Modern technologies allow us to track our business activites and monitor their effect on the world’s resources and communities.
When I was a young Account Manager in a marketing agency, I was given my first account to run — a famous brand of long-lasting, energy-saving lightbulbs.
Being young and inexperienced — I neglected to test the retail display stands properly. I had spent weeks developing these with the client, which involved a life-size cutout of a mountain bike (less energy used, which you could spend peddling a bike to win — get it?). I filled up the prototype with bulbs in the carpeted boardroom, gave it a couple of kicks, and signed it off.
Of course, all the retail stores had shiny polished floors, not expensive deep pile London agency carpets. It was about midday on the date of launch when I first started getting calls from irate store managers telling me that their brand new displays had only just avoided collapsing onto their unsuspecting shoppers.
I only mention this because, a quarter century later, it’s really the only brand that I worked on where the primary aim of the product was a “worthy” one — to save energy and help the planet. Despite the mild panic that still fills me when I think of all those display stands toppling like dominos, I also look back with a small sense of personal pride.
We all have to make money (or save it) to afford the lifestyle we want. Money, after all, drives our society and makes our world go round. Nobody goes to work for the fun of it.
But not many people get to say they did some small good. Actual good.
Since the ill-fated lightbulb catastrophe, I’ve marketed and developed all sorts of brands, from software to data storage to beer and even fine wine. And although some business-to-business brands dealt with cost savings from efficiency gains or reduction in operational spend, none of them really included an actual aim of ideological “good”.
That’s why I’m excited to see initiatives like B Corp and ESG scoring, altruistic movements that genuinely seek to reduce the harm our business activities have on the planet and on exploited communities.
Yes, I’ve heard the arguments and the cynicism that says it’s just a tick box exercise to attract more investment, but even if you believed that — you’ve still got to admit the means befit the end.
I now have a family, and of course, every parent will tell you the hours they spend worrying about the future world our loved ones will inherit.
I genuinely think large corporations can collectively make a big difference to the damage we do to our one and only planet before the new genertions take over. And I see evidence all around me that consumers are starting to demand more and more ethical and sustainable practices from the businesses they give their cash to.
Some of the initiatives in the R&D space I have seen recently at IBM Labs are truly groundbreaking in how they tackle the issue of resource usage. Good people are driving ahead committed to solving the problems of ever more consumption of energy.
Governments come and go, some quicker than others, and so do their short term objectives. As a global society it’s up to all of us to think further into the future than our leaders sometimes fail to do.
Think of those lightbulbs — I’m not daft enough to think they were doing it just to save the planet — they were still a profit-driven company after all — but they none-the-less directed their energy into something with a positive outcome.
The same can be done with business activities — targeting areas where carbon wastage negatively affects your profits and also hurts the environment.
For example, by reducing your IT infrastructure wastage, the side effect will contribute toward actual, hard-hitting sustainability targets measured in tangible CO2 tonnes. So, whilst making a profit is still going to be key — it’s possible you can do so without your activities adding to the ever more pressing climate problem.
That’s why I’m proud to have helped set up up Lighthouse, a business where we use innovative, trusted, IBM software to streamline your IT operations and costs and target areas where energy is wasted, both upstream and downstream.
Yes, its prime aim is to save you money, but why not combine this into ESG targets and sustainability KPIs for reducing your carbon footprint?
Isn’t that a great message to send out to your customers?
Rob
Rob Paton
CMO & C0-Founder, Lighthouse
