London Calling

The latest issue of JAM, the Journal of Arts Marketing, is now available, and includes our regular thoughts on sustainable marketing and business practise along with a range of thought pieces on the idea of leadership.

Great reading and food for thought as always, and here’s our own small contribution in full…

All too often in meetings, conversations and at conferences I’m finding that the idea of sustainability is something that sounds nice to businesses in theory but is doomed to sit forever in that someday/maybe file of things to do once every other pressing box has been ticked off.

Proof read the new brochure, debug the website, figure out that whole social media minefield etc etc.

In other words time is just as precious and finite a commodity as paper stocks or power, so why shouldn’t it be included in any audit of available resources?

Sustainable thinking is all about forward planning, maximising on existing resources as well as conserving them, and taking the long-term view – all safe and commonsense business attitudes when you come right down to it, right?

I’d argue that adopting a sustainable approach doesn’t have to be a choice between whether its better to gain social benefits or save precious financial resources. In fact a sustainable thought process is often the key to unlocking new innovation and creativity within a company.

Let me give you an example from our own business to illustrate.

As a business London Calling offers plenty of different things, but a lot of what we do, day in, day out, is use fossil fuels in one form or another to drive dead tree stock around town.

That’s the majority of our carbon footprint in a nutshell, and considering we recently figured out we’d driven the equivalent of perhaps seven times around the equator in a year, you can surmise both that:

A – We’re pretty good at what we do because we’ve gone a long, long way for a lot of different people over the years.

B – That whole mileage thing would probably be a good place to start if we were serious about addressing our business from a ‘how do we lessen our environmental impact?’ point of view.

As you probably guessed, that’s exactly what we did, reducing our real-world mileage and fuel consumption by 15% in the last year with no drop in volumes of print delivery and in fact increasing the overall geographic area we cover.

The trick, such as it is, is all in investing staff time and resources in desk research and figuring out how, for instance, to best combine our delivery routes to minimise the distances one of our vans will need to travel in any given day.

This real-world mileage reduction also means an equally real-world reduction in our fuel expenditure, so if we’re delivering the same volume of work with a 15% reduction in associated costs that’s obviously a great saving and one we can use to help keep our prices steady during this belt-tightening budget year.

That’s just one example from a long list of business-benefitting initiatives we’ve been inspired to take thanks to that first step of thinking green.The real point here though is that if we can do it, so can you. Or, to put it another way, maybe there’s more mileage in embracing a sustainable business stance than you might think.

Audience segmentation for the next decade is the theme of the latest issue of the Journal of Arts Marketing, the quarterly publication from the Arts Marketing Association.

My latest piece argues for an approach to sustainability that moves past the simple eco-checklist approach to putting your house in order, and rather returns to the core brand values of an organisation. In this way sustainability becomes a strand of programming in its own right and another way to think about and  talk to our audiences.

The implications for understanding how an audience’s attitudes to green issues and sustainability might integrate with our more traditional segmentation strategies are still being uncovered, but it’s clear to me that failing to include this line of thinking in our planning is a failure to grasp new opportunities for building relations with our target markets in the decade to come.

Here’s the article in full:

Like a latter day Johnson and Boswell, Dr Ben Todd of Arcola Theatre and I have been out on the road performing a green marketing double act at AMA Networking events and other choice locations across London and the South East.

The idea has been to inspire discussion on the different ways a green marketing mix can benefit broader audience engagement and, as Ben pointed out, take advantage of the biggest and best networked marketing team we possibly can to help test out our theories.

One of the main questions we’ve been posing is whether a venue’s marketing team should be the ones taking the lead on green initiatives.

Unfortunately there is no one size fits all simple solution to the problem of sustainability.

Rather there’s a need to navigate any number of different positions. You’ll want to encourage investment in meaningful change, avoid the slippery greenwashed slopes of a quick carbon neutral cop-out, seek out new lines of communication and explain what you’ve learnt so that others can follow in your footsteps.

