Design for Sustainability — It’s Good Marketing
Sometimes we see great marketing ideas in the most unexpected places. I recently saw a terrific example of smart environmental marketing on a box of tea.
Celestial Seasonings is a brand of tea that many people recognize for its lack of string, staple, and tag. Some may find the lack of tag annoying because there is nothing to grab onto in order to remove the bag. Others, like me, prefer it because there is no metal staple to fall into your tea and no paper tag to disintegrate in your hands when it gets wet.
But Celestial Seasonings uses this lack of accoutrement in another way—to promote its environmental commitment.
What makes the company such a particularly good example of smart marketing is that it uses this commitment, which is something it is doing anyway, as a smart, no cost addition to its marketing efforts. In this, it provides an example that we can all learn from.
How does it do this? On the underside of the tea box lid, Celestial Seasonings prints a question: Ever wonder why . . . no string and no tag?
It goes on to explain that because these “natural fiber tea bags” don’t need strings, tags, staples, or individual wrappers, the company is able to save more than 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year. This also means less energy used to harvest raw materials and produce the unnecessary ballast.
On the bottom of the tea box, Celestial Seasonings promotes that its boxes use 100% recycled paperboard with 35% post-consumer content. The box also sports the Ethical Trade logo, which supports fair wages and sustainable harvests in more than 35 countries.
This is really smart marketing. Why? Studies have shown that eco-sensitive customers are more loyal than other types of customers. Thus, with just the addition of a little bit of text, Celestial Seasonings enables its measurable environmental commitment to double as a terrific marketing strategy.
What can other marketers learn from this?
- If your company has an environmental story, tell it!
- Don’t overlook your corporate identity materials and product packaging as marketing media. They’re free!
- Where possible, quantify the benefits of your commitment. I’m impressed that Celestial Seasonings took the time to quantify its waste reduction in its marketing. This kind of detail provides credibility and gives others a reason to tell your story for you (for example, this blog post).
What are you doing to hang onto your eco-sensitive customers? Are you making use of any available space on your existing packaging and corporate identity materials to tell your story?