Sustainability Marketing, Marketing Sustainability

I’m glad to have a reason to resurrect my UBC Blogs site, since I’m required to write weekly blogs for my Commerce 486F: Sustainable Marketing class. It’ll be really interesting to reflect on course topics and share relevant items here. I’m looking forward to this “assignment”!

First off, what is this class all about? As the title of this post shows, Commerce 486F really explores two different topics. How can we as marketers continue to promote goods and services in a sustainable manner (in the long run)? And then the latter phrase, ‘Marketing Sustainability’, is more focused on how to market the lifestyle and principle that is sustainability. In my opinion, these could be two individual courses because they are so different…but it is already impressive enough that Sauder offers anything along these lines, so let’s not ask for too much at the moment…

In regards to the marketing sustainability side of the course, I’ve always paid extra attention to companies that embrace the business buzz word that is CSR (corporate social responsibility); admittedly, it’s hard to ignore as a business student. Just last term, our Business Writing class spent a significant amount of time researching Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline project and analyzing its CSR policies. Companies seem to like to attach ‘sustainability’ to CSR, listing environmental initiatives as one of the ways they are achieving their CSR targets. However, I would argue that sustainability should not be an afterthought of how to offset damage done to the environment and promote it as a CSR accomplishment; sustainability should more and more be a mindset that is immersed into a business’ operations, its mission statement, and its management.

I’m looking forward to learning strategies to achieve this ideal business model, and am hopeful that sustainable businesses can change (and save) our world.

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Some food for thought:

Where are we focusing media, political, and economical resources as a society?