Marketing of Sustainability Programs to Internal Stakeholders: A Blueprint

The success of a Corporate Sustainability program depends in large measure on its adoption by employees--even if the executive suite has bought into it completely.  While that's a big if, let's suppose that you are one of the few--and extremely lucky--sustainability professionals working under just such a forward-thinking leadership team.

In such an ideal situation, you strategy is simple (as distinct from easy, but more on that below):

Step 1: Educate--explain what sustainability is, how it works and how it benefits the triple bottom line
Step 2: Demonstrate--if education is telling, demonstration is showing; this phase of the program equates to an academic praticum, in which every employee has an opportunity to participate; after educating with theory and examples, develop a simple, easy to engage initiative that will have easy to see results.
Step 3: Recruit--after the demonstration phase, invite employees to leverage their experience, insight and unique perspective in order to indentify new opportunities to reduce waste and improve efficiency.
Step 4: Reward--find ways to give both emotional/personal ownership and financial reward to employees who originate ideas that become actuated programs.

These are the essential program components, and it is extremely helpful to think in terms of education as the over-arching strategy as you design your communications/outreach materials.  Why?  Because the idea that something that is good for the environment can also benefit the bottom line is extremely counter to the corporate culture that has grown up in the United States.  As a result, your job is not merely to role-out a new initiative, but to give all employees the conceptual tools to adopt sustainability, own it, and drive it forward as part of their day-to-day job function.  This latter point is especially important, because the most successful sustainability programs are strategically "top-down", but find that their greatest waste reduction oppportunities areidentified on the "shop floor."  Therefore, management is doubly-incentivized to actively recruit rank and file employees into its sustainability mission.  Education is the key to this recruiting process.

Underlying any successful education campaign is a standard communication planning process.  As a result, the standard marketing challenges are in place: defining a value proposition, building awareness, over-coming barriers, getting "prospects" to try your product and building repeat "purchases."  The good news: You have a dynamite value proposition, one that virtually every one in the company should want to embrace--after all, who doesn't want to work more efficiently, while also saving money?  So the value proposition of sustainability is as universal as it is simple: sustainability increases profitability.
The bad news is your prospects are all extremely busy.  While sustainability can reduce inputs and thereby reduce costs, someone has to design the actual operational program that yields such wonderful results.  Employees recognize that this probably means they are the ones who will have to fill the role of architect.

Because you won't be able to count on most employees to jump right in and re-design core business processes (or even on them having the time to listen to and process the sustainability Gospel that will be the salvation of  their company), you will have to rely on old-fashioned hard work.  Most notably, developing a communications plan, and executing it across the entire enterprise. 

Your main steps in this process are as follows:

1. Refine the language of your value proposition to dovetail with your corporate culture and strategic goals.
2. Define "success" for your program
3. Develop metrics for measuring program performance
4. Identifying barriers: Apathy, commitments that compete for mindshare; antipathy (a certain percentage of people not only don't care about environmental issues, they actively think pursuing environmental programs is a waste of time and resources); time; term to payback; insufficient ROI)
5. Construct strategies for overcoming barriers
6. Establish achievable goals.  This is huge, and the long-term survival--to say nothing of success--may turn on this issue. 
7. Consider Multi-level marketing.  It may be a bad word, and certainly has a bad reputation.  But the underlying model works: build a network of passionate missionaries to carry the sustainability doctrine through-out the corporate community.  Recruiting opinion leaders or otherrs who are well-positioned to influence large numbers of employees is especially effective.
8. Review and refine.  Just like the management strategy of "Continuous Improvement Process", your program must include a protocol for regularly reviewing your success and modifying your messaging and outreach to capitalize on any lessons learned.
9. Anticipate fail-points and short-circuit them.  Many sustainability marketing campaigns--like marketing campaigns in general--are prone to fail.  Why?  there are two main reasons.  First, the product is ill-conceived; second, the marketing campaign is either poorly designed or executed.  In the former case, it isn't that sustainability is a bad "product" and one that your target market is pre-disposed to reject.  The history of the auto industry is strewn with the wreckage of failed models--yet we all know that cars are one of the most fabulously successful products ever introduced.  Sustainability is the same: it has inherent value, but it must be properly crafted, regardless of how good the marketing program that surrounds it.  Employee education  initiatives of all stripes are no different from consumer markets, where "nothing kills a bad product faters than good advertising."

