About a year ago, I contemplated a lot about existentialism in marketing:
If a product engages an audience (especially the consumer) with an actual experience, the product–and in turn, the brand–becomes priceless, the added value becomes invaluable. I also made an ethical distinction between outreach and marketing. You can read that post here. Now, I’m finding a continuum between community-based ethical enterprises and stories:
Stories humanize our relationship with whatever good or service we engage.
In the case of two companies we’ll read about soon, one is a fair example of a story functioning as added value for its product distinction and marketing. The other is a case of what I’d call “integrated value”.
Authentic sustainability creates value for all parts of an organization, its community, and operations by cohering them into its initiative and ethos (AKA, the culture of the project/program/and company).
Ironically, my revelations are heightened by the fact that I’m starting to work closely with an Australian company (ISMOTION) to examine the “story of stuff” for sustainability in global supply chains–while many people whom I know are focused on very exciting sustainability and community building on a local level.
Hansen and Lydersen: “Exquisite Smoked Salmon” a case of “added value”
Playing music as Ole smokes the salmon gives a story that differentiates his product from others, and adds value to the smoked salmon altogether. It’s clever marketing that makes consumerism a bit more humane thanks to the touch of a story and a product procured with passion. But how integral is the music to enriching a customer’s experience? Looking for the value of the story, I’d say it could be additive, but it’s not crucial to the success of the product.
Interface: Net-Works a case of “integrated value”
Interface is a carpet company. For those who might not be familiar with building materials and sustainability in industry, carpet companies pack a surprising punch when it comes to re-imagining how our economy can function [1].
Judging from the video, Interface’s net-works program might be considered a “social enterprise”. However, they’re throwing in a fine new phrase that’s worth noting in the lexicon of commerce, “restorative enterprise” which asks: How can a company improve a place or process for the human and ecosystemic community?
While they might not explicitly say so in their marketing, it’s focused on using their supply chain to cultivate sustainability through a coherent thread of actions and their concurrent or subsequent stories. Interface improves the world by sourcing their materials from waste. But they move people in showing how they source material and why the initiative exists in the first place: by removing discarded fishing net from coastal coral reefs, and by creating visible benefit to people from impacted island communities. That’s quite a story.
The value they provide comes from everything they do in the supply chain–it’s integrated value, and every step of the way you’ll probably find something or someone who’s willing to tell a story about what they do. That’s a stronger qualitative indicator for ideal creative actions toward sustainability–everything and person benefits because it’s integral to the enterprise’s core operations.
The product becomes an engagement piece for the entire production process. You’ve probably seen this in commercials–for car companies, we see footage of engineers and assembly line workers who take pride in their most recent design and labors as an example. It’s good, but the system they work within has yet to figure out persuasive alternatives that make a good coherent story for their products throughout the supply chain and communities they touch. At least on face, Interface’s Net-Works program looks at improving others throughout its supply chain and makes another distinction in its product: it’s “community-based”.
The places that its nylon supplier gets material makes a difference: people take fishing nets from the coast and ocean around their homes. Also, the end of the product’s life matters too: the company takes back old used carpet to create something new.
Their community impact is integral to the product and brand’s story–just as thoughtfully crafted art for humane purposes can become a priceless treasure for a person or community, the product, program, and brand convey a priceless value: it contributes to the dignity and integrity of our existence and those we live with–including the land.
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I recently got back from a summit (check out the highlights from ReRoute) in New York which poses the same kind of question for business and economics in general: “How can we make business and economics more enriching and non-degrading to the people, and other co-habitants we live with?”
There’s a movement/field of study called solidarity economics, which looks at this, and from discussing with conference luminaries, it’s clear that the “new economics” movement is well underway.
Telling the story of our stuff looks like an excellent start in a global economy. Yet at the end of the day, I think we beam the most when people we know, see, and embrace directly do well.
I’m really excited at the prospect of consulting Interface’s Australian company with the team at Ismotion to show the global story of their sustainability initiative, and will look forward to the time when I do the same here in the Great Lakes bioregion as well.
[1] The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s “Circular Economy” video gives a good big-picture overview of how the carpet industry’s business of “cradle to cradle” material reuse happens.
#11 VIII 2013
Edited 14 August 2013 to distinguish added value from integrated value.
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