How brands can use a community to reach their sustainability goals
As lockdown is easing and a new sense of normality is on the horizon another crisis is looming - climate change. On a global and local level companies have to comply with mandatory environmental laws and regulations, but many are implementing their own self imposed targets. For example, IKEA announced that it will use only renewable and recyclable materials by 2030.
Setting their own targets and goals makes sense. A survey into UK customers found that, “84% say that being environmentally friendly is important to them”. Yet, is the message about the brands green actions and targets getting through to customers? The same survey reported that, “68%” of consumers “cannot name a single environmentally friendly brand”.
But there is an appetite to get leadership on environmental issues from brands. An estimated “88% of consumers want brands to help them live sustainably”. So, a brand that can communicate its sustainable actions to consumers and actively involve their consumers in this process is at an advantage. If they help their consumers taking small micro actions to become more sustainable, even better.
One way brands could do this is by creating an online, or even offline, community for their customers for both education and action. This could be a space for sustainable education and action for both brand employees and customers to share ideas and collection act to reduce their environmental footprint.
How could brands do this?
Sustainable education through micro-learnings
The location for their community really depends on the customers and the answers to the following questions. Where do the consumers spend their time? What platforms are they on? What are their needs? But, one thing this community will need is learning. Ideally bite-sized learning where the members of the community can quickly learn the basics about environmental issues such as micro-plastics, deforestation and more and also track their learning. The key is the learning needs to be fun, supportive and validated (through a collaboration with a University, charity or something similar).
Once the community members have learnt about the topic, they need to act. This could be through deciding on what sustainable solutions or projects the brand should get involved in or actions for themselves to do.
Collective action
They could also proposed activities for community members to take and hold each other accountable. For example, buying products in bulk, reducing their water consumption. While these actions are micro at an individual level. If most people in the community act, the impact could be much larger. The environmental impact could be tracked, shared and reported in the company’s annual CSR report.
New business models
Beyond this, new business models could be proposed, tested, and implemented in this community. It could be an online prototyping tool. For example, if several customers in one location though a local vending machine could work as a model to sell products where they live and it would reduce the company’s environmental impact at a local level, they could be involved in helping to understand the appetite locally, in ideas for what the minimum viable vending machine would need to be like for testing, and help in the launch and marketing of the ideas.
The possibilities are endless. As long as the needs of customers and brand employees are understood, met, and appreciated. An online community for sustainability could help bring the brand and customer close together, create more trust, and open up more possibilities for collective sustainable impact. In the words of Margaret J. Wheatley, “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about”.
