Recently, The Marketing Store’s Global Director of Digital, Kurt Karlenzig, was invited to present Best Practices of Social Media Marketing (in relation to in-store strategies and shopper marketing) at the POPAI Masters program in Chicago.

If you are a shopper marketer or in retail, you are probably very familiar with this organization. POPAI is the Global Association for Marketing at Retail. If not, you should get to know them—their Masters program was chock full of interesting speakers (and we’re not just tooting our own horn).

Beyond our own social media panel—we had the privilege of sitting in on a few of the sessions—sessions that we thought had some key takeaways/insights that merited mention.

Sustainability: Successful Strategies for The New Normal – presented by Mike Henneghan from RockTenn

This presentation was full of notable facts, figures, and considerations around corporate responsibility and sustainability that we thought you might find useful. Here are just a few we thought were worth mention:

• Retailers use sustainability as a tie-breaker: For many major retailers, sustainability is a tie-breaker between products/vendors. If there is a decision to be made between two almost-identical vendors or products, many retailers go with the provider that is “greener”, has a plan toward sustainability, or features sustainable packaging with in-roads into a green product.  

• Packaging has a giant impact on US waste: Within the US’s total solid waste stream—packaging is the single largest component at 29.5%.

• The US has made in-roads to recovery/recycling: 47.8% of all packaging is recovered in the US according to stats from 2009. This would seem to be a good number, but when you consider European initiatives, other countries have the United States by a huge margin—the Belgians are closer to 97% recovery.

• Sustainability takes a larger strategic plan. It’s not an A-B line, with this package choice, or that bottle. And it’s important to remember that corporate responsibility also means not giving up profitability. It also means that choices need to be weighted. If the package you are selecting is not protecting your product properly, the cost (and carbon footprint) of reproducing that product comes at a much higher cost to both environment and bottom line than a slightly more expensive, “less-green” package.

• Weighing the Total Cost of Delivery: A realistic sustainability program consists of a series of choices to get closer to that ideal level of perfection. An example of this kind of series of choices in the supply chain, and one brand doing it well according to Henneghan, is the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. When looking at their choices to help with sustainability, they selected a slightly more expensive (to produce and ship) bottle, but made selections that offset those choices, selecting a greener transportation option—investing in trucks using bio-diesel fuel to offset the impact of heavier bottle.

• Recycled fiber isn’t a no-brainer: The materials one chooses for both product and packaging should be carefully evaluated as well through the lens of sustainability. And the choices can be more complicated than a simple “how recycled is it?” Often recycled fiber is in the public mind the most sustainable—but the reality, you can’t have a package that is 100% recycled fiber—as some part of it breaks down in the recycling process. It needs to be a combination of new/old—where some plastics can be more recyclable, almost to 100%, as they maintain their sturdiness.

• Reducing packaging at the cost of product is worse: This is where it’s so important to look at total lifecycle costs—again with both price and environmental impact. One example given, which was surprising—but makes sense upon consideration—is yogurt. If the packaging to your yogurt product isn’t protected, or sturdy—and the container breaks—cows (and livestock in general) have a very big environmental impact—the cost of recreating that product and to redeliver it may have a much more negative impact than a few ounces more of packaging. That’s why it’s so important that supply chain and ideally a sustainability officer, are able to evaluate all aspects along the total cost of delivery to create the least cost and least environmentally impactful plan.

• Partnerships in POP for sustainability: One area that needs significant improvement and consideration that retailers and vendors need to team up to create a plan for is Point of Purchase (POP) recycling and materials choices. If you are a POP supplier, and you set up at a retailer—how do you ensure that they are properly disposing of your materials at the end of the promotion?

As a brand design and packaging company with our own stringent sustainability program, The Marketing Store and Boxer makes corporate responsibility a priority—so to have a vibrant sustainability discussion around some of the tougher points at POPAI, was not only important, but hopefully impactful to our POP partners as well.

If you’d like to see some of our own work in action, here are a few of The Marketing Store and Boxer’s packaging and brand design greatest hits. We’re betting you’ve held at least a few of these in your hot little hands.

Posted by @heathergately