07 Nov Sustainability Sweet Spot #3
Imagine Coke and Pepsi sitting down together to collaborate. Sounds like a fairytale? It’s not. That actually happened – and it took the topic of climate change to do it.
Sustainability Sweet Spot #3: Seek Collaborations to Advance Your Sustainability Strategy
More and more brands are coming together to not only advance their missions but solve some of the world’s most critical issues. I couldn’t be more thrilled to see this happen in the marketplace. It’s not only a way to expose your product or service to a huge customer-base that has never seen it before, but more importantly for sustainable brands and mission-based businesses, to get your groundbreaking ideas and solutions that can change the world out there with velocity.
Let me give you an example of a collaboration my organization, Women Of Green, did with the Santa Fe Green Chamber of Commerce. Every year, the Chamber had a Fall Event where they would invite a prominent speaker to address the city on topics focusing on the environment or sustainability. Speakers such as Robert Redford, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s (he brought ice cream) and Paul Hawkin have graced the stages of Santa Fe. It was time to get a woman on the stage, I thought.
For Women Of Green, a collaboration with the Green Chamber was perfect as we both shared the same values and a similar audience. Disclosure: I was a founding board member of the Santa Fe Green Chamber, so I knew the integrity of the organization.
I pitched the idea of bringing Nell Newman (daughter of Paul Newman and founder of Newman’s Own Organics) to Santa Fe. But in addition to the regular Santa Fe Green Chamber evening presentation, I proposed we add a one-day women’s conference the day after called “Women As Game Changers”.
Well, that’s exactly what we did. Our evening presentation attracted about 200 people and our one-day conference had 70 game-changing women there – not to mention the thousands of people that saw our promotions through social media, email, ads, etc.
This success led to another collaboration Women Of Green proposed to the US Green Chamber of Commerce where we co-produced an online Global Summit featuring 27 Women Thought Leaders that thousands of people downloaded.
I am a big fan of well thought-out collaborations as they are one of the most effective ways to advance your sustainability message, mission and business. There are a million and one ways to do them. And with social media and the power of the internet, the world is your environmentally sustainable oyster.