Sustainability

Sustainability is becoming more and more important in marketing. The sustainability of business is tied to that of the community and the environment and long term viability requires each of these three components.

Businesses seem to be now split into three disparate groups - those that don't care and are continuing on business as usual in an unsustainable fashion, those that are trying to trick the rest of us into believing they are green and the third group of companies who are genuinely trying to the do the right thing in a sometimes confusing landscape of rules, regulations and 'expert' advice.

Recently in the media we've heard murmurs from some saying that 'oh gee' we're in financial strife now so we can't be thinking about sustainability. My opinion is that now is exactly when we should be thinking harder about sustainability because in many ways it was unsustainable business practices that got us where we are in the first place.

All marketers need to take responsibility for finding ways for their business to prosper in a sustainable fashion even in tough economic times - if we can solve this now - imagine how good we'll be at it by the time the economy starts to recover.

It is in times of scarcity that human endeavour and creativity can reach the heights. In times of abundance we're too fat and lazy to worry about it.