SodaStream is one of my favourite brands, which was recently featured in the The Circular Economy Business Model Toolkit card deck we discussed in class. It was placed as an example of a “Consumer Lock-In.” Although I do agree with this, I think it is also a great example of a company that has adopted a “Collection Service.”

If you are a sparkling water addict like myself, you can go through a SodaStream CO2 cylinder in less than a month. If I were to buy these cylinders at full price it would cost nearly $40. However, with the carbonator exchange policy, it saves me nearly $10! Not to mention it saves me from accumulating multiple cylinders, and not knowing where to dispose of them. SodaStream has made this a convenient process, as thousands of retailers honor the exchange policy. Unlike other companies, this avoids the hassle of shipping!

The CO2 cylinder takes a bottle of tap water and turns it into sparkling water in seconds. And the best part is that it does all of this with no electricity! This product is a sustainable alternative to purchasing soda at the grocery store. It saves you money, and at the same time it saves the environment!

If you’ve never seen the SodaStream in action, I wanted to share one of my favourite commercials with you:

I bought my soda maker two years ago, and since then I have seen a drastic transformation in their brand positioning and advertising. Prior to this transition, they projected themselves as a “Green” company. Unfortunately, this positioning did not align with the values of their target market. When SodaStream saw sales rapidly declining in America, they removed their focus from sustainability. According to this article, they had to do so in order to effectively compete with brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

I am confident that the value American consumers place on sustainability with improve. I found it interesting that SodaStream had to reposition themselves to attract a wider market in order to stay competitive in the industry. “Soda leaders” such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola are heading the opposite way, and incorporating sustainability initiatives into their corporate strategy.

I was really inspired by the “love has no labels” campaign that we discussed in class, so I went to the Ad Council website to see what other campaigns they have done. Although I came across many that I liked, my favourite was the “I am a witness” campaign. Their main objective was “to stop bullying by activating the silent majority of kids who witness it each day transform them from passive bystanders into a united, empowered and active collective that will speak up against bullying”.

At the heart of the “I am a witness” campaign was a Witness Emoji, which was available for free download on the Apple App Store. The Witness Emoji was shaped like a speech bubble, but the app provided teens with multiple stickers to choose from. The incentive was for teens to post the emoji when they saw a hurtful comment online, or send one to a friend as a form of support. I think this app is brilliant, because as we know, social media is plays a pivotal role in society (especially for teens).

I think with the right tools and resources pro-social marketing can be really powerful. I think it’s the ad campaigns like “love has no labels” and “I am a witness” that create awareness and influence consumers to make changes in their behavior. I think it’s all about starting that conversation – and who knows how to do that best? Marketers!

There’s a misconception that marketing is only for promoting products and their attributes. I think sustainability marketing goes much further than that – it is focused on changing consumer lifestyles. It shares a very close relationship with pro-social marketing, which isn’t about marketing product attributes to generate sales, it’s about influencing behaviour change. There are consumers who still drink a can of soda and throw it away in the garbage (hard to believe – I know). Consumer lifestyles are extremely difficult to change. Marketing has an opportunity to influence the way people consume, reuse, and dispose products in their day-to-day lives. Sustainability marketing initiatives share similar objectives to those of health campaigns. For example, a health campaign targeting nicotine smokers is trying to create an incentive for users to quit. This is essentially no different from the campaigns that try to incentivize consumers to recycle.