Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a fad-free, fluff-free, no-nonsense podcast for marketers looking to work smarter.
I’m your host, Mia Fileman – a marketing strategist with over two decades of experience, and an entrepreneur.
I’m tired of marketers telling you what you want to hear. Instead, I tell you what you need to hear. During the show, I chat with creatives and strategists about all the aspects of marketing, but especially marketing campaigns. Unpacking and dissecting marketing campaigns is what I do for fun.
Got Marketing? is brought to you by Campaign Del Mar – the marketing education platform where marketers and entrepreneurs go to upskill.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Hello, friends! Welcome back to the Got Marketing? Podcast!
I have invited back the very first guest on the Got Marketing? Podcast – Melissa Packham who is a brand and marketing strategist from Brand-Led Business – to share the virtual microphone with me today.
We are going to be talking about greenwashing which I know I say this about every episode, but this is going to be very, very juicy.
Welcome back to the show, Mel!
Melissa Packham 1:30
Thank you so much for having me, Mia! I really appreciate it and I can’t wait to get into this. Like you said, it’s super juicy. I’m so pumped.
Mia Fileman 1:37
Amazing. So good!
What is greenwashing, Melissa?
Melissa Packham 1:43
Greenwashing – hey! It’s happening all around us all the time at the moment. It’s basically the misrepresentation of your green credentials or sustainability credentials. There are a lot of claims around it being potentially unintentional. Sometimes, it is intentional.
Spoiler alert! It’s never okay! To misrepresent is unethical. There’s a lot of that happening around at the moment.
Mia Fileman 2:10
Everyone wants to jump on this green bandwagon because it is so important. It swung our election. This was finally a climate change election.
I understand from a brand perspective that every brand wants to be seen to be part of positive change, but – as we will unpack today – some brands should not be playing this space at all before they go and take a good hard look at their credentials to begin with.
Melissa Packham 2:43
Absolutely.
There’s an element of transparency there. We’re all on a journey. We all have to be and should be on this journey, but there’s a time and a place in terms of the appropriateness of green messaging. Certainly, there are some brands that can do it and some brands that absolutely should not yet.
Mia Fileman 3:05
What are some of the major challenges that this presents to brands and also marketers within those brands?
Melissa Packham 3:13
I think the big thing is this is an unprecedented global challenge that we are facing. No one in the world has faced a challenge of this scale.
Everyone’s running around, figuring out what to do, how to measure, how to talk about it, what that whole picture looks like. Some are still doing the head-in-the-sand thing. There’s that angle as well. Problem aware but not problem taking action. That’s a problem.
From a marketing perspective, I think the challenge is that we – as marketers and brand custodians – want to talk about the good things our brands are doing. It is natural in us to want to go and tell those good stories, but the challenge is really understanding the total picture.
From what I can see the brands are doing or not doing, there is a lack of understanding around how the total business works, and there is a lack of understanding about what sustainability actually means, or what is an appropriate message to be sharing, and what else needs to be shared.
Sharing the news or omitting something – that’s the challenge that we talked about in Ethical Marketing. It’s the same idea. What do you omit and how important is that to the full picture?
Mia Fileman 4:25
Yes, shameless plug for Ethical Marketing and the “Gurus.” If you haven’t listened to that episode, definitely go and do that because that one went off like a frog in a sock, but this one will, too!
I’m going to be devil’s advocate here, obviously, because I think that that’s going to make for a better discussion. What you’re saying is that a brand has to do everything right before they can talk about some of the things that they’re doing.
If they’re moving in the right direction with climate change and with changes, can they not say anything that’s positive for fear of retribution or for being taken down by the PC warriors?
Melissa Packham 5:05
Yes, I think there are two things in there.
The PC warriors are always going to be onto it. There’s always going to be that. That’s just part of any messaging that is controversial in any way. That’s going to happen. That’s part one.
In terms of whether brands can talk about anything that they’re doing – all those small steps that are important, and everyone should be taking small steps – no, I don’t think they have to wait. There is no perfect solution here. We don’t know what the perfect solution is. No one knows, really.
Unless you’re going to go and get credentials in climate science, it’s going to be impossible for marketers to know, “This is the time to be talking about these credentials.”
I encourage brands to be talking about the small steps that they are taking, but they have to talk about them in the context of the total strategy for delivering a sustainable operation.
It’s not “Hey! We’re now in biodegradable packaging!” That is not enough. That is a small piece of the puzzle for becoming sustainable, carbon-neutral, and on the path to net zero. It’s a spectrum.
