From an interview I did a little over a year ago with Mona Amodeo, President and Founder of idgroup Consulting and Creative
You place a high value on branding in corporate sustainability efforts. I believe I know why. We’d like to help people understand why these programs aren’t just altruistic or even just that they make financial sense. If we identify sustainability strategies and tactics with core brand values, we’ll likely to get more people on board, while also strengthening the organizational culture. What do you think?
There are many ways to look at and define sustainability. My research defines sustainability as a core value that defines behavior (profit within the context of social and environmental responsibility). Most people want to be a part of something bigger than them. Big visions engage people and give meaning to work. Sustainability offers that type of opportunity for companies. Connect people with something they believe is making a difference and you will have a committed group of people—customers and employees.
We know that authenticity is a key factor in the ability to position a company as sustainability-focused. Authenticity is created by engaging the whole organization in living the values of sustainability. We learned from Interface that organizations can incorporate these values deep into their cultural assumptions through the incremental process of aligning organization identity (who are we), culture (how do we do things around here) and image (how do others see us).
Our experience shows the intentional alignment of these three spheres— something we now define as Branding from the Core® — creates the greatest potential for creating authentic organizational brands because when organizations “walk the talk” of sustainable values, they create a strong image with the marketplace and employees, this image then reinforces the values and behaviors associated with sustainability.
Tell us about Music as Message. I like the idea of nurturing positive holistic values in children, and progressively instilling a sense of eco-literacy beyond the mere benefits of tree planting and recycling. Rather, it’s a growing understanding of the interdependence of all phenomena and life. What are your thoughts?
Music as Message and specifically our character, Eco the Butterfly, was a direct outgrowth of my research with Interface and other companies who have incorporated sustainability as value into the core of their organizations. Actually, Ray Anderson was the inspiration for Eco.
The idea is simple: Use music and fun entertaining characters to teach children important lessons about the environment and taking care of each other and the world we live in. Music and characters are powerful vehicles to engage children, and maybe indirectly, their parents. Remember how you learned your ABC’s? Our hope is through engaging children early in life, their view of the interdependence between humans and the natural environment will be embedded into their belief systems.
Looking at your bio, I see a big background in Organizational Behavior and Culture Change. The study of motivation and the design of an employee culture that perseveres to succeed (or collectively ‘actualize’) is a massive topic within OD and management circles. Are there certain factors managers need to expand upon in light of the sustainability era upon us?
As you pointed out earlier, embrace sustainability as a value (not a strategy or a tactic) and connect with proven processes that engage employees with that value. Create a powerful vision of what sustainability means to your company. Ask big questions, but start where you are. Give employees room and support to explore what this means to themselves and the organization. Encourage new ideas from all corners of your organization, and don’t give up. This is a paradigm change; it takes time, but yields a return on investment that can be measured in innovation, engagement, pride and marketplace acceptance.
Idgroup is also involved in creative design and advertising campaigns. Push marketing will be with us for a while, although digital PR and word-of-mouth marketing are becoming ever more popular due to the humanistic approach and since personal credibility is on the line. Do you see a shift in how great ad campaigns will adapt to an increasingly value-based society?
Actually idgroup revamped our approach to branding about 5 years ago with this realization in mind. We emerged from our metamorphosis as a bit of a hybrid, combining the best of the worlds of branding, organization development & change (OD) and communications to help organizations create values-based brands. This OD-centric approach to our work is based on the belief that the strongest brands are born from a process of engaging organizational members in creating, living and telling their stories—the struggles and the victories. This is how we build authenticity into our branding campaigns. We have found engaging employees in OD-based dialogue processes helps us unearth meaningful story lines which frame our campaigns while also building high levels of engagement and pride in organizational members. This has a powerful impact on the quality and authenticity of the campaigns as well as a reinforcing effect on the employees belief systems.
What gets you excited about the future trends or direction for sustainability?
I think top-leaders are really grappling with what sustainability means to them, their organizations and their stakeholders. I know this sounds a bit weird, but I get excited because I see them willing to struggle. This means there is potential to help leaders reach beyond eco-efficiency-thinking, to engage with sustainability as a core value. Not just a strategy, or tactic. This is where the real power lies—seeing profitability within the context of social and environmental responsibility requires a real paradigm shift. I believe those willing to ask different questions, big questions will be the real winners. Challenging people to think differently, to view the world from a new window, yields new and innovative answers, high levels of employee engagement and pride and strong connections. Five years ago, no one was really listening. Today, they are asking good questions and searching for meaningful answers. These are exciting times!!
