How to measure the carbon footprint of your marketing
From packaging to advertising, there are many aspects of marketing campaigns that can influence a product’s carbon footprint. The shift from print to electronic communication has reduced the industry’s paper demands, but there is still a black mark against some brands’ excessive use of packaging and direct mail.
Euan Murray, general manager of carbon footprinting at The Carbon Trust, says: ‘The marketer has an incredibly important role. Making sure that campaigns they run are efficient is incredibly important.
‘The trend that is starting to emerge is a shift away from physical media to electronic. If marketers can avoid printing something by sending consumers an email, that makes sense.’
The medium that attracts most criticism in this area is direct mail, which is seen by some consumer groups as wasteful and unwelcome. Total spend on direct mail for the year ending June 2009 was down 9.9% year–on–year, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research as brands continue to switch their direct mail budgets into areas such as e–mail.
The biggest users of direct mail, according to Nielsen, are BSkyB, BT and MBNA Bank. The industry has got better at personalisation, cutting down on wastage, and it remains an effective customer acquisition tool for brands in sectors such as financial services, insurance and direct–to–consumer retail.
Murray advocates regular review of mailing lists: ‘Managing the spurious use of paper is important. It makes sense because your data and postage costs are lower. It is about being as targeted as you can.’
The use of the internet in marketing campaigns is expected to continue to rise, as we spend more of our lives in the web. In the first half of 2009 internet advertising weathered the recession and grew by 4.6% to £1.7bn, overtaking TV for the first time.
But while the web is a relatively new phenomenon, the subject of excessive packaging has angered green lobbyists for years.
Some brands have upped their game by using recyclable materials and encouraging consumers to refill old bottles, for example. But in competitive markets, such as fmcg, where brands can live and die on their in–store presence, packaging needs to be eye–catching, so there is a tension between sales and sustainability.
Murray says criticism is understandable, but products must be appropriately packaged to ensure they reach the buyer in the best condition. ‘There is a risk that the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. We all need to recognise the important role that packaging plays. It makes sure that the product gets to the customer in decent working order.’
As sustainability rises up the consumer agenda, waste will become the watchword by which products are judged. Any brand seen to be using unnecessary levels of paper or packaging may find themselves joining them in the dustbin.