I think absolutely brands should be talking about what they are doing, but don’t do it if it’s a single claim. It’s not about a marketing claim.
It has to be about “We’re on a sustainability journey. We’ve put the thought and effort into preparing what that sustainability journey looks like and what those steps are. Here is where we are at the moment on that journey.”
Mia Fileman 6:36
What can be a good yardstick then for what to say and what not to say?
Is this around what we were talking about before we went to air which was maybe what brands need to do is ask themselves “what message does this send?” and make that as a barometer for “is this potentially misleading people into believing that we are a lot more green than we are actually what is happening behind the scenes?”
Is this sending an accurate, transparent, and honest message about our business?
Melissa Packham 7:12
Yes, absolutely.
Like any other marketing claim, I think it should be handled with the same. It’s kind of more important because, if we’re out there as brands, sending the message that we are more green than what we actually are.
It misleads consumers into thinking that progress is further ahead than what it should be, or it creates a false sense of security in a way, and it means that “the brands that I buy are green because they tell me that they’re green; therefore, I don’t need to worry about hassling my politicians, and I don’t need to worry about engaging in community recycling and composting programs,” and things like that.
The trade-off becomes a little blurry there in terms of what consumer action needs to happen. It’s important that we have a balance in society more broadly – I’m getting on the old soapbox here – about community action, individual action, brand and government action. All of those things need to come into play.
When brands are misrepresenting what their credentials actually are, it’s damaging because it means it could potentially hamper actual meaningful progress.
Mia Fileman 8:25
Oh, my goodness! That is such a good point around the fact that it’s giving us a false sense of hope that we’re getting this right. “Look! Mercedes Benz is so green!” I didn’t even think about that!
There is a climate emergency that requires action now, and this is all lulling us into “no, she’ll be all right, mate!”
Melissa Packham 8:50
Yes. “Look how good we’re doing! We’re doing great! Everything is fine!” It’s that meme of the dog sitting and having a coffee with the fire burning all around him. “Everything is fine.” It’s not fine!
It’s not fine for brands to pretend that it is or pretend that they’re further ahead on their journey than they are. I think now is the time to break down those barriers. Stop trying to pretend and oversell and overbloat.
This is the whole point of the problem! We have exceeded our capacity! Stop doing that. Start taking positive action and being transparent about it.
Mia Fileman 9:26
So true.
We’re going to do something that we don’t often do on this show that I actually don’t often do at all which is a bit of naming and shaming.
However, I want to caveat this by saying that we are going to talk about the marketing. We are not talking about these brands or individuals. We won’t be talking about any individuals, but this is about the crap marketing.
We’re doing this so that we can illustrate examples of brands that could do better and brands that are doing it well so that we can learn from this. This is very much illustrative. That’s what we’re going to do.
Keyboard warriors, calm down.
Melissa Packham 10:14
Just chill out.
Mia Fileman 10:15
Just chill. We talk about examples and case studies a lot on this show. For the first time, we’re going to share some not-so-great examples, so that we can all learn how to do better.
All right. Let’s start with brands who are doing well in this space – some really great examples so that people can look to them, learn from, and use that as a bit of a playbook.
Melissa Packham 10:37
Yes, great.
One of my new favourites – because my husband has become obsessed with them – is an Australian fashion brand called Citizen Wolf. They are basically turning sustainability into a competitive advantage which I think is really interesting.
They are using sustainability to deliver excellent customer value. It’s custom-made. Basic T-shirts. They are made to fit. You get your measurements and then send them away. They create them using locally sourced materials.
They use local employees. It’s not slave labour. They are well-paid. The whole process is considered and intentional. You get the shirts which hopefully fit you because they’ve been made to fit.
If they happen not to fit, there’s a recycling program – the end-of-life program – so that they can retain that, use, repurpose that into other things. Any bits of scrap are turned into things like scarves or smaller fabric items and those kinds of things.
There is this full cycle which I think is really lovely. It’s a competitive advantage because it allows them to maintain that supply chain, manage that a little bit tighter, and deliver excellent customer value. I think that’s the key thing. It’s such a great experience. It keeps people coming back. My husband as one is talking about it all the time and wearing them all the time. It’s a new favourite.
I think it’s a really great example of a full cycle considered in the process of manufacture and delivery of their products as well as delivering exceptional customer experience.
Mia Fileman 12:13
Yes, that’s a really good example because it’s baked into the business model. This is not an afterthought – like a bolt-on “let’s jump on this bandwagon!” and “let’s culture jack this!” This is the mission that they set out. Their whole business is built on this.
