Pop Sustainability consults with organizations to help communicate their sustainability strategies in culturally relevant and technology-savvy ways. They help create emotional relationships between brands and stakeholders. Their goal is to translate sustainability into a culture of sustainable lifestyles. Sustainability refers to achieving economic prosperity while renewing natural systems and providing a high quality of life now and in the future. Marketing sustainability in popular culture requires focusing on human and social capital rather than manufactured or financial capital.

1. Popularising sustainability
04 November 2008

2. Pop Sustainability consults to like-minded organisations who wish to communicate
to and actively engage their stakeholders in new, culturally relevant and technology
savvy ways.
We create trusting, emotional relationships between personal and brand
identities.
We can help you to communicate your sustainability strategy.
We are a social enterprise whose ultimate goal is to translate the concept of
sustainability into a culture of sustainable lifestyles.

3. “Nature” is over.
The twentieth century did it in....
From now on, “Nature” is under
surveillance and on life-support.
A 21st century avant-garde has to deal
with those consequences and thrive in
that world.
Bruce Sterling Founder of the Viridian Design Movement

4. Sustainability is ...
The ability to achieve economic prosperity while
renewing the natural systems of the planet, and
providing a higher quality of life for its people now
and into the long term future.
Not a fad... It is a new way of doing business

5. The Five Capitals Manufactured capital
Financial capital
Sustainability Social
0
Human
capital capital
Natural capital
• Natural - Natural resources (energy and matter) and processes needed by organisations to produce their
products and deliver their services
• Human - Health, knowledge, skills, intellectual outputs, motivation and capacity for relationships of the individual
of their workforce or communities and many other stakeholders
• Social - Networks, communication channels, families, communities, businesses, trade unions, schools and
voluntary organisations as well as social norms, values and trust
• Manmade - Buildings, infrastructure (transport networks, communications, waste disposal systems) and
technologies (from simple tools and machines to IT and engineering)
• Financial - Forms of currency that can be owned or traded, including (but not limited to) shares, bonds and
banknotes .... Which rely upon the productivity of all the above

6. Sustainability
Popular culture has the Five Capitals backwards
Smart Growth or Dumb Growth?
Human/Social Development?
Nature as Capital?

7. “We're finally going to get the bill for the
Industrial Age.
If the projections are right,
it's going to be a big one:
the ecological collapse of the planet. ”
Jeremy Rifkin

9. Sustainability is the only
seriously ‘big idea’

10. Unless we change minds, we are unlikely to
significantly change much of anything else.

11. 7/10
South African consumers report that they would pay more to a
business that supports worthwhile causes – UNISA
This is the brand equity gap
There is a growing societal expectation that business should
contribute more to the broader public good

12. Marketing for a flat planet
A brand belongs to the company.
Its reputation belongs to its
stakeholders.

13. Companies today must be
• Prepared
• Radically transparent
• Accessible
• Inclusive
• Enabling

14. Brand value is intrinsically
linked to sustainability
- Best Global Brands 2008, Interbrand

15. Marketing & Advertising are fast
becoming irrelevant
• People know when they are being sold
• Growing trust gap
• One way communication
• Not relevant to the consumers at the time
• Marketers need to focus on making
products that are relevant

16. Live Bait = A highly attractive, interactive
offering with a hook
Extract knowledge from quantitative and Effective Bait
qualitative research Communication
Use brand ambassadors (‘people like me’ Efficient
& experts) to establish street cred & spark Live
Communication
peer conversations
Utilize dynamic, interactive and engaging
Active
events, new media and social media Interactive
Engagement
communication tools
Tap into the power of pop culture, provide Emotive
brand experience in informal, entertaining Experience Attractive
cultural settings
Ask them to do something they can Actionable Hook
actually do – quickly, easily, cheaply

17. @ good housekeeping

18. @ the till

19. @ innovation in your business

20. “We will not be measured by our aspirations.
We will be measured by our actions”
– Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott
in making sustainability part of his core strategy