Creating an environmentally friendly marketing campaign not only makes a positive impact on the environment but also helps to promote a business. A marketing strategy like this will address social responsibility and influence the purchasing decisions of customers.
In environmentally friendly marketing campaigns, brands illustrate how they change their missions and practices from revenue-driven to environmentally aware by implementing business processes that have the least impact on the environment as possible.
The goals of such campaigns are to demonstrate social responsibility, reduce energy/water usage, and show how safe and mindful products and businesses are.
Many brands like Lush, Apple, Budweiser, and many more have had campaigns that encouraged people to care more about the environment. Some of them are described below.
Lacoste’s Marketing Campaign
One of Lacoste’s awareness-raising campaigns aimed at supporting species conservation action worldwide. They partnered with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to help raise awareness about the extinction of threatened species. The brand created ten limited-edition polo shirts with the iconic crocodile giving away its spot to ten threatened species. For each threatened species, the number of shirts produced was equal to the number of animals that were known to remain in the wild. All shirts were sold out within a day. The proceeds of the sales went directly to the preservation of each species chosen. The campaign demonstrated a strong commitment to the environment, and helped to raise awareness.
Panera’s Bread Bowl Bikes
On Earth Day, Panera wanted people to choose their bikes over their cars to pick up food. To motivate the switch, it designed a limited-edition ‘Bread bowl bike’. The bike didn’t have a traditional bicycle basket, it had a bread bowl instead. As part of the campaign, Panera gave away a select number of the Bread Bowl Bikes. With this campaign, Panera showed that it was committed to reducing the impact of climate change.
Budweiser’s Earth Day Project
Budweiser had a strategic message for consumers on Earth Day: “Together we can turn this around”. The message demonstrates the commitment of the brand set out in 2018 to brew 100% of its beers using renewable electricity by 2025. The campaign featured a “reverse poem” which painted a picture of gloom when read from top to bottom but turned into a hopeful message when read in reverse. The poem was set to a 60 second-visual which showed images of destruction first and then changed to show images of growth and life as a voice read the poem backwards. With climate change being a major issue, Budweiser showed with this campaign that it wanted to make a difference.
Bloom and Wild’s Earth Day Campaign
Bloom and Wild’s Earth Day campaign showed how hard the company was working to offset its carbon footprint. The campaign , ‘Every day is Earth Day’ offered tips on how customers could do their bit by putting everything in the right recycling bin and by composting flowers at the end of their vase life. They partnered with the Bee Friendly Trust to help protect bees and educate customers on how important pollinating bees are to the environment.