During our mini-tour one theme has become increasingly apparent – if you really want to position sustainability as a central part of your venue, it needs to be embedded right through the corporate identity. In other words we’re back to brand – the natural home of the modern marketing team.

Talking about the Arcola’s own experience, Ben outlined how evolving their own sustainable strategy has been a long, slow burn in direct contrast to the quicker promotional ‘splash and dab’ of selling theatre tickets.

The first lesson they learned after deciding ‘We’re all going to be sustainable – Yeah cool!’ was to start asking what that really meant to them as an organisation.

The answer was to go right back to Arcola’s corporate branding and mission statement, so the place where long term work on building company identity and relationships with stake holders, funders and audiences becomes the home for sustainability as well.

As Ben explains it, there are two divergent approaches to adoption. Treat sustainability in the same way you would Health & Safety (forms and tick boxes basically) or position it directly as a strand of your core programming. For Arcola their three main strands of programming – Professional Productions, Youth & Community Work and Sustainability – are now all intrinsically linked, cross-pollinating creative ideas and creating new and exciting ways to engage with Arcola’s audiences.

As Ben explains it ‘we’re identifying a whole new way of engaging audiences, building loyalty and accessing new markets.’

We think you’ll agree that rather than just viewing this as adding another task to the teetering pile of to-dos, the opportunity to engage with new ideas and talk to our audiences in new ways is precisely why we became marketers in the first place.

At it’s best arts marketing is about capturing people’s imagination and inspiring them to try new experiences. It’s exactly this kind of engagement we need to encourage a cultural shift towards more sustainable practises, and this is precisely where the arts are in a prime position to reach people and help create real change for the better.

Full Disclosure:

London Calling is the current sponsor of JAM, supporting the Arts Marketing Association and working in partnership with our recommended printer, Greenhouse Print, to ensure each issue is printed to the highest possible standards of environmental management.

We’ve chosen to use the promotional space that comes in kind as part of our supporting package to create a series of advertorial articles highlighting issues of sustainability within the arts and cultural sector.

We rather like writing these, and all comment and feedback is always greatly appreciated.

Climate change has become the pressing issue of our time, and so it’s entirely right that the artistic world would have a varied and provocative response to the issue.

Taking the idea of how recent debate on the subject has shifted away from the possibility and more towards the certainty and speed within which climate change could take place, the Royal Academy of Arts second GSK Contemporary exhibition has been curated to connect ‘issue’ and ‘art’ and present works that are beautiful, powerful and thought-provoking.

At London Calling we’re proud to be one of the chosen supporters for this exhibition as another step on our own mission to promote sustainability within the arts, and we would strongly urge you to make time to see the show which runs until 31st January 2010.

We wouldn’t just want you to take our recommendation for it though, so here’s some links to other positive and thoughtful comment online from the Guardian, Evening Standard and The Arts Desk.

Been to see it already, then why not leave us a comment and let us know what you thought too?

There’s never been a greater demand for clear and practical information on the best ways we can all help London’s theatres go green. That’s why I’m especially delighted to have been invited to represent London Calling as a green theatre supplier at the forthcoming Greening Your Theatre workshop at Arcola Theatre Friday 23rd October, 10am to 12.30pm.

The event is designed to introduce the latest schemes and subsidies, offers networking opportunities with expert advisors and green theatre suppliers and should see you coming away with a clear picture of of what next steps are right for you and the best ways to get the support you need.

Better yet, it’s completely free to attend. You still need to register though and you can do that by emailing Janie Neumann to reserve a space – london@green-business.co.uk or 0845 863 0770

Speakers are:

• Mhora Samuel of the Theatres Trust on their new ECOVENUE initiative
• Jon Proctor, Technical Director of LDA-sponsored Green Tourism for London
• Ben Todd, Executive Director of Arcola Theatre and Arcola Energy
• Alison Tickell of Julie’s Bicycle, on Greening Theatres and how all of the greening support programmes fit together

The workshop is supported by the London Development Agency, Arcola Theatre, The Theatres Trust and the Society of London Theatre.