One of my favourite examples is Zero Co. I am a huge fan of everything that Mike Smith does – mostly that he runs campaigns for his marketing but also that he fishes out a lot of plastic bottles and rubbish from the ocean.
It is so clever that he has thought about everything. This is a hard sell which is that they want you to store your refillable pouches at home until you get enough of them and then post them back where they are washed, sanitized, and reused. People are all over it.
Zero Co is now in 60,000 households. Only in the last 18 months have they achieved this kind of incredible success for commodity products – something that you go to Woolworths, and you walk away with an Omo and you don’t think about it at all.
It is such a low-involvement purchase decision. They have made us think about even those commodity products in such a profound way. Because we use so much of it in Australia, it is really those aisles of the supermarket that are personal care and cleaning products that we use so often and there is so much single-use plastic in there.
That’s a brand that I tip my hat to in terms of doing this really well. Again, it’s baked completely into their mission. I think what they do really well with their marketing is they raise those objections and they offset them.
There are a lot of questions about “well, if I’m sending you back my refillable pouches, what is the footprint of that?” because that is actually not particularly sustainable. But then, they are actually like, “No, we’ve thought about that. We’ve done the maths. It’s actually really good compared to you throwing out Omo and Morning Fresh day after day after day.”
Melissa Packham 14:38
Yes, a couple of things.
Those penetration gains in such a short amount of time would have the big brands running scared, I’m sure. That says that consumers are willing to change their behaviour and possibly pay more.
Significant behaviour changes. It’s not buying a different brand. It’s actually engaging in the product in a completely new way which is really optimistic. That gives me hope that people are willing to change.
It also hints to the idea of these scope-one, scope-two, scope-three emissions – the emissions that you as a business are directly responsible for, those that are on the peripheral of your business, and those that are further down the supply chain.
That’s another key thing that I think a lot of brands are missing a little bit at the moment. It is not just what you are directly producing that matters. It’s the whole flow and effect.
Brands like Zero Co and Citizen Wolf have solved the end-of-cycle piece of the puzzle which is out of their hands and out of their control.
It’s like the Australian government. “Great. We’ve got some legislation that’s actually going to take action.” But they’re still talking about opening new coal and gas because the responsibility is not with them on what happens with the product at the end.
That’s the argument that’s happening. That’s not okay. That’s not a wholistic sustainable view of what should be happening. I think brands can learn from that as well.
Mia Fileman 16:00
Totally.
One of the brilliant things that I think Zero Co have done. I am a bit of a packaging enthusiast. I love packaging. As soon as I land in a new country, the first thing I do is go to the supermarket.
Melissa Packham 16:13
(16:13 unclear) obviously!
Mia Fileman 16:15
Yes, total marketing nerd. I just love packaging.
Mike Smith – the founder of Zero Co – has talked about how he created packaging that people would want to keep. These bottles are so beautiful. You’ll want the whole collection. I know that sounds terrible and so very consumeristic, but you do. You want all these beautiful colours in the collection. That’s so well thought out.
He’s appealing to our left brain and our right brain that wants to do good but also the fact that we do want to feather our nest and we want to make our house look good. We don’t want to have ugly bottles sitting everywhere. I think that’s insanely clever.
Melissa Packham 17:00
That’s full Maslow’s hierarchy of needs being addressed there, isn’t it? The basics. I want a clean house. I want it to be good for the environment. But also, I want people to say, “Hey! What’s that cool packaging you’ve got on your shelf there in this beautifully curated laundry and kitchen?”
Absolutely. That’s the key around tapping into more than a functional but also an emotional benefit. That’s a really great example of consumer insight that has been very well delivered, too.
Mia Fileman 17:30
Absolutely!
What about Patagonia – the global poster child of trailblazing in this area?
Melissa Packham 17:04
Totally.
They are so far ahead, aren’t they? They are years and decades ahead of everyone in terms of their sustainability journey. Absolutely. They should be looked at as the Holy Grail. They created it. They shaped what it looks like.
They are at the point where they are talking with their suppliers of the raw materials that go into their clothing and their products and helping them create new ways to grow cotton and to cultivate cotton.
Regenerative agriculture is where they are thinking and where they are operating right now which again is talking to scope one, scope two, scope three. It’s not directly related to them, but so much of what that raw material does comes into their product and is necessary.
It’s in their interest to help make that a better process and a more green process. I think it’s so exciting and so fascinating. Areas of science you wouldn’t even comprehend that aren’t directly related to your business but potentially have such an impact, and it does!
