DESIRABLE SUSTAINABILITY PT 2: Authentic Sustainability
This series is from our talk at London Packaging Week on the Luxury Unboxed stage as a part of the Pentawards: Capital of Design Sessions in 2022.
If you haven’t read the first instalment catch up here
AUTHENTIC SUSTAINABILITY
How do you position your luxury brand as sustainable without devaluing your status or risking greenwashing?
One really important stage - before we delve into the design - is to establish our client’s brand strategy to root sustainability at its core.
When this becomes a core value, woven into your wider mission - all of a sudden, sustainability is no longer an after-thought, a buzzword or a ‘nice to have’ - it’s a key thread in the fibre of your brand, guiding your wider business decisions and helping us hone in on key sustainable actions that authentically align with your brand.
These are the steps we take to work out what authentic sustainable actions we can implement for each brand;
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
You can’t underestimate the power of knowing who wants to buy your products.
Who are they? Where do they hang out? What do they care about?
Conscious customers want to identify themselves with the values behind your brand. They want you to be passionate about something and they want to know what you’re doing to affect change.
Understand what your clients are actually buying from you - the problem that only you can solve - and then create goals that align with that.
Share it with them, involve them and know that they’re paying attention.
MOTIVATE WITH THE ‘FEEL-GOOD’
With so many consumers still motivated by personal benefits rather than environmental duty, we need to motivate with the ‘feel good’ rather than the ‘feel bad’
Luxury makes you feel good but conversely, the typical messaging around sustainability tends to motivate with fear.
Many consumers are fed up with 'guilt' and the burden of change resting on their shoulders.
We need to flip the message from ‘STOP’
STOP driving your car
STOP flying abroad
STOP buying more
And the reality is, this is not an either/or game - very few people are going to stop taking holidays or reign in their spending.
Unsurprisingly people don’t want to sacrifice their luxuries or lifestyles, these require us to change our habits - and we are very habit driven! - it’s what makes brand loyalty so valuable - as such, the STOP message has limited success.
So we flip the message to ’START’
START buying consciously, with purpose
START voting with your wallet
START investing in goods & services that are good for people & planet
START making a global change without having to make a personal change
What do they get by buying into your brand? What is the personal benefit to them?
Make it easier for them too;
Respect human rights
Reduce their carbon footprint
Buy local or fair trade
Support conservation
Contribute to environmental or social solutions
Imbue their purchases with positive mission-based actions that make them feel good about spending their money with your brand.
LOOK BEYOND THE QUICK WINS
We have to do better than creating one ‘sustainable’ line or product.
If the rest of your range is made using cheap labour, with unsustainable, single-use materials your customers WILL see through it.
Establish clear sustainability goals - consider;
Your materials - provenance & traceability
Manufacturing - locality, responsibility
Transportation - shape & weight
and
The end-of-life opportunities.
Remember that sustainability is circular, not linear - think Reduce, Repurpose, Refill.
Ask yourself how this product could close the loop on waste.
Recycling should be our very last option and where that is the only option, ensure your materials make that easy to do, and use brand language to help your customer understand what actions to take.
And that’s exactly what we did with our client, Cloth Collective when considering how their sustainability goals would translate across the rest of their business.
Read our case study on INNOVATION VS ITERATION with Cloth Collective >>
