Ultimate Guide to 

SUSTAINABLE  MARKETING 

 

 

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 Ultimate Guide to Sustainable Marketing 

  

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less 

than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela 

  

Consumers today want more. They want to do more, change more and be more active in making 

the world a better place. They want to do good things themselves, and support companies – big, 

small and in between – that demonstrate strong ethics and stewardship of human beings and the 

planet. 

  

In fact, according to the Ethical Consumer US report of 2015 by Mintel, more than 63% of 

consumers feel that ethical issues are becoming more important. And, consumers are strongly 

supporting businesses that incorporate meaningful values into their core business.   

  

This desire to make a positive impact translates into a key concept in today’s business world: 

Sustainability. Sustainability as a business strategy is becoming increasingly appealing to 

managers, executives and business owners, and more businesses and organizations are driving 

change – and success – with sustainable business goals. 

  

Here, we’ll take a closer look at sustainability and how it plays out as a strategy for both business 

and marketing. What do sustainable businesses look like? And how can sustainable marketing 

help those businesses succeed? 

  

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Sustainability as a Business Strategy  

 Sustainability in business is the ability of an organization to thrive over time in a way that 

protects and replenishes resources.  

  

Although the concept seems new, sustainability has actually been around for decades. The 

modern-day concept of sustainability was developed from the World Commission on 

Environment and Development, an organization launched by the United Nations in 1983. The 

Commission was led by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, and thus became known as 

the Brundtland Commission. 

 

After four years of work, the Commission concluded that government and industry needed to 

practice more environmental and social responsibility. The term sustainable development was 

coined and defined as: 

  

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future 

generations to meet their own needs 

  

Since then, sustainability in business has driven nothing but value. Harvard Business Review 

reports that companies that have sustainable business practices experience greater risk 

management, more innovation, and better financial performance, including larger profits, more 

cost savings, and improved efficiencies and logistics. Moreover, sustainable businesses benefit 

from improved customer loyalty. 

  

According to the Clarkston Consulting 2014 Corporate Sustainability Trends Report, 

“sustainability has emerged to a prominent position in corporate and consumer consciences.” 

  

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Among the consumers who are noticing are millennials, who now boast $2.45 trillion in spending 

power. Forbes reports millennials not only have money to spend, they care where they spend it: 

Roughly 70% will pay more for brands that support a cause they care about. 

 

 

  

 

As the purchasing power of millennials increases and the population of conscientious consumers 

continues to grow, authentically sustainable, purpose-driven brands and the people-planet-profit 

model are winning across the board – economically and socially. 

  

 

    

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Triple Bottom Line Business Model 

 A primary sustainability strategy is the triple bottom line. Developed by entrepreneur John 

Elkington, this approach is about finding opportunities to build competitive advantage across 

three areas of an organization: 

· Net financial 

· Environmental 

· Social impacts 

  

A crucial element of this approach is to broaden the consideration of stakeholders beyond 

shareholders to all groups that have interest in and are impacted by the organization. 

 

 

 

 

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New Movements in Sustainable Business 

 Throughout the years, there have been several new movements in the pursuit of sustainability, in 

addition to the Triple Bottom Line. 

  

Conscious Capitalism encourages businesses that are, according to The Conscious Capitalist 

Credo, “galvanized by higher purposes that serve and align the interest of all their major 

stakeholders.” This movement calls on the power of business and capitalism to cultivate 

compassion, freedom and prosperity to make our lives more purposeful. 

  

Similarly, the movement of B Corps is advancing. B Corps are businesses that have been certified 

by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of performance in areas of social and 

environmental impact. Inc. Magazine regards B Corp certification as “the highest standard for 

socially responsible business.” 

 

 

Sustainable Business At Work 

  

Sustainable business strategies require a level of systems thinking that can only be accomplished 

by bringing together people across the spectrum of an organization's operations. Such 

cross-functional teams can gather different views of an organization's opportunities, strengths 

and weaknesses for a whole-system perspective into sustainability outcomes. 

  

Several companies have embraced best practices of sustainable business with success. Patagonia 

and Interface are two that have created sustainable solutions while differentiating their brands 

and winning consumer loyalty. 

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Patagonia 

Patagonia founder Yves Chouinard brought his love of outdoors, concern for the planet, and 

passion for sports together in a company that supplies the world’s top climbers, fishermen, 

surfers, and outdoor enthusiasts with high-quality gear. To be successful and profitable, the 

company has built its mission on sustainable sourcing, supply chain innovation and valuing 

relationships with vendors, customers and stakeholders.   

Interface 

After starting his business in the 1970s, carpet manufacturer Ray Anderson realized it was 

contributing to pollution and he challenged his company to make carpet sustainably. In a major 

mid-course correction, Interface reinvented nearly every aspect of its business based on the 

Mission Zero goal of zero impact on the planet. With their new mission, Climate Take Back,™ the 

business is committed to creating a climate fit for life while calling on others to do the same. 

 

 

  

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What is Sustainable Marketing? 

 As the consciousness of sustainability has made its way into the mainstream of business 

strategies, a new paradigm of marketing is emerging with it. 

  

Sustainable marketing is a critical part of operating a sustainable business. To understand what it 

means, we break down the meanings of the individual words. 

Sustainable 

Sustainable is the ability of a system to maintain or renew itself perpetually. It can also mean: 

conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources. 

  

The term sustainable has branched into sustainable development and sustainable business, setting 

the stage for sustainability to become a key indicator of an organization’s success. 

  

"In recent years, sustainability has been recast as a broader concept encompassing the 

social, economic, environmental, and cultural systems needed to sustain any organization. 

