Sustainly: The Marketing of Sustainability

EKOCENTER offers a storefront for clean water and female entrepreneurship

By sustainly on Jul 29, 2014 in Brand Campaign, Case Studies, Citizenship, Coca-Cola, Diversity, Food & Drink, Water | 0 comments

As part of its 2012 commitment to bring safe drinking water to communities in need, Coca-Cola teamed up with a raft of influential partners to roll out its EKOCENTER technology to improve the well-being of developing communities around the world. These ‘downtowns in a box’ (former shipping units) offer clean water via the Slingshot water purification system, sustainable energy, and refrigerated vaccination storage, plus the opportunity for other community-improving projects, such as small shops and education hubs. Each EKOCENTER is run by a local female entrepreneur, in a bid to address the gender imbalance that pervades these areas. The company hopes to roll out up to 2,000 EKOCENTERs throughout the developing world by the end of 2015, delivering 500 million litres of safe drinking water. The Storytelling Coca-Cola, for all its critics, does a good job of upholding its sustainability...

Can Unilever’s Project Sunlight shine brightly enough to promote sustainable consumer change?

By sustainly on Jul 24, 2014 in Brand Campaign, Branded Content, Case Studies, Companies, Consumer Goods, FMCG, Sustainable Living, Unilever | 0 comments

Location – Global Company – Unilever With its products used over two billion times a day in more than half the households on the planet, Unilever has a significant sustainability responsibility. It’s that global exposure and potential that prompted Unilever to launch its initiative, Project Sunlight at the end of 2013. The multi brand project aims to make sustainable living desirable and attainable and it places a particular focus on children, whom the company says play a key role in driving behavioural change in their parents. An offshoot of the wider Project Sunlight campaign, the Sunlight Living Challenge encourages families in five countries (the US, UK, India, Indonesia and Brazil) to undertake small, achievable challenges (‘Acts of Sunlight’) around specific areas to better ingrain sustainable living into everyday life. The Storytelling The project and...

Chipotle puts takes aim at Big Agriculture with Farmed and Dangerous series

By sustainly on Jul 22, 2014 in Brand Campaign, Case Studies, Food, Food & Drink, Video Series, Videos | 0 comments

When it comes to talking sustainability, the go-to comms solution for most chain restaurants and fast food outlets is a shiny CSR section on their website, maybe a few smart infographics and a video or two documenting the tangible outcome of their efforts. The tone is positive throughout, the key takeaway: ‘Look at the good stuff we’re doing.’ Chipotle, however, has turned this standard approach on its head, choosing to communicate a message through a new medium – an online TV mini-series – and with a decidedly less gung-ho, corporate tone. The Storytelling The online four-part mini-series, ‘Farmed and Dangerous’ takes a satirical look at factory farms, processed foods and big agriculture, highlighting the problems of unsustainable food production and, of course, directly endorsing the Chipotle way of doing things. Production values are high (‘24’ and ‘Mad Men’ actor Ray Wise stars),...

Marriott takes to sharing its office space with LiquidSpace

By sustainly on Jul 21, 2014 in Companies, Innovation, Marriott, Sharing Economy | 0 comments

How many times have you found yourself on the road fighting to meet a deadline while jostling for space and a power socket in some over-priced coffee shop? This is where Workspace on Demand comes in – offering a convenient, quiet and dependable mobile working environment charged for by the hour. Workspace on Demand is a collaboration between Marriott Hotels and sharing workspace start up, LiquidSpace. Marriott frees up a number of spaces within its US hotel chain that would otherwise not be utilised and LiquidSpace brokers those spaces through its online platform and community. The upshot is a more efficient use of Marriott’s dead office space and. moving forward, a potentially lucrative new line of business for other hotels around the world to tap into. Sustainly says – Collaborative work enables enhanced rates of innovation. Collaborative consumption of space, using a...

With Bla Bla Car there’s no more loneliness of the long distance motorist

By sustainly on Jul 18, 2014 in Innovation, Sharing Economy, Transport | 0 comments

Company: Bla Bla Car Location: UK, France, Spain, Poland Driving is so convenient that it’s no surprise most of the world would prefer to travel by car. Increasingly though people are coming to terms with the environmental cost of their attachment to the auto, and they are seeking out greener, more cost-effective ways to get around. Until recently, most car sharing services have been restricted to short journeys within cities. Bla Bla Car, aims to take you further, offering a long-distance, inter-city car-sharing service that allows drivers to find passengers who are heading in the same direction, and share the cost of the fuel. Users find people going their way via Bla Bla’s website or the dedicated mobile app. Less individual drivers means less cars on the road means less emissions. Sustainly says – A good example of the potential of the sharing economy – less individual...