Between the lines of the Unilever brand story

At last week’s Marketing Society Conference – a day of Global Leadership discussions – we were treated to a very well put together and powerfully delivered talk from Keith Weed, CMO at Unilever. The headlines, reported succintly in today’s Marketing magazine (7 Dec), focus on how they are embedding sustainability in the business, not having separate CSR, and how…

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Reuse’ revisited… a vital marketing innovation challenge

We all know the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’…. What this is meant to mean is firstly reduce your materials and impacts by changing your product/service, then try reusing your finished products (straight reuse or value added upcycling) then when all else fails, recycle into something else. Somedays it seems folks only think about the last one, but sadly we’re…

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Easyjet vs Ryanair – the Joker’s still beating Batman

Easyjet is in the news again this week – this time, for painting it’s aircraft (8, as a trial) with a nanopolymer coating that reduces friction and therefore fuel use. If it works on the whole fleet, it would reduce fuel bills by up to 2% – and given 40% of easyJet’s costs are fuel, this is no small…

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How to drive demand for recycled products?

I was in the foyer of the BBC yesterday and noticed that their stationery had arrived – cases of Evolve 100% recycled paper, exactly the same as I use. I was delighted. And then I thought, if even the BBC can do it (huge organisation, slow to change), then its really not hard. Why do we even use up…

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Ecology BS is a breath of fresh air in the financial world

Congratulations to the Ecology Building Society! They’ve been winning awards left right and centre for the hard work they do in creating genuinely ethical savings products – Ethical Consumer Magaxine’s ‘best buy’ 2009, and What Mortgage’s ‘best environmental lender’ awards and even ‘Mortgage Finance Gazette’s’ ‘best green lender’ award. Its because they are very strict on who they lend…

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