The final point in this "To-do" list reveals some helpful additional planning considerations. 
Step 1: design and package the sustainability program honestly; don't fail prey to the path of least resistance suggested by green-washing: be honest with your stakeholders about the hard work ahead, but engage them as experts in the field who will be leaders in developing actual on-the-ground programs, and not merely on the receiving end of corporate mandates.
Step 2: Design the communication strategy, messaging and tactics for marketing it for mass appeal within your target audience
Step 3: Establish easily achievable but nontheless meaningful "first level targets".  Success demonstrates the legitimacy of sustainability to stakeholders, which in turn builds momentum and eventually loyalty to the program (aslo: cultural shift--the goal of a sustainability program is to get every employee to address every task by asking: how can I do this sustainably?); it also gives both the program and the executing team credibility with senior management which is necessary for on-going sponsorship and support.

A sobering word.
As noted, a successful roll-out of a sustainability program is a simple undertaking--but just because it's simply, doesn't make it easy.  It requires careful planning, studious preparation and willful conviction during the execution phase.  Just like running a marathon, or swimming the English Channel, sustainability program marketing is forumlaic.  In the same way that endurance athletics is based largely on resolve and repetition, so too is program marketing that supports a dynamic and self-evident value proposition.  As long as you are prepared for a long ramp-up period of preparation, and you have the right support team in place, you will cross the finish line

Summary: Marketing Sustainability to your internal stakeholders
GOAL: Adoption by rank and file at high rate
STRATEGY: Educate, demonstrate, recruit, reward
RESULT:  Succeed in achieving a high level of program participation and messaging uptake, reesulting in improved sustainability practices

Energy Use: The Devil Inside

In several other posts, I've noted that energy is the both the Holy Grail and the Gordian Knot of environmental sustainability.  In the Pandora's box of environmental threats, Anthropomorphic climate change--aka, Global Warming--is the greatest scourge: on its own, it has the potential to destroy human civilization as it currently exists.  The corresponding loss of life, destruction of property and decimation of productive land and industrial capacity renders questions of clean air, clean water, arable land and food supplies almost totally irrelevant.  As a result, solving the Environmental Energy Crisis (not a shortage of fuel sources, but a shortage of the right type of fuel sources) lies at the center of the global need to migrate human activity to a sustainable model.

Crusaders sought the Holy Grail because it supposedly possessed mystical powers of salvation.  In this context, clean, zero-carbon energy is an industrial Holy Grail: it enables "afterlife" for modern industrial society, enabling us to live beyond our current energy accomodations, which appear to have a termination point somewhere around 550 PPM of atmospheric carbon.

But like the Holy Grail, zero-carbon energy is elusive.  In this respect, it is the Global Warming Gordian Knot: the bonds of energy consumption patterns, structural bias toward existing fuels and technologies, system realiability, economic considerations, backward compatibility with installed transportation and distribution infrastructure and--ironically--environmental regulation have tightly lashed the helm of the contemporary economy on a collision course with Fate.  Without a broad-based, international migration away from fossil-instensive feedstocks, the planet--and the civilizations, economies and capitalist systems it supports appear posed to collapse.

Energy in the Enterprise
There is a rising debate about what the solution to Global warming should "look like." Should it be a multi-lateral, internationally negotiated governmental fix?  Or should it be left to markets to resolve?  For sustainability officers in the enterprise, this debate is immaterial, because you already have a strategic mandate outside of any broader systemic response.  Beyond questions of environmental sustainabilility, your enterprise embraces the profit potential and competitive advantage of sustainability practices and is moving forward.  As you design your program, energy usage is thus a key component in achieving your goals.
In an ideal scenario, the enterprise will become a zero-net emitter of greenhouse gases resulting from fossil fuel driven energy systems.  Reaching a zero-emissions standard is a two-step process:
1.  Minimize useage of GHG-emitting energy and system inputs that have high levels of "embedded" energy;
2.  "Offset" that energy usage which cannot be eliminated from the production chain

In the first case, actual implementation will depend largely on the type of business you are running.  Manufacturers may need to install higher efficiency pumps and motors, utilize "load-building" software that optmizes transportation loads and reduces fuel waste, and install oversite controls in the supply chain;  Services companies may simply build-out renewable (solar; micro-wind) on-site to diminish reliance on fossil-driven grid energy, retro-fit buildings to improve on-site efficiency, and optimize business travel  for the sales force.

