Mention the words green marketing at a management meeting and you’re either labelled pony-tail wearing bunny hugging whale saver or you’re told to put it on next month’s agenda where serious consideration will be given to environmentally friendly packaging! It’s another Journal Debate and as Jeremy Maggs facilitates the debate some of the interesting points from the morning include:

Simon Gear – Green Business Consultant, SDB Consulting

• Green Marketing is getting to a stage where it is becoming more mainstream but it’s not enough
• Eskom doesn’t do any Green Marketing it’s more Crisis Management. But they are extremely transparent about their carbon footprint.
• In terms of  Sappi the reality is that a tree farm is not a forest
• You do things properly inside your company and then you tell that story

Jacques Brent – VP Marketing, Sales & Service, Ford and Mazda

• Transparency is driven by competitive disclosure. Use the good to build your brand up but you rarely make active disclosure of the negative if nobody else is doing it in your industry. This is one of the problems.
• Education is key, the more it gets spoken about the greater awareness and the quicker the change should come.

Maseda Ratshikuni – Head: Cause Marketing, Nedbank Affinities Marketing

• The truth is South Africa is behind in terms of sustainability.
• Surprisingly 53% of people are Green supporters in this country. But Green is like religious. You have to live it.
• More responsibility to ensure people is educated and informed. Green is not something that happens out there, we need to start internally. And we need to make sure that our business accept the strategy of being green.

Bernhard Riegler – Marketing Director, Sappi Fine Paper

Latetia Venter – Marketing Manager: Demand Side Management, Eskom

• Eskom has an energy efficient program that has managed to save over 2000 Megawatts.
• Eskom launched an internal program where we started for energy efficiency to get our employees to be brand ambassadors.

Deon Robbertze – Creative Director: Ogilvy earth South Africa

• Green marketing is about sustainability, and there are three pillars, social, financial and environment.
• Consumer knows everything about your business, fixed what’s wrong don’t shout about what’s right.
• You have to implement sustainability from the top down. You have got to get people in your company to believe that change is going to happen.
• Sustainability is intuitive, it’s not rocket science.  We need to reach the age of transparency. It has to become part of the brands DNA.

From this mornings debate one thing is clear, it’s really important that we get to grips with issues like this. The conversation has provided food for thought and attendees walk away from another successful morning.

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It’s the first Journal of Marketing breakfast and Virtuosa once again are here giving live updates through Tweeting and Blogging to bring you all the news firsthand. Moderated by Jeremy Maggs this morning we are talking about Radio and why this medium is still relevant. The panel consists of Lance Rothschild (Media Consultant & Radio Commentator, Opportun(at)e), Norman Gibson – (GM, Radio Advertising Bureau) Omar Essack (Executive Director: Broadcasting, Kagiso Media) Andrew Smythe (GM Radio Sales & Alternative Revenue, SABC, Terry Volkwyn (CEO, Primedia Broadcasting).

Interesting for me is the panels diverse opinion around what role digital should be playing in radio stations. Some seem to be of the opinion that internet access in South Africa is not high enough to warrant really investing into it. I find these opinions surprising. Others on the panel recognise that digital is exploding and see this as an unique opportunity to offer an integrated approach to their listeners. What’s clear is that there is an uncertainty on how best to integrate digital with their offering and how to  manage the communities that are developing around the station and especially the websites.

If you want to read more about what was discussed during this morning session be sure to get your hands on an issue of the next Journal of Marketing.