A sustainable organization, and similarly a sustainable person, is prepared to thrive today 

and tomorrow.” –Adam Warbach, author of Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto 

Marketing 

The American Marketing Association’s definition of marketing is comprehensive, and works well 

toward building the definition of sustainable marketing as a multiple stakeholder approach: 

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, 

delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and 

society at large. 

 

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In our rapidly accelerating digital age, business leaders often lose sight of the three core 

functions that are needed to create value: 

  

● Operations, which produces and delivers the product or service to the customer 

● Finance, which tracks the flow and needs of capital 

● Marketing, which creates demand for an organization's product or service. 

  

All of these functions are needed to build value. Without any one of them, an organization is 

likely to fail. 

Sustainable Marketing 

There is a “textbook” definition of sustainable marketing based on Sustainable Marketing by Diane 

Martin and John Schouten. 

[Sustainable marketing is the] “process of creating, communicating and delivering value to 

customers in such a way that both natural (resources nature provides) and human 

(resources people provide) capital are preserved or enhanced throughout.” 

  

Believing that marketing has “great potential as a force for creating cultural change,” Martin and 

Schouten set out to illustrate that marketing has two imperatives: to market sustainably and to 

market sustainability. 

 

Market sustainably is an inward practice that ensures all marketing processes are environmentally 

and socially benign. 

  

Market sustainability is an outward practice that helps bring about a society in which striving for 

sustainability is the norm. 

  

A good way to practice sustainable marketing is to be committed to honesty in marketing 

messaging and sustainability claims. 

  

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What Sustainable Marketing Isn't 

It’s not regular marketing 

Marketing efforts to make an organization stand out in the marketplace are part of any 

marketing strategy. 

It’s not “green” marketing 

Green marketing means marketing the sustainability efforts of a company to a target audience, 

as in what a marketing agency might do for Patagonia or Interface. Another example is Starbucks 

creating marketing assets that incorporate sustainability messages (such as Starbucks’ fair trade 

sourcing or sustainable agriculture practices). Like regular marketing, green marketing simply 

involves executing tactics driven by a marketing strategy. 

It’s not green-wash marketing 

Green washing is what happens when a brand makes sustainability claims in their marketing 

messaging that they can't back up in operations. 

  

A well-known example of green washing is illustrated by the the Volkswagen emissions scandal. 

Beginning in 2009, VW sought to dominate the diesel car market in the U.S. A huge marketing 

campaign was created to tout its cars' low emissions. 

  

Eventually, the Environmental Protection Agency found that Volkswagen had intentionally 

programmed the diesel engines to activate their emissions controls only during emissions 

testing. This allowed the vehicles’ nitrogen oxide (NOx) output to meet U.S. standards during 

regulatory testing, but emit up to 40 times more NOx with routine driving. 

  

Volkswagen deployed this programming software in eleven million cars worldwide, in model 

years 2009 through 2015. 

  

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As this scandal went public, Volkswagen stock prices fell, and its executives resigned or were 

suspended. The Volkwagen Group spent almost $20 billion to fix the issue and conduct a recall 

program. The 2009 Volkswagen Jetta Diesel Sedan was named “Green Car of the Year” by Green 

Car Journal; in October 2015 that award was rescinded. 

  

The Evolution of Sustainable Marketing 

 Before there was Sustainable Marketing, there was unsustainable marketing. Unsustainable 

marketing began with the mass production of the Industrial Revolution. Marketing was 

hyper-focused on supply and demand and at paces directly linked to unsustainable usage of 

non-renewable and renewable resources. This was tied to increases in pollution, debt, illnesses 

related to the environment, and other negative impacts on individuals and society. 

  

Green washing is considered an unsustainable marketing practice as it is harmful to consumers 

and society to make false claims about a product or service. 

  

The next generation brought more unsustainable marketing with aggressive sales and 

advertising tactics among competitors, which resulted in a ‘buyer beware’ mentality. Consumers 

began to develop mistrust of marketing and sales. 

  

Since then, marketing has turned to focus more on the needs and wants of the customer. Brands 

have shifted strategy to develop more of a two-way relationship with consumers. 

 

In turn, consumers not only expect brands to behave ethically, they also demand that brands 

align with their own value-led lives. 

 

  

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Sustainable Marketing in Action 

 Lynda Resnic, the brand mastermind behind Fuji Water and Franklin Mint, wrote in Rubies in the 

Orchard that a sustainable marketing function is created when there is a coherent business 

culture, where everyone is pulling in the same direction and digging deep to find value, and being 

truthful in communicating that value to consumers. 

  

This can result in shared objectives for marketing and sustainability. Marketing can then 

incorporate these objectives and sustainability principles into the marketing strategy. 

Sustainable marketing has two goals: 

1. Meet the organization’s financial goals 

2. Incorporate sustainability objectives and practices 

When implemented properly, sustainable marketing can lead to outcomes such as: 

● Lower impact on the environment 

● Increased value to the community, suppliers, and organization 

● Consideration of the organization’s impact on society  

● Anticipation of changes in the industry and in society, and how those changes will affect 

the organization in the future 

● A plan for such changes 

● Customer retention 

● Increased happiness quotient of employees 

 

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Sustaining Sustainability  

  

For business owners who care about creating a sustainable world, the powerful tool of 

sustainable marketing can both enhance connections with conscientious consumers and drive 

success across the triple bottom line. 

 

 

 

For consumers, sustainable marketing educates and empowers about ways to support 

businesses and nonprofits that share their vision of changing the world for the better. 

 

Sustainable marketing, when done authentically, brings consumers and companies together 

toward shared goals and success, both now and into the future. And that’s ultimately what 

sustainability is all about.  

 

To learn more about how Yodelpop implements sustainable marketing strategies for businesses and 

non-profits, schedule a consultation today. 

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