After the enterprise has done everything it can to wring energy waste out of its operational processes, there will still activities that generate carbon.  To achieve a goal of zero-net emissions, the enterprise must then engage in offset activities--the purchase of renewable energy credits, and forest offset products are leading candidates for this process.  These are available either through commercial brokerage services, or through bilateral contracts with originating project developers.  In either case, the enterprise must be cautious, ensuring that the products it buys are real, additional, verifiable and permanent.  If a product fails that four-prong test, the enterprise cannot reliably assert that its emissions activities have genuinely been negated.

The question often arises: if Sustainability is supposed to flow profit through to my bottom line, why am I incurring a hard cost in the form of offset purchases?  This is both a fair and important question: remember, sustainability is a viable strategy only if it does not raise operating costs (and preferable reduces them). So reconciling incremental costs with your sustainability program is essential to success. The first answer to the question is that reduction in energy costs will at least partially cover the cost of offset purchases. The firm realizes hard-dollar savings from reduced energy use, which then offsets the cost of offsets.

 The second answer is more subjective, because it depends largely on the industry and type of business you are managing and therefore your needs for energy inputs and thus your opportunities for reduced usage and increased efficiency will vary.  Generally speaking, overall savings from increased efficiency and lower costs of both energy inputs and waste management remediation (such as purchasing allowances for the emissions of SOX, NOX and/or particulate matter) counter offset costs and yield hard dollar savings.  (Note: this phenomenom will become increasingly important in jurisdictions that implement some sort of GHG control, such as either a cap and trade system or an emissions tax.  In such a case, those firms that have seen anticipated government controls and prepared for them realize immediate benefit in the form of compliance costs never expended.  Proper planning in the name of enviromental sustainability yields "preventative profit" instead of requiring expensive compliance payments.

Finally, it is worth noting that a willingness by your firm to purchase offsets is a powerful driver toward reducing GHG emissions from energy consumption.  Obviously, the less energy used, the lower the emission load that needs to be offset.  So there is a positive feedback loop: as the enterprise seeks to reduce its liability for offsets, it innovates in its core business activities--driving down offset costs certainly; but also further reducing energy needs and thus front-end energy costs.  As a result, Environmental Sustainabilty has mutually reinforcing  forces that move more dollars into the profit column.

Cultural Shifts: Doing with less

In an earlier post, I noted that one of the central pre-requisites of embedding sustainability in the enterprise (in addition to it being a process and not a moment; more on that later) is a cultural shift. This post deals with the rationale that underlies the need for cultural migration away from heavy dependence on materials inputs and low-cost access to waste sinks, to consumption minimalization.
Remember, sustainability only succeeds when it becomes a holistic, corporate strategy—not an add-on, an after-thought or an accommodation such as black-letter compliance with environmental regulation. For any transformative strategy to succeed, it must be embraced throughout the enterprise; if it is not, it simply becomes a stuck-in-the-mud mantra, or—worse yet—a failed slogan.

Under the rubric of Environmental Sustainability, a cultural shift is both very simple, and very profound. It is simple, because it complements the core directive of any enterprise: profit-making. It is profound, because it requires the rejection of a long-standing bias that says that environmental protection can only be a cost. But viewed through a different lens—that of efficiency, of getting the same unit of output with lower levels of constituent inputs—brings these two (falsely) disparate concepts together. Why? Because using fewer inputs means spending less on input materials—and it also means generating fewer non-productive outputs. Another name for outputs? Waste. Fewer outputs means less waste to be treated, remediated, stored, landfilled or offset. Each of those waste stream management activities costs money. So yielding the same unit of productive output from fewer inputs pays a double dividend: lower materials costs; lower waste stream management costs. And the environmental benefit is also two fold: fewer input materials means less extraction (mining/harvesting/refining/processing--all of which have attendant waste streams and carbon output from energy usage); less waste means fewer demands on the “eco-assets” of the planet as a waste sink.  The enterprise saves money that flows directly to the bottom line; the environment is treated more gently on both ends of the production cycle.  Profits rise; environmental impacts fall; the enterprise enters a sustainable production cycle

