Zag Ep. 66 Sustainability in marketing, How to defeat a goliath, and why marketing and PR need to be integrated

📅What Challengers Need To Know This Week

In this week’s edition:  

• How seriously should we be thinking about sustainability as marketers?
• Estrid, a razor challenger brand gives Gillette a close shave
• HereWeFlo launches in the USA with a very British campaign…
• Integrating marketing & PR

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♻️Sustainability in Marketing

☀️ We just had the hottest summer in recorded history and apparently, we’re not the only ones to have noticed… Real Gen-Z insight: 56% of people aged 16-25 believe humanity is doomed.

Though the term “sustainability” gets thrown around by us marketers regularly in our product marketing, how many of us truly understand how to approach sustainability in marketing?

We hear you, “We aren’t as bad as fossil fuels so our impact is negligible” but parts of the marketing machinery represent a huge portion of agency and advertiser overall environmental impact - from media buys to production and data management we're rapidly increasing the associated carbon footprint. In 2022, Scope3 and Ebiquity estimated a slightly more modest 77 Mt CO2e. This is the equivalent of millions of passenger flights annually, or enough to power tens of millions of homes per-year.

So how should you approach marketing sustainably? Well, 2 weeks ago we hosted a panel of doers and thinkers who are leading the charge when it comes to the intersection of sustainability in marketing.

It was packed full of insights that you, as a senior marketer, can implement but here are the top 3 takeaways if you’re short on time:

1. Do less: For the past decade, as advertisers, we’ve conflated doing more with doing better. So we spend on every format imaginable from OOH to YouTube ads. But what’s the energy implication of this much activity? We need to get a better handle on what sustainable media planning and buying looks like. This problem is only set to get worse as generative AI enters the conversation. Not so fun fact: It’s estimated that a query in AI has a carbon footprint 4-5 times more than a Google search.

2. Don’t fearmonger: Climate change is f***** scary! As brands, it’s easy to lean into the existential crisis we’re facing in our marketing, but that doesn’t do anything aside from telling consumers to ignore us. Creatively, we need to stir up urgency without making it all about fear. Finisterre was mentioned as a brand that is doing this incredibly well.

3. Unraveling the Action vs. Interest Mystery: So, the data tells us that customers are falling head over heels for sustainability, but are they really committed to a long-term relationship? It turns out, that while sustainability is getting more swipes right, it's not always leading to action. Why? Well, it seems that even in the world of green, the wallet still wears the pants.

Check out the full panel discussion below👇

Watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/_HFG0ZdDBsM

🗣️ How to Beat an Incumbent

🤨 In a bold David-and-Goliath showdown, the razor and body care challenger, Estrid, discovered a rather cheeky maneuver by their colossal rival, Gillette Venus. Gillette, who own 73% of the market share for hair removal snagged the 'estrid.nl' URL and slyly redirected it to their own UK website.

Estrid, retaliated with a dose of courage and some impeccable memes that left folks cheering for the underdog.

Well played, Estrid! 🙌

The British Are C🍆MING... to a CVS Pharmacy store

🗓️ Every week we’re lucky enough to see some of the best challengers in the world put their campaigns into the real world.

One of our favorite brands, HereWeFlo recently launched their “The British Are Coming” campaign to announce their partnership with CVS.

3 reasons this was brilliant? ✨

1. Attention: The imagery and the pun grab attention immediately. Given that HereWeFlo are launching their condoms and lubes across CVS pharmacies, this makes complete sense.
   
   
2. History: The statue is of Paul Revere, a Boston hero known for shouting “The British Are Coming!”
   
   
3. Geography: New England is the HQ of CVS so it makes it even more perfect.

Watch this space as we have Co-Founder and CMO HereWeFlo on Scratch next week!

💭 A PESO (model) for your thoughts: why integration between marketing and PR matters

👉 The PESO model is a robust framework to aid in the integration between marketing and communications. That integration can help optimize the budget, enhance consistency and mitigate risk.

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🤨So why aren't more companies doing it?

Check out the full article from our recent contributor, Alayna Francis, Global Head of Media Relations at IG Group.

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