Planning your journey to Arcola Theatre can be checked here: Traveling to Arcola Theatre

When you think about it, it makes sense that there ought to be a connection between our Arts & Cultural audiences and the sustainability movement.

The parallels are there – a value on the unique, live experience over commodities, socially active and often community-minded, a broad cultural awareness and a slight political lean towards the Left, at least when it comes to the environment (I’m basing this last point on the number of client briefs I receive suggesting a preference for targeting Guardian readers).

It follows that arts organisations could benefit directly from engaging with their audiences on these issues, highlighting their own commitments and initiatives and using the issues as spring board to encourage further conversation around their brands as well as feeding directly into artistic projects.

It’s ideas like these that lie at the heart of our own Sustainable Communication drive, and we’re far from alone as the latest  issue of Arts Professional happily illustrates. A welcome special edition focusing on Arts and Climate Change, the issue features articles from arts and business experts in the field including  a piece on green audience segmentation by our own Andrew Moir.

I’ve posted the full article below and you can download a pdf copy of the issue here

“For most arts organisations chasing the green pound should have some relevance. In the past it has been hard to prove either way. But now we finally have some evidence that would suggest that there is a link between cultural audiences and a positive pre-disposition towards sustainability and green issues.  London Calling has had a contract to supply the Mosaic audience segmentation analysis produced by Experian for a number of years. Therefore our understanding of who attends which types of events is very sophisticated and we can map out, to individual postcodes, the types of people who attend arts events throughout London. Now Experian have created a new segmentation analysis called “Green Aware” that segments the population by virtue of their behaviour and attitude towards green issues and even monitors individual household carbon footprints. We have contracted with Experian to sell this research to the Arts, Leisure and Tourist industry.  As public consciousness of global warming has increased, so has the complexity of the issues surrounding the key drivers that influence people’s behaviour. This research identifies the drivers and barriers of current household behaviours including consumer’s understanding of green initiatives, sense of risk, accountability and an understanding of the terminology associated with carbon footprints and organisation’s claims to be green.

“Green Aware enables you to identify and target households in relation to their attitudes towards environmental issues. This means that we can identify environmental attitudes of Mosaic groups as part of our existing strategy for segmenting customer behaviour. Initial analysis has shown that there are patterns that suggest that those who are well educated, affluent and are generally switched on are more likely to take on an environmental focus in their daily lives. It would appear that “Symbols of Success” and “Urban Intelligence”, the two most prevalent Mosaic segmentations at arts venues and cultural events, have a high correlation with “Eco-evangelists” and “Convinced Consumers” the two most environmentally aware and actively supporting groups within the population.

“”Eco-evangelists” have the greenest attitudes of all and are major consumers of green products. They are trying to cut down on buying “stuff” and are mistrustful of companies. They tend to use public transport and many cycle, but on the negative side they tend to be frequent flyers and are not good at saving energy in the home.

“”Convinced Consumers” are highly aware of green issues and are very concerned to improve their behaviour. They are worried about other people not doing their bit and support Government compulsion.  They have cut down on car use and some have even bought hybrid cars but they do fly often.

“The other types are “Green But Doubtful”, “Confused but Well Behaved”, “Doing Their Best”, “Sceptical Libertarians”, “Too Busy to Change”,  “Why Should I Bother”,  “Constrained by Price”, and finally “Wasteful and Unconvinced”

“Understanding the attitude of your audiences towards these issues can help you tailor the messages you give them as well as identify similar segments of the population who currently don’t attend your performances or events.

“Taking simple steps to “green” your marketing could have a significantly positive effect of the empathy and support you receive.  Recycled paper, vegetable-based inks and environmentally friendly messages like “Please recycle this leaflet when you have finished with it”, can help organisations to contribute to improving sustainability and at the same time enhance the relationship with your audiences/visitors.”

