Sustainable Brands Detroit: Transforming Brands to Deliver the Good Life

This week, the Porter Novelli/Cone team headed to Detroit for the annual Sustainable Brands conference, contributing to four days of inspirational conversation around transforming brands through sustainable innovation. The event brought together a diverse group of more than 2,000 passionate thought leaders and change makers to collaboratively address some of the most systemic issues we face on our path to creating a healthy, sustainable future.

A series of thought-provoking plenaries, panels and workshop sessions encouraged attendees to approach sustainability and social impact at their organizations with a fresh perspective and renewed sense of Purpose. We’ve highlighted four of the key ideas and moments that stood out to us from the week:

Moving Consumers from Intent to Action: On Wednesday, Sustainable Brands and a group of multinational founding partners, including P&G, PepsiCo and Target*, joined together to formally launch Brands for Good, a movement to make sustainable living more attainable and rewarding for people around the world. Founding partners have committed to embed environmental and social Purpose into the heart of their business and use marketing and brand influence to inspire consumers to adopt sustainable lifestyles.

Human-to-Human Marketing: Valérie Hernando-Presse, Global CMO at Danone, took the plenary stage on Thursday and challenged brands to bring humanity back to marketing to better meet our current business and social environment. Consumers today hold more power over brands than ever, largely due to the rise of social media, while also demanding transparency and authenticity. She asked a simple question to articulate the business case for human-to-human marketing: “How can you build authentic trustworthy relationships with your tribes, if you are not authentic yourself?”

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