How advertising can repurpose itself to serve cities in more sustainable ways
Brands need to create ads that serve their cities and the people (or citizen-consumers) within them, argues RMIT's Sergio Brodsky in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Noisy, ugly and dirty. Advertising has polluted cities, annoyed consumers, and jeopardised its own existence. Beyond a mass-media cacophony, brand communications’ significant carbon footprint and runaway consumption are certainly contributing to what economists call market failure.
In the UK, for instance, advertising produces 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. That’s equivalent to heating 364,000 UK homes for a year, according to CarbonTrack.
Still, contrary to that sentiment, marketers and their brands can (and should) move away from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution for sustainable development and the industry’s own sustainability.
Offering a new outlook
The urbanisation megatrend wholly underpins other forces shaping the way we live, now and in the future. Although cities occupy only 2% of Earth’s landmass, that is where 75% of energy consumption occurs. Advertising growth is also concentrated in big cities.
Because of increased demand for ever more comfortable lifestyles, urban infrastructures have been feeling “growing pains” for decades now. Whether it’s energy, education, health, waste management or safety, cities’ services are struggling to keep up with their larger and “hungrier” populations.
The strategic opportunity here is to reframe brand communications from the promotion of conspicuous consumption to becoming a regenerative force in the economy of cities. That means using brands’ touch points as more than mere messengers, but rather delivering public utility services. I’ve coined it Urban Brand-Utility.
For example, Domino’s Pizza’s Paving for Pizza program fixes potholes, cracks and bumps said to be responsible for “irreversible damage” to pizzas during the drive home.
This may sound silly, but the US National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission estimates that simply to maintain the nation’s highways, roads and bridges requires investment by all levels of government of US$185 billion a year for the next 50 years. Today, the US invests about US$68 billion a year.
According to Bill Scherer, mayor of Bartonville, Texas: “This unique, innovative partnership allowed the town of Bartonville to accomplish more potholes repairs.” Eric Norenberg, city manager of Milford, Delaware, said: “We appreciated the extra Paving for Pizza funds to stretch our street repair budget as we addressed more potholes than usual.”
In Moscow, major Russian real estate developers approached Sberbank to collaborate on better infrastructure planning in residential areas. People’s opinions on local needs fuelled targeted campaigns, promoting loans for small businesses. The “Neighbourhoods” campaign generated nine times as many small-business responses as traditional bank loan advertising.
In other words, people had their needs met. And neighbourhoods become more attractive as a result. The city increases tax collection from the new businesses being set up, which also reduces the costs of having to deal with derelict areas.
A shift to serving citizen-consumers
If we could see ourselves as citizen-consumers, as opposed to individual shoppers in the market, every dollar spent would enable business to tackle the issues that matter most.
Here’s a hypothetical situation. Let’s assume Domino’s Paving for Pizza program is taken to its full potential, generating a large surplus to the City of Bartonville by minimising the costs of repairing potholes. Rather than treating this as a one-off campaign, smart mayors would try to create a virtuous cycle, where the city retains 50% of the surplus, 25% is returned to the advertiser, and 25% goes to the agency and media owner – a value only unlocked by repeating the approach.
This way, marketing budgets are effectively turned into investment funds. The returns are in the form of brand cut-through, happier customers, social impact and more effective city management, as shown in the model below.
In a circular economy, products and services go beyond an end user’s finite life cycle. Similarly, Urban Brand-Utility looks at brand communications as closed loops by designing a system bigger than fixed campaign periods, target audiences and business-as-usual KPIs.
Brands with some level of foresight will be able to broaden their audiences from customers to citizens and their revenue model from sales to the creation of shared value. These will be game-changers for profit and prosperity.
Markets, choice and competition are not just a consumer’s best friend, but their civic representation. After all, as one of the tribunes asks the crowd in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: “What is the city but the people?”
Sergio Brodsky, Sessional Lecturer, Marketing, RMIT University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This article makes it very clear why you don’t work in the industry. It’s pseudo intelligent unsupported blah.
We’re in the business of building brands and businesses. The examples you cite are PR stunts that’s it.
You can’t sustain a business on that kind of ‘advertising’. Dominos wouldn’t get into the pot hole fixing business because they are simply much smarter than that.
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What a great initiative from Dominos. This is not only sustainable advertising, but also clever advertising. They’re creating such a positive brand image in the community and building relationships which will only lead to customer loyalty.
In regards to the above comment, sometimes PR stunts have huge marketing pay offs.
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I think you’ll find Sergio has clocked up some good years in the industry (in strategy nonetheless) and your attempt to discredit him simply based on one article that you disagree with begs the challenge:
who the f**ck are you and why should we listen to you
(probably a 25yr old pseudo intellectual hipster)
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Better idea – close corporate tax loopholes and use that revenue to fund the development/maintenance of infrastructure. Marketing thought bubbles aren’t the solution to everything…
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Good stuff @Sergio Brodsky. With the Edelman Trust Barometer at the very least an indication that the customer in the world wants brands to do more for the world, and has the power to do more this is right on track in my books. Conscious capitalism is just sustainable business for the future ultimately. There is no reason why the commercial focus of a PR stunt can’t do good at the same time. Dominos could have done some other stunt that cost the same and had the same exposure, so good for them for doing something the people need and want in the process. Showing what their values are is a brand job too. Good stuff. I think the only unsupported argument here today is the one from @Clear above. There is plenty of data and precedence overseas with Benefit Company (or similar) structures that prove that purpose driven business is a commercial success and there’s plenty to prove the public want it, and the company’s own employees want it too. If people think that purpose driven brand work is not viable or a fad, you are sadly the ones out of touch and out of date.
Some lovely thoughts in this article. Explore ways to create value for clients and the world and everyone wins.
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In previous UBU articles and keynotes I do acknowledge the fact that most branded utilities are indeed stunts and the circular revenue model is a response to that. And no Domino’s would not enter the pothole fixing business. Paving for Pizza is a program that strengthens their positioning- making pizza delivery as seamless as possible. That said, the creation of shared value is real and that is a paradigm shift in advertising. Same for Sberbank. Many more cases with hard data proving the point.
And perhaps, for an industry at the bleeding edge of culture and waiving the flag of innovation so highly it’s funny how much resistance there is when something actually innovative is presented.
Here’s a paper I wrote for the Berlin Marketing Journal that focuses more on the agency perspective: https://issuu.com/heliosmedia/docs/bmj_2017
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Put your energy into a positive conversation. Ask RUOK? today.
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