Successfully Tell Your Sustainable Brand Story With Better Data
Sustainability was not always a big growth driver for CPG products. Often, these niche products were relegated to the top shelf and commanded a premium for a microsegment of customers with limited sales. Brand managers were asking questions: Is it worth pursuing a sustainable product? Will it generate enough revenue for the brand or as a new product?
In a watershed moment for the U.S. market, IRI and NYU released a joint study in early 2019 that answered whether sustainability is meeting profit and volume goals with a resounding “YES.” The extensive research across 36 categories specifically showed sustainability-marketed products delivered over 50% of market growth from 2013 to 2018. Sustainability products have gained share overall and grew three times faster than the overall CPG market during the period.
The trends are even stronger today. Demand has expanded for many consumer product categories including food, beverage, health care, beauty care, apparel and more. Underlying this decade-long uplift in consumer demand is a change in consumer mindset. Consumers have recognized their purchase behavior has influence, a difference they can own by researching brands and making intentional decisions to help the planet and society. Consumer expectations have heightened to include transparent evidence of sustainable products.
Strategic decisions
Some business leaders may think the sustainability flight has left. The truth is, it’s not too late. If brands have not developed their ESG strategy, it’s time to evaluate the brand relative to the company’s sustainability goals as well as target consumer, key retailer partners and other stakeholder expectations.
Consider: Is your brand compliant with the packaging, plastic usage and claims made on the product today in all your markets? Additionally, are you prepared for new regulations that may be harder to comply with in the various regions of the world, including EMEA’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive set to be enacted in 2024? Doing this right reduces the risk of fines and/or being caught in greenwashing issues.
Another key strategic decision is competitive advantage. Understand the sustainability problems that are top of mind for your category, and make sure those are covered adequately by your brand. For example, the 20-ounce single-use plastic bottle has been a challenge for the carbonate soft drink category, so many major manufacturers have made the commitment and developed plans to use alternative materials or make them out of recycled packaging.
See also: 5 Ways Sustainability Impacts CPG Margins
Infusing sustainability in brand strategy
Brand strategies are not static and need to adapt with the changes in consumer mindsets as well as the requirement to align to the corporate sustainability goals. Brand strategic plans can be an effective tool in communicating core values of the brand as well as ways to build out the tactics to activate the new sustainable goals.
A great example is the Cheerios removing the honey-bee mascot from Honey Nut Cheerios to call out the decline of the bee population. Cheerios partnered with a seed company to distribute sunflower seeds to help rebuild bee communities which are key pollinators for various food products around the world.
Using data management to activate your brand story
CPG companies are complex, with most having more than a dozen brands with presence in several categories. Closing the gap in your brand’s sustainability story requires organization, teamwork and product management technologies that can enable and communicate those changes in product information.
With a leading product master data management solution with superior data governance and ability to organize teams, manage compliance related details, build third-party certification data, brands can close the gap quickly. Once the claims per brand and product are identified, teams can then work to ensure the third-party assessors have certified the product and then update the marketing and product claims. Brands then partner syndicate data to update PDPs across the various digital channels and build a long-term plan to update packaging to highlight the most relevant and valuable claims.
Taking the long-term view
Long-term success in sustainability data management requires an end-to-end perspective from sourcing and verifying information to quality assurance, data governance and enrichment based on brand and category goals. To reach that success, brands must be agile in taking authoritative data to syndicate the product information out to the right sales channels to meet consumer expectations and enhance retail partnerships.
Brian Cluster is the industry strategy director of Stibo Systems.