Muhammad Yunus, the practical visionary who pioneered microcredit and, with his Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, has developed a visionary new dimension for capitalism which he calls “social business“. By harnessing the energy of profit-making to the objective of fulfilling human needs, social business creates self-supporting, viable commercial enterprises that generate economic growth even as they produce goods and services that make the world a better place. In case you want to know more about this “non-loss, non-dividend companies” which, I believe, have an astonishing potential to worldwide reinvent the economy and has gone from being a theory to an inspiring practice adopted by leading corporations, do not hesitate to read his book “Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs” – it truly impacted me.

In this post, I would like to highlight one of the examples described by Muhammad Yunus in his book: Adidas. This corporation started a joint venture with Grameen which aims at producing affordable shoes for the lowest income people in India. Yunus once said: “The goal of Grameen Adidas is to make sure that no one, child or adult, goes without shoes. This is a health intervention to make sure that people in rural areas, particularly children, do not have to suffer from parasitic diseases that can be transmitted through walking barefoot”. Adidas can proudly and loudly state that they are working with Grameen to bring these benefits to the poorest people of the developing world using an economically viable social business model.

However, I would dare to say that Adidas gets much more from that. Firstly, they are able to tremendously learn from user’s reactions and preferences and start building a reputation in emerging countries which appear to be a powerful future market. Secondly, the challenge to produce the world’s first near-one-euro shoe pushes Adidas towards an exploration of new ways of doing business at all levels – engineering, marketing, finance and business development – which later on can turn to be immensely valuable when translated to their core business activity. And finally, they are profiting from the prevailing theory that sustainability is the key driver of innovation and future competitive advantage by heavily investing in extremely affordable, 100% recyclable and desirable sneakers at customer’s eyes.

And you know the best of all this? Adidas is able to embrace all this universe of benefits without losing a penny. That’s precisely the magic of social business: self-sustainability and potential to ethically grow.

During these firsts classes I was shocked to realise how much knowledge about Sustainability Marketing I unconsciously learnt during my internship in the International Cooperation and Human Rights department of Red Cross Spain. This department contributes to the overall mission of the Red Cross Crescent Movement worldwide in preventing or alleviating human suffering wherever it may be found. They do so through emergency response, recovery and long-term development by providing specialists, delegates or financial assistance in cooperation with Red Cross partners. When designing the projects, I remember there was a whole part of it devoted to long-term sustainability which certainly included plenty of concepts from the Model Behavior: Red Cross was trying to fight for gender equality in Bolivia – where one in every three women experiences some kind of sexual abuse before the age of 18 – through Microfinance by giving loans to women willing to take control of their lives by becoming entrepreneurs in the bakery field; likewise, I saw how Red Cross fights for enhancing the sanitation conditions of the food markets in Maputo by recycling the waste created and producing with it basic products for vulnerable families – this is, using Rematerialization; or similarly, I observed how Red Cross actually improves the life of farmers in Niger by convincing big corporations of the benefits of using Inclusive Sourcing with their local suppliers…

Conclusively, we can affirm that sustainability not only fosters innovation or company’s competitive advantage, but also the long-term progress and self-development of an overwhelming number of vulnerable communities.

Another point I wanted to stress out is how complex it is for Red Cross to design their marketing campaigns. In fact, their entrance and activity in several countries is granted because of their neutrality regarding certain conflictive issues – for instance, religion. This tension to balance the necessity of impartiality and the willingness to strongly support certain ideals arises constantly in this organisation. Concretely, for the stated project in Bolivia, the marketing department struggled when they have been told that no feminist symbols could be used to advertise this project if we wanted to reach the collaboration of the conservative Bolivian government for this project. I believe the best way in which Red Cross signals their sustainable and ethical values is through the absolute engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals, which tremendously helps them to overcome this huge marketing challenge.

In this video produced by the Red Cross Crescent Movement many examples of the sustainable international projects can be observed.