It allows them to engage better with their suppliers and therefore tell a better story to their customers. It’s an end-to-end success story, I think.
Mia Fileman 18:53
Totally.
The Patagonia “don’t buy this jacket!” campaign – which should be taught in marketing schools on how to do marketing – was a stunt. This was a stunt. There is no way that this cannot be.
They took out a full page. I think it was the New York Times. It literally said, “Do not buy this jacket!” and not a single person called them out for virtue signalling, greenwashing, PR stunt because it was genuine. That’s a really interesting lesson for people as well.
They come with so much credibility and authority in this space that it’s literally their brand DNA. Even something that is a little bit of a stunt – which was to generate awareness and publicity around this – was still very authentic because they genuinely did not want you to buy that jacket.
They were talking about their recycle program. If you have a Patagonia product, don’t throw it away. Send it to them and it can be upcycled, recycled, or fixed. It goes to show that, if this is baked into your DNA, you can avoid those PC warriors.
I think there’s a lot of people that will be listening and going, “Ugh! Every brand is going to have their five seconds of shame. That’s just what’s going to have to happen. Everyone is going to get called out. That’s call-out culture.” I don’t think that that’s true.
Melissa Packham 20:25
I agree. Yes, if it’s in there, it’s in your DNA, you’re doing all the things across the board, can stand up to that, and have that argument, absolutely. I think it’s totally possible.
That’s the point right now. If you’re saying you are purpose-led and you’re going to be sustainable, then JFDI. Do it properly. You know, do it wholistically. Take a good hard look at your entire business operation.
As marketers, I think that’s one of the key opportunities – to really learn the ins and outs of the business – not to a level of technical expertise but certainly enough that you’ve got an understanding of where the opportunity is for the brand and what story can be told from that, legitimately.
Mia Fileman 21:12
Yes, totally.
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Who are the not-so-good brands? What can we learn from them?
Melissa Packham 22:02
One that’s been a little concerning to me at the moment is superannuation HESTA as the brand.
From a marketing campaign perspective, I think it’s textbook. It’s fantastic in terms of the channels, the message, the whole thing. They’ve got some great talent. It’s an excellent angle.
The problem is the back of house. The message from HESTA is encouraging people – new members – come across because changing your super can change the future. That’s their key line. They can choose where their investments go. Ethical sustainable choices are available to them.
This is highly problematic from a superannuation fund that still actively invests in existing fossil fuels and new fossil fuel projects with some of Australia’s biggest fossil fuel providers.
That’s something that’s not being told in the whole campaign. “Come on over and join us! You can change the future. Choose where your money goes.” That may well be the case. There are some ethical choices. But it doesn’t paint the entire picture.
It omits key information that could be detrimental to a huge decision. It’s a massive decision to move your super. For most people, it’s the biggest chunk of money they have. It’s quite misleading. That’s why I think it’s problematic.
Mia Fileman 23:26
Yes, I agree!
I don’t care how good your campaign is. I’ve said this before, but marketing is not the job of polishing up a turd. That’s not the business that I’m in. It’s not in turd polishing!
I don’t abide by marketing that isn’t transparent, doesn’t tell the truth, and hides salient details that are really front and centre. No, that is very problematic.
Melissa Packham 23:54
I’m not a financial advisor, obviously, but this is a huge financial space for people, and that’s a big decision. There’s a gap in knowledge.
If they’re making a decision on their own without additional third-party expert support to make that decision, it’s taking advantage of people’s lack of knowledge, and that’s unethical in itself. It’s also problematic because that omission is crucial.
If they’re making an emotional decision to move their money to support sustainable renewable investments, that’s a piece of information that would help them make that decision better, and they might not choose then to go to with that superfund on that basis.
Mia Fileman 24:37
Exactly. That’s the point.
This is one of those disclaimers that could have changed people’s minds about this, and you left it out. No good.
Melissa Packham 24:49
That’s not okay.
Mia Fileman 24:51
A slightly different example of a brand who has not done this well recently is Mercedes Benz – the auto manufacturer. There was a recent article in Adweek which I will include in the show notes below.
They were really called out for greenwashing. Again, they used stunning imagery of nature. The campaign tagline was “nothing or nature.” I don’t particularly like this campaign. It was very egotistical.
Melissa Packham 25:21
Yes.
Mia Fileman 25:22
What they were trying to say was that the Mercedes Benz symbol – the triangle symbol – naturally occurs in nature so often, and here it is that we’ve spotted it in caves, and we’ve spotted it in ice.