I spent the weekend at the Tree House Gallery in Regent’s Park doing some reading and invigilating in the Spherical Reading Gallery. The Tree House Gallery has been set up by a group of people who have brought together their skills, knowledge and time to produce this amazing project. Everyone who has worked on this project has done so on a voluntary basis and all materials and labour have been found / donated. London Calling have helped by donating wooden palettes for the tree houses and will hopefully be helping with their marketing.

Check out the pictures that I took over Saturday and Sunday. It was really fun and there were lots of people around on both days, especially kids on Sunday! If you have a chance to go, do as it’s quite amazing what they have achieved; they have some really good talks, workshops and performances too.

All the details can be found on their website and if you want to get involved then contact Claudia or Steph via thetreehousegallery at googlemail dotcom

Anita

My latest article for the Journal of Arts Marketing talks about the thorny issue of carbon-offsetting and its potential for the (unwitting or otherwise) greenwashing of your company’s marketing mix.

I’d dearly love for London Calling to be a genuinely carbon neutral company, but the simple fact for us is that offsetting our carbon emissions is being viewed as the last resort rather than first or only step on the road to becoming a truly sustainable company. Our prime aim right now is to work to actively reduce the levels of our actual carbon emissions, especially out on the road, and you can find out more about our progress on this and other sustainable initiatives here.

Meanwhile here’s the full article from July’s issue of JAM.

Ready – Steady – Greenwash

So, I originally had a whole series of these articles planned out, but fortunately for me, and my impending copy-deadline, I’ve just lucked out and found the ultimate easy option for greening up your image in an instant.

It basically works like this: Hop online, run some easy numbers through one of the many handy carbon calculator websites you’ll find there, then simply hold aloft your magic credit card, loudly exclaim By The Power of Greenwash then just sit back and wait.

Sooner or later the same nice website will award you a badge or something. Just pop this on to your website, brochure, headed paper etc etc and you’re off. Hey presto, instant official Carbon Neutrality. Well done you.

In a nutshell this and various similar tactics are what people mean when they talk about Greenwashing.

I need to be clear here and say I’ve got nothing against the majority of carbon calculator websites, just the companies who look to them for a cheap and easy out. We recently stumbled across one website that suggested we could offset a whole year of our carbon output for around a thousand pounds. Cheap sure, but on this occasion perhaps reassuringly expensive really is worth more.

On the plus side these sites are a great awareness resource and I’ve frequently used them myself to contribute some kind of meaningful charitable compensation for all the glamorous business travel I seem to do these days – and since it’s my own cash I tend to select my own favoured charities as well, which is why I’m now the proud adopter of some snow leopards and a great white shark amongst other things. Lucky me.

My real problem is with the illusion of sustainability this type of activity can create, both inside a company and for your customers or audiences.

A company doesn’t necessarily have to be actively unscrupulous to fall into this trap, but it can be all too easy to punch in your pin number and simply offset the issue into that mental territory known as someone else’s problem.

To quote from John Grant’s excellent book The Green Marketing Manifesto, “The biggest misconception about green marketing is that it is about making companies look green (my italics).”

In other words, it’s broadly okay to offset your carbon output. It’s even okay to wear the badge and tell people about it. The real trick is in acknowledging that isn’t the end of the journey and you also need to go that extra mile to reduce your actual carbon emissions. Only when you’ve ticked all those boxes of what’s meaningfully achievable should you go looking to offset the shortfall.

My advice is don’t focus on this almost inevitable shortfall as an embarrassing company problem you’d rather wash and spin away, but rather use this as a spur to think about all the creative ways you might start bridging the gap.

Full disclosure: This article was written as a paid for advertorial as part of our ongoing sponsorship of JAM. As sponsor London Calling is responsible for the print production of the journal, and ensures that it is printed to the highest possible standards of sustainability by our print partners Greenhouse Print. This mutually beneficial arrangement allows us the opportunity to regularly raise and discuss green issues within the wider arts marketing community and to highlight examples of best practise that can benefit everyone.