Is Small Sustainable, or can Big be Beautiful?

One of the most exciting recent developments with ‘Sustainability Marketing’ in recent weeks was an email from a Director of one of the World’s biggest brands, who had been reading the book and got in contact with us to say that they had really enjoyed reading it and were ‘finding it more and more appropriate to the challenge I am faced with in our global organization - how to leverage the reach and relationships our brands have with consumers to make a positive difference in the world while building the equity (brand love and value) of our brands. And equally importantly, how to institutionalize this thinking into our 'way of marketing' here’.

This led to a phone conversation with them and another senior marketer from the company and an interesting exchange of ideas about the challenges that any ‘giant’ global company faces in integrating sustainability thinking throughout the organisation. It also led to discussions about the opportunities that such companies have to make a difference in the countries and communities they work within and throughout the supply chains within which they operate.

Whether big companies are the problem or the solution in relation to marketing and sustainability has been a debate that has rumbled on every since Fritz Schumacher published ‘Small is Beautiful’. When trying to envisage a sustainable economy, it is somehow easier seeing it as comprised of relatively small companies serving local markets in a process in which the distances travelled to market are short. We tend to think of small companies as potentially nimbler and more innovative than the giants, and more likely to be close to their communities and employees. This kind of stereotyping is potentially misleading and paints a rather romantic picture of smaller businesses. Many small companies may have the intention to tackle sustainability issues, but may lack the resources and know-how needed to develop and implement more sustainable strategies. Other small companies are too focussed on short-term financial survival to even consider sustainability issues, even thought the failure to do so may endanger their longer-term viability. Some commentators have pointed to the fact that larger companies create material efficiencies in terms of the resource inputs consumed per unit of economic output (and similar figures show that SMEs produce greater levels of pollution per unit of output). Supporters of smaller firms point out that such figures are skewed because the purchasing power of larger companies is such that they enjoy beneficially lower input costs. This gives larger companies an appearance of greater efficiency in process terms, but it is at least partly due to market distortions which their size and power creates.

The reality is that size is not a barrier to becoming a more sustainable business either way, although both the giants and the minnows will face their own particular set of challenges in making their businesses more sustainable. It is hard to argue that many of the key sustainability marketing innovations in terms of products and business models have come from smaller companies. As discussed in Chapter 6 of the book, many of the iconic ‘green brands’ of BodyShop, Ben & Jerry’s, Green & Black’s and many others have in recent years been subsumed within the brand portfolios of the big companies they were established to challenge. To the cynic, this is an example of big businesses simply swallowing up pesky upstart competitors. To the optimist, this is a sign that the giant companies are taking sustainability seriously. Certainly although companies like Walmart and Toyota may have their detractors and have had their problems, they have also made great progress in terms of driving sustainability principles throughout their organisations and supply chains.

For a more sustainable and lower-carbon future we will undoubtedly need the small sustainable innovators and entrepreneurs, and a return to more localised production and consumption systems in many markets (even though this may be delivered through a globally owned network). We will also need the giant companies to drive the mainstreaming of sustainability innovations and to use the power of their global brands and purchasing power to move both consumers and suppliers along with them.

Ultimately it was uplifting to come away from a phone conversation with a senior manager from one of the biggest brands on the planet to discover that not only had they liked our book, but that their passion for moving their company and stakeholders towards a more sustainable future was a strong and sincere one.