Sorry, Mel. What is the point of telling us that their logo – which is essentially a triangle – appears in nature? I guess it’s trying to show that Mercedes Benz cares about nature because it has released an electric car 30 years after they should have released an electric car.
This is a different example to HESTA because this is not so much about leaving out details. This is about overclaiming, right?
Melissa Packham 26:08
Yes, overstating your position in the place.
It’s on brand for Mercedes to be ego first and status. That’s very much their positioning. But you’re right. It’s a complete overstatement about their role to play. So late to the party.
It would be exciting if they were doing more about the infrastructure around supporting electric vehicles because that’s actually one of the key challenges, Actually, entry level, being able to purchase an EV is pretty expensive, and Mercedes would be absolutely up there. But the infrastructure around it is the other challenge.
If there was a bigger story there about how they were looking to support that and move all of that across or how they were changing their entire business operation and not just purchasing carbon offsets to do that, then that might be the time to tell that story, but certainly not to take a leadership position and purport to be leading the charge and embedded in nature because they are not.
Mia Fileman 27:16
This is a classic example of a campaign idea that a marketing team would have loved because it featured their logo. Our logo! Our beloved logo!
Melissa Packham 27:28
Of course! It’s the logo in nature! What a romantic story!
That would have been sold up the chain with precision. I can see those meetings happening. But bad times for actually being able to support the full story here and just the overstatement of the role in the sustainability story. I think it’s a little vomit-worthy.
Mia Fileman 27:54
Yes. Honestly, I feel that could have been solved by talking to one single person outside the organisation that hasn’t drunk the Mercedes Benz Kool-Aid to go, “Actually, we don’t really care so much about logos, in fact.”
Melissa Packham 28:10
You know what? That is such a key point. Getting outside of your own brand bubble is crucial right now.
As marketers and brand custodians, we are obsessed with our brand, and we think everyone else has that same level of obsession. News flash! No, they fucking don’t!
It’s our job to explore the landscape further, look at examples in completely different categories, consume media that we would normally never consume, so that we can get a full picture about actually what the heck is going on in the world and how we can actually play a credible role in this and build our strategy – not just a marketing campaign that will give us a tick on our sustainability claim once off.
Mia Fileman 28:52
Yes, yes, yes to a marketplace of ideas!
Do you know what’s really interesting about our Mercedes Benz example as well? I thought it was really interesting that the agency is copping flack which is Leo Burnett.
Melissa Packham 29:05
Yes.
Mia Fileman 29:06
This has been something I’ve been pondering for a while.
Let’s say I’m a healthy granola brand and I go to a marketing agency, and I say, “Hey! I’m a healthy granola brand. Please create a campaign for me based on health credentials.”
Then, the agency will say, “Great! What are your health credentials?” The client supplies those in a document, but the creative agency or marketing agency doesn’t have a lab to go and test the granola. “Are these claims true?” There’s a bit of trust that needs to happen between the client and the agency – that these credentials are legit.
For a long time, the agencies and the marketers and the brand custodians have been given a hall pass for that reason. “Well, you’re just marketers. You can’t possibly know. You’re doing what your brief told you to do.” But now there’s some real blowback, and Leo Burnett doesn’t want to be in this.
I’m a bit torn because Mercedes Benz would be a huge account for Leo Burnett. They might have raised concerns about this to Mercedes Benz, and Mercedes Benz were like, “No, this sounds good!”
Where do you stand on that?
Melissa Packham 30:24
You’ve raised the point before about the knowing and the responsibility – who is actually responsible? We are all responsible.
A granola bar might be slightly different to cars. Leo Burnett know that cars are bad because they use fuel that is fossil fuel and that is bad. There’s that. Of course, there’s trust.
This is why it’s important that marketers actually understand their responsibility to know truly what’s happening with the total picture of their operations.
Learn what’s happening in your operation so you understand the ins and outs and can give truthful briefs to your creative partners. Probably step one.
Also, there’s a movement around agencies taking responsibility for the stories that they’re telling because they are great storytellers. They are the best. World-leading agencies are freaking fantastic at it, but they have a responsibility to work with and elevate the voices of brands that are actually helping.
There was a recent protest at the latest Cannes Festival about advertisers not working with fossil fuel and to actually take climate action seriously by refusing to give them a voice.
It’s hard to say no to the money. It’s very hard for those big agencies to say no to those retainers because they’re very healthy. But ultimately, they are not very healthy if they are going to help destroy the world.
