Sustainability – the area in which environmental, social and economic considerations converge to address the common good – is fundamental to the way the world now does business. Governments, citizens, special interest groups, influencers and media demand sustainable business practices from the companies and brands they interact with. What’s more, understanding social and environmental impact has become an integral part in the development of long-term business and communications strategies.
Ketchum Sustainability is Ketchum’s global specialty group that provides counsel, resources and strategic communications programming to corporations, brands and NGOs working to enhance their reputations by conducting business in an economically, socially and environmentally responsible manner. Our mission is to provide clients with authentic, transparent and responsible communications strategies no matter where they are in their sustainability journey.
Navigating the nuances and evolving dynamics of sustainability communications is complex, but our global network of specialists have years of experience and proven processes to help clients and ensure the delivery of credible, effective and ethical communications. Ketchum Sustainability can deliver these communications to serve a wide scope of needs:
- Showcase a company’s existing sustainability practices while building consumer loyalty
- Capture consumer imagination by attaching a brand to an important environmental cause
- Launch product lines that break existing perceptions and change corporate reputation
- Leverage a brand’s efforts in packaging, transportation, production or operational processes, and marketing tools to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability
- Protect clients from partnering with causes that would detract or raise issues with an otherwise strong environmental position
- Guide messaging to be authentic , transparent, measurable and still compelling enough to drive commitment and sales
- Engage influencers and an organization’s staff in becoming ambassadors for its sustainability stance
- Translate complex government and regulatory mandates into manageable, actionable responses for businesses, communities and consumers
- Build sustainability practices and policies into a company’s CSR programming to attract and retain employees while building its reputation
- Measure, analyze and report on a business’s annual sustainability track record.
Ketchum excels at developing a logical planning process and then shepherds clients through that journey so significant decisions (and sometimes significant changes in strategy) are not made in a vacuum. We’ve developed a range of proprietary tools to help companies facilitate dialogue with employees, consumers, stakeholders, media and influencers on how to do business in a way that can be both profitable and environmentally friendly with profound implications for a company’s reputation. Among these:
- Sustainability Planning Process: A specialized approach to charting a sustainability program that is rooted in deep understanding of the target and how to influence awareness, perception and behavior, and which is based on Ketchum’s agencywide Ketchum Programming Process.
- Ketchum Sustainability Brandbuilder®: A program to quantify the relationship between sustainability initiatives, commitments with corporate and brand reputation, and business results.
- Ketchum Media Optimizer: A tool that increases a client’s targeting precision by prioritizing the best sustainability channels for reaching a target audience, thereby focusing outreach on outlets that will actually move the needed versus merely produce “impressions.”
Sustainability is a complex notion that demands that today’s companies must drastically change their behavior in a real and meaningful way, making their individual actions part of a sustainable whole. Ketchum Sustainability helps companies achieve this goal by aligning them with sustainable efforts in ways that are authentic, transparent and responsible.
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