A couple of weeks ago, Alexis Olans and I attended the Sustainable Brands Conference in London. The conference is hosted by the Sustainable Brands organization, which is a learning, collaboration, and commerce community of over 50,000 sustainable business leaders from around the globe with the mission to empower more brands to prosper by leading the way to a better world.
In this framework, the adidas brand was invited to present at two sessions – Cultural Differences in Effectively Driving Sustainable Innovation, and Sustainability, Brands & the Olympics. Both sessions used a forum set-up where a group of 3-4 panelists across different brands gave short intro presentations on how their brand had experienced the topic, and then opened up the floor to questions and discussion with the audience. This open forum approach was widely appreciated by attendees, as they were able to openly brainstorm with colleagues on how similar initiatives would work within their own business formats.
The adidas contribution
Alexis’s first presentation “Effectively Driving Sustainable Innovation”focused on the creation, and dynamics of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition as a successful example of international industry collaboration – a collaboration which includes companies, governments, NGOs, suppliers, and further stakeholders. Alexis shared adidas’ experience within the Coalition: why members saw the need for SAC collaboration, how the group ensured concrete and timely deliverables, as well as how SAC members embraced the cultural differences in the Coalition as an asset, rather than seeing them as a challenge. Other Panelists included Target and H&M.
Alexis’ second presentation – Sustainability, Brands & the Olympics – shared adidas’ experience as the official sportswear sponsor of the “Sustainable Games”, the London 2012 Olympics. Alexis spoke about the targets adidas Brand set for itself – 100% of the volunteer kit and torch relay kit, 96% of village wear and 70% of competition product including sustainable content – and what it took to deliver against them. She shared the sustainable performance stories, both product made specifically for the Olympics as well as those sourced from our Pro-athlete inline offering, such as the recycled polyester NBA uniforms. She also covered our most recent sustainable innovations (Primeknit, DryDye) which were highlighted to the public via the Olympic Games.
Looking forward to the future of sustainability
This conference focused on all different parts of sustainability and branding, even dealing with challenging topics, such as regional consumer variation, communication receptivity, and variances in consumer willingness to pay.
Companies from across multiple industries – both large players such as Unilever, H & M and Marks & Spencer, as well as smaller firms such as Zipcar UK and The People who Share – were taking unconventional approaches to incorporating sustainability considerations into their business model. Seeing how other industries jump-started new initiatives gave us new ideas on how to build engagement internally around what, at first, might seem like radical and uncomfortable new ideas. Along with growing from a professional perspective, the commitment and excitement of many of the individuals at this conference was quite inspirational to me personally, and reconfirmed my commitment to the topic.
Many attendees presented on the idea of shifting from a purchasing business model to a leasing business model with the goal of meeting the consumer need of product use instead of product ownership. This moves away from the traditional model of the need to permanently invest in a product to benefit from its use to a more personalized model that focuses on consumer needs versus product benefits. One such company is Zipcar which is a company that allows urban dwellers to rent cars on an hourly basis. These cars “live” in convenient urban locations and can be rented quickly and easily using smart phone or on-line applications. The service focuses on the consumer need of a flexible, personal transportation solution without the obligations of traditional car ownership. This change in the traditional business model is an interesting solution that could allow customers to use products according to their personal needs without long-term commitment.
The conference provided us at adidas Better Place, the adidas brand product sustainability program, with an overview of how global brands are approaching the topic of sustainability, while allowing us to share with others some key sustainability learnings from adidas’ experience with the London 2012 Olympics and the SAC.
We look forward to participating in similar forums in the future!
I attended the first day of this conference in my capacity as an independent sustainability communications consultant. I attended the first of Alexis’s sessions on the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. It was a good opportunity to highlight the collaborative approach adidas and others are taking to solving big issues such as how do you assess how sustainable materials are. The second session sounds like it was a great opportunity to showcase adidas innovations too.
I too liked the ‘sharing’ message that came through Kara. It reminded me that my brother and I used to share a car – as young men living in London with its transport links and before we had families, this was relatively easy to do. The challenge is of course that business models would need to change significantly away from a product basis to a service basis for this sharing approach to be viable for business. That seems like a huge challenge for adidas and others in the apparel and footwear sector. Or am I wrong?