Mia Fileman 31:50
Yes, I’ve actually experienced this quite recently on the frontline because I’ve been working on the social media campaign for Darwin Festival. The major sponsor of Darwin Festival for many years is Santos.
In previous years, the community has given Darwin Festival a hall pass for having Santos as the major sponsor because a lot of what Darwin Festival does is free community events that wouldn’t be possible without corporate sponsorship. We’re also in Darwin which is a very small population.
But this year, after the election that we’ve had, and because of the climate emergency, we are getting a lot of blowback. As someone on the social media frontline of this, it’s relentless.
It’s really, really hard, Mel, because part of me is saying, “Well, without Santos and INPEX, there wouldn’t be Darwin Festival – not the way that people can experience it now, which is to go to the Darwin amphitheatre with 4,000 people and watch a First Nations incredible performance that tells a story of Gurrumul’s final album that was completely free. That wouldn’t be possible, but then – exactly as you said – we’re giving voice to climate wreckers. It’s very tricky.
Melissa Packham 33:15
If I had the solution... But it’s murky. It’s really murky.
I think we have to challenge ourselves to think differently. I don’t know if it’s possible to have Darwin Festival without them as a major sponsor, but what if it was? What could be the way to achieve that? What community levers and collaboration could be pulled together to make it happen in a way that was owned and embedded in community as opposed to a PR exercise for a major climate wrecker? I don’t know.
I think the time is now to challenge our existing thinking around that. There are buckets of money there. I get that. That’s huge. But we need to rethink our delivery of experiences and our delivery of products and services in a way that we can sleep at night and tell our grandchildren that this is how we changed and how amazing it was to change something that felt like an institution.
Mia Fileman 34:23
I’ve got some arguments on either side.
The arguments on one side are that it’s not Darwin Festival’s job to end fossil fuels. We’re using those fossil fuels as well. Mind you. We are using them.
Melissa Packham 34:37
Of course.
Mia Fileman 34:37
Since these organisations have tons of money, why not use that money for positive good which is to pour to straight back into community and into the arts, right?
I get that argument. That’s a bit like, “Yes, they’re not doing the right thing, so let’s take their money and do some of the right thing with their money.” I definitely see that.
But then, on the other hand, being on the social media frontline, we have had many people say to us they are not coming to Darwin Festival this year because of this reason, and it’s only going to grow.
If you’re not going to do it because of the moral imperative, do it for the business imperative as well because this year is not going to change next year. It’s just going to get worse next year.
This is way beyond my paygrade, but if I was further up the chain in Darwin Festival, I would say, “Look, I feel like the tide has changed here, and we are going to lose hearts and minds if we continue with this anymore.”
I think there’s going to be more of a revolution come 2023 on this issue.
Melissa Packham 35:45
Yes, I absolutely agree. I can see the same challenges, of course.
I can see both sides of that argument, but it comes down in the purest sense to “what do my sponsor partners say about my brand and what does my brand say about them?” There is a relationship there always in sponsorships like that.
“Do I want to be associated with that brand, their messaging, and their operation? Yes? No? How does this brand elevate mine – if at all? It doesn’t. Therefore, what is the actual value of this outside of monetary?”
I think that’s another challenge – to consider beyond just funding what is the potential damage and the difference between that? Is it worth it?
Mia Fileman 36:36
Totally.
All right. Well, we could talk about this all day, but we are completely out of time. Also, my kids have let me know that they are now home, and that requires my undivided attention.
Any final thoughts, Mel?
Melissa Packham 36:52
In terms of what we can do as marketers, act ethically and responsibly. Educate yourself. Talk to customers. Talk to suppliers.
Understand how your business works so that you can leverage that to your advantage. Empathise with everybody – the 360-degree of stakeholders involved in your business – directly and indirectly.
Also, embed a culture of sustainability. Like marketing is actually not just the role of the marketing department or function in a business, it’s the same with sustainability. It can’t be. It has to be wholistically and embraced across the board.
I would urge all marketers to be champions of that so that we can be bringing our brands profitably and sustainability into a future that we can all live in.
Mia Fileman 37:43
So beautifully said! Always a pleasure, Melissa Packham!
I will drop a link to your website and your social media handles below, but thank you, thank you, thank you!
Melissa Packham 37:53
Thank you so much for having me, Mia!
Mia Fileman 37:56
Thank you!
You listened right up until the end, so why not hit that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling?
Podcast reviews are like warm hugs. They’re also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia Fileman, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message! I’m super friendly.