But back to the idea of a cultural shift for moment—those are the component parts, but it is actually a much simpler undertaking. Collectively, the enterprise stops thinking exclusively in terms of maximizing profit, and elevates the comfortable and constructive interplay of the so-called “triple bottom line” to priority status. Consciously, the decision makers recoginize that long-term profit for the enterprise depends on the long-term health of the planet. To achieve this balance, the enterprise needs to take less and more importantly dispose of less into the various common waste sinks (air, water, land) that have been so inefficiently exploited in the past (a review of the classic essay by Hardin, "the Tragedy of the Commons" is helpful...http://dieoff.org/page95.htm).

But a funny thing happens on the way to the landfill: people realize that short-term profit can be captured from sustainability activities, that what was once viewed as a cost center is actually a profit driver: sustainability is an engine for value creation in the enterprise.

Finally, it is absolutely essential to manage expectations (both your own and that of the C-level) about the timeline for shifting internal perceptions and behaviors.  In this way, embedding sustainability in the enterprise is a process.  It won't occur at the end of the metaphorical bayonet point of a corporate mandate.  Rather, it occurs gradually, as your team deploys a planned, coordinated communications effort aimed at first eductating employees, and then rewarding them for involvement in the program's cross-enterprise success.

As a result, it is critical to up-ramp your Sustainability program gradually; you need to ensure success with early initiatives in order to develop credibility with rank and file employees and to demonstrate to management that a properly conceived and executed sustainability program can yield measurable activities that translate to waste reduction and further to bottom line profit. But more on that in a future post, when I will outline the essential steps for triggering such a shift, through Marketing the Environmental Sustainability Program to Internal Stakeholders.

Something you can do: Think before you drink

Corporate sustainability is an enterprise-wide undertaking. Why? Because CS is not merely about recycling waste-paper, setting printer defaults to "two-sided" and turning off computers and office lights when not in use. (Tho' these are all fantastic ideas, and ones that you should incorporate into your daily code of sustainability behavior.) It is ultimately about achieving a "zero-net" carbon footprint--and since virtually all commercial activity involves carbon output (usually from fossil fuels), virtually all enterprises are net-positive contributors to GHG output. Achieving zero-net therefore requires coordinated corporate action, such as purchasing offsets, participating in corporate transportation programs such as BP's CoolFuel (http://climateneutralnetwork.org/benefits.php), and proactive energy reduction measures in the supply chain.
But that doesn't mean that individuals can't make meaningful contributions to energy reductions that lead to corresponding curtailment of GHG emissions. As part of an on-going series of "Individual Actions", this is post offers one easy and high-impact way that you can reduce your personal footprint (while also saving a BIG BUCKS*: Switch to filtered tap water.

Bottled water is incredibly fossil fuel intensive: energy is required to pump it, bottle it, ship it, deliver it and display it. And that's before the manufacturing (and disposal) of the petroleum-based plastic bottle is accounted for. It is certainly true that filtered water also requires energy: it has to be pumped from the reservoir to the tap. But whereas many bottled water sources are extremely remote from the point of consumption (Evian is in France; where are you?), most municipal water comes from local sources and doesn't require an energy outlay (or corresponding GHG emissions) to run either a bottling process or a trucking-based delivery chain. Best of all, tap water doesn't require a fossil-derived plastic bottle that required limited resources to produce, and limited resources to dispose of. So when it comes to water, please think before you drink.

Note: For everything you ever wanted to know about bottled water (but were afraid to ask), take a deep dive into NRDC's report on the topic....http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp...and learn such frothy, fun facts as one 'brand of "spring water" whose label pictured a lake and mountains, actually came from a well in an industrial facility's parking lot, near a hazardous waste dump, and periodically was contaminated with industrial chemicals at levels above FDA standards,' and most cities have to test surface water for Giardia--yet bottlers don't have to.

*Bottled water can carry a price tag as much as 10,000 times that of tap water. Yikes.