Desirability and Sustainability: the Opportunity for Brand and Design

Steve Bishop, Global Lead, Design for Sustainability, IDEO
Desirability is key to any successful brand. As designers we seek to enrich offerings with relevance, meaningful value and emotional connections to build brand desire. But can desirability drive sustainability? We believe we have the opportunity to apply our design capabilities to create demand for sustainable brand offerings. In the first half of "Desirability and Sustainability: the Opportunity for Brand and Design," IDEO shares what's been learned (so far) about the intersection of sustainability, brand and design. Through examples and research, this presentation highlights opportunities to design desire for sustainable offerings that are often overlooked in favor of more tangible supply-side efficiencies.

Defining Your Unique Sustainable Brand Position & Voice:  A Workshop in the Creative Process

Cheryl Heller, Founder & Principle, Heller Communication  Design
While smart companies know that building a sustainable brand is an opportunity to strengthen relationships with stakeholders, the challenge, amid the rising sea of common claims and generic language, is to define a strategy and voice for your company that are authentic and distinguishing.  This workshop shows you how.  As a participant, you will:

•    Define your objectives in a way that amplifies creativity
•    Use brand archeology to identify the ethical core of your company
•    Create a distinctive and relevant brand promise that embeds CSR
•    Use the brand promise as a roadmap for behavior
•    Use communication to engage your audiences and create change
•    Map behavior with communications for better alignment, effectiveness and efficiency.

Using Balanced Scorecard to Measure and Report your Sustainability Initiatives

Daniel Robin, Managing Director, In3

The work of sustainability is inherently measurable, and stakeholders expect at least some degree of transparency, but (a) How can reporting be linked to strategic imperatives and (b) How fully are the teams able to use these measures to ‘manifest destiny’ at the local level?

Corporate social and environmental responsibility initiatives can go deeper and deliver greater sustainable value when balanced measures are properly selected, monitored and reported.

This practical program features case studies, exercises and tools to identify, monitor and evaluate organizational sustainability through carefully selected performance and results indicators. Just as important are the methods for involving and recognizing those who construct and use the indicators to guide improvement – they must make sense to the various people in the organization – from the staff on the ground to senior management.

In this half day seminar, participants will discover proven methods for selecting and implementing the right sustainability performance indicators using an updated, proven “Balanced Scorecard” approach. You will gain insights and learn specific techniques that can be applied immediately to your initiatives.

Enduring Value: The William McDonough Approach to Innovation and Design

Lisa Friedman and Laszlo Gyorffy, Principals, Enterprise Development Group
Enduring Value is an interactive workshop blending EDG's innovation best practices with William McDonough's concepts for transforming the way we design.  This workshop was developed in collaboration with William McDonough,  Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Planet” and co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.  The goal of the workshop is to turn leaders into designers and designers into leaders.  To harness the intelligence of natural systems—the effectiveness of nutrient cycling, the abundance of the sun's energy—so leaders can design products, industrial systems, buildings, even regional plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully co-exist.

Lisa and Laszlo will use video based case studies, team exercises, and lots of story telling and group dialogue to keep the energy up and the learning curve steep. Participants will have the chance to learn and apply workshop concepts to their own important work challenges.  Workshop topics include:

• Core concepts of the “Next Industrial Revolution”
• Cradle-to-cradle design principles and practices
• The Ladder of Sustainability
• Innovation tools and practices including how to grow good ideas into enduring value propositions and  how to harness collective intelligence to increase the chance of an idea’s success.

Sara Louise Todd, Senior Design Analyst, frog design
>Adam Richardson, Strategy Director, frog design
The topic of sustainable or “green” design is of increasing urgency to companies involved in product development. In the last year we have seen a tipping point of public interest and concern over global climate change, fueled by massive media interest. Companies which are not addressing it risk both legislative as well as brand and sales impacts. Recent surveys have shown that key customer segments are willing to pay more in order to buy greener products.

The seminar will combine presentations with hands-on activities done in break-out groups, where possible using the participants’ own products, organizations and experiences as sources of challenges and opportunities.

Green Marketing 101

Jacquelyn Ottman, Founder, J.Ottman Consulting
Green marketing represents opportunities for businesses to grow their sales, enhance their image and build brand equity. But doing green marketing right is not so easy. Pinpointing your green consumer, working your way through the thicket of eco-labeling groups, and avoiding the criticism of greenwashing are just a few of the challenges.

In this highly interactive half–day workshop you will have the opportunity to learn from America’s foremost green marketing expert, Jacquelyn Ottman, all you need to know to create a green marketing plan for your own business that will target your consumer with credibility and impact. Items on Ottman’s jam-packed agenda include: size and key trends of the green market; critical data on green consumer demographics and psychographics; key success strategies illustrated by examples of some of the successful green products (as well as some of the failures, too).  After the interactive lecture attendees will have the opportunity to put their newfound learning to work on a marketing plan for their own or a hypothetical business.

All attendees will receive a copy of Ms. Ottman’s book, Green Marketing: Opportunity for Innovation, 2nd edition, called “the definitive work on the subject” by the American Marketing Association, along with a handout of key workshop points.

Measuring Your Social Footprint

Mark W. McElroy, Executive Director and Chief Sustainability Officer, Center for Sustainable Innovation
This workshop begins with a brief summary of corporate sustainability management (CSM), measurement and reporting – what it is, and leading concepts, tools, and measurement methods. It then introduces the Social Footprint Method, a compelling new approach to CSM that arguably takes sustainability reporting to the next level and operationalizes the triple bottom line.  

By the end of the workshop, attendees will learn:

•    How to clearly differentiate between the concepts of ‘green’, ‘eco-efficiency’, and true ‘sustainability’
•    How leading sustainability measurement and reporting schemes compare and contrast with one another, including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), carbon footprinting, and the Ecological Footprint
•    How to raise the quality and rigor of sustainability measurement and reporting as a strategy for competitive (and marketing) advantage
•    How to measure and report the social sustainability performance of an organization using the Social Footprint Method.