Marketing has driven unprecedented levels of consumption - Talk Marketing 042 - Michelle Carvill

AMarketing has driven unprecedented levels of consumption – Talk Marketing 042 – Michelle Carvill

Wherever you sit on the conspiracy scale it is hard to argue that the way we are consuming is having a dangerous effect on the environment that we depend on. It is perhaps an uncomfortable realisation for marketers that we are driving that consumption. Michelle has invested a huge amount of time and energy in addressing this issue. If you are in marketing and you are interested in the environment you should check this out. 00:00 Introductions 07:54 How are you qualified to talk to us about sustainable marketing? 19:46 Is sustainable marketing an oxymoron? 33:47 What role can marketers play in sustainable marketing? 39:31 What role should businesses and brands be playing in issues like sustainability? 53:09 Do people really care about sustainability or are they just paying lip service to it and not actually concerned about the businesses that they buy from? 59:31 Why do people continue to buy things that are clearly bad for them? 1:09:55 What can businesses do to be more environmentally sustainable? 1:26:47 What can marketers do to bring about sustainable marketing? 1:34:17 Who do you recommend I speak to as part of the Talk Marketing series? How are you qualified to talk to us about sustainable marketing? Michelle Carvill 7:54 Okay, so I’m not a climate scientist, you know, I’m not I’m not a sustainability expert even, even though I suppose I’m learning more and more about that, over the years. I’m a marketer, and as a marketer, I’ve been increasingly concerned about the role that marketing plays in behaviours of consumers. So you know, marketing, really, if you think about what what is the role of marketing? Marketing, traditionally, is to understand the needs of the audience and to deliver solutions, to deliver products and services that meet their needs. It’s also the role to kind of do the investigative research and kind of be innovative and come up with things that people maybe don’t even know they need. Of course, over the years, all of this activity, whether it’s at strategic level, brand level, whether it’s an application, tactical level, like you know, helping people click buttons faster, and be able to convert quicker online and all of the optimization techniques that, again, fall into kind of search marketing and online marketing, in one way or another, have all kind of driven these unprecedented levels of consumption. We don’t even think about what we buy now. We just, you know, everything is convenient. The role of marketing has been to encourage people to have more, to get more, to do more, to throw away, if something’s broken, oh, don’t worry about it we’ll just get a new one. We’ve, we’ve lost that over the last 50 years. As the pace of, of technology and manufacturing and global markets has been eradicated, these barriers have been eradicated. We’re able to do very quickly get something delivered from China or India, which is, you know, the labour costs have been forced down. So it’s cheap, and it’s quick, and it’s easy. And as consumers, we don’t even think about it, we don’t even think about it, I’m thirsty, I just want to drink, we’ll go and pick up that plastic bottle of water and drink it without really any consideration of the fact that that plastic bottle will, what are you going to do with that plastic bottle, you know? It may have a recycling label on it, but only 9% of any plastic in in the world has ever, ever been recycled. So, you know, we don’t, we don’t realise these things we’ve we’ve just been our consumption levels have just been, you know, convenience at any cost. Marketing has driven a lot of that. The marketers are out there driving that and for me as a marketer, helping businesses all my life to get more, do more, have more, I’ve always had this kind of level of discomfort with Whoa, you know, where does this stop? Martin Henley 11:08 Okay, good. I’ve had that level of discomfort as well, like maybe more than that. I’ve got a theory. What you’ll learn about me, Michel is I’ve got a whole head full of theories and issues. So I’ve got a theory about the environment. It seems to me that there was a time probably just before the Industrial Revolution, where we were all environments, environmentalists, because we were all living in our environment and we were all dependent on our environment nut also we were all exposed to our environment. Whereas what’s happened in whatever that is, those 150 years, is now we’ve all been moved into and coseted in these little boxes that we live in. We are bombarded all the time with entertainment, there’s no time in the day, where we’re not entertained. Literally, if I stop for a minute, I probably have my phone out, and I am being entertained by some video content, or some music or whatever it might be. So it feels to me not even in the last 50 years, maybe, clearly as accelerated in the last 50 years.
Martin Henley

Martin Henley

Martin has built a reputation for having a no nonsense approach to sales and marketing and for motivating audiences with his wit, energy, enthusiasm and his own brand of audience participation. Martin’s original content is based on his very current experience of running effective marketing initiatives for his customers and the feedback from Effective Marketing’s successful and popular marketing workshops.

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