Melodies in Marketing

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Date: June 2, 2008
Location: Sustainable Brands 08 - Monterey, California
Organizer: Sustainable Life Media, Business & Industry News for Sustainability

Speaker: Rob Kaplan - Corporate Responsibility Officer, Brown Forman

Summary:
Brown Forman is a producer and marketer of wines & spirits, most notably Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, Fetzer, and Finlandia Vodka. In this brief but entertaining speech, Rob talks about sustainability within some of their alcohol brands, and how when his company went to look at how their Finlandia brand went about sustainable sourcing and operations, there was no formal structure or program in place - it’s been a natural part of how they’ve always operated; nothing so special about it.

So if we look at the alcohol industry and think about sustainability, what are some of the big issues and considerations?

• Sourcing - How were the originating grains, potatoes, berries, grapes, etc. cultivated? What types of fertilizer and protectionary agents (chemicals or alternative methods) were employed? Was the labor involved fairly paid? How far did the materials travel between source and production facility?
• Production - Quality aside, were the processes and facilities efficient in their use of energy, water, and other resources? If you have better quality materials (i.e. organic), fewer distillaton rounds will be needed to produce a higher quality alchohol, which in effect will save energy.
• Packaging - PET (Polyethylene Plastic) or cartons like TetraPak are better than glass. I know it’s not traditional nor pretty, but it’s a LOT less energy intensive and cools beverages faster. Secondly, they use much less weight and space for shipping & storage, which translates into fewer incoming packaging at production, and less petrol for transport throughout the life cycle.
• Logistics - How far did the alcohol travel from production to shelf?

My pal Alissa wrote a Fast Company article from the June 08 issue, called "Spin the Bottle", on this packaging concept as implemented by a wine maker. Here’s the basic abstract with pictures.

If you have some additional thoughts or know of some case studies on making this unqiue class of trade more sustainable, please leave a comment.

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