Over the past few years some words have passed like meteors through our skies and then quickly disappearing on the horizon. You may remember that there was no newspaper article or professional conference in which you did not read terms such as: Digital Revolution, (and then) Disruption, (and then) Resilience,… and then?
And then – NOW – it’s time for the word “Sustainability“.
But this “moment” is here to stay, and it will be good that each of us contributes not to allow it to disappear. It is important to control, to ensure that sustainability is not just a buzzword but a concrete attitude, the result of a permanent sensitivity.
Since in Eumetra we strongly believe in the need to feed this feeling, we are in our small way monitoring, analyzing and interpreting the data available from the observatories of the proprietary Knowledge Building platform.
On this basis we have verified the existence and intensity of the link between the three dimensions of Sustainability (environmental, economic and social) and the general opinion that consumers have of the work of the business world – transversally to different economic sectors.
Well, the link exists, and statistics allow us to say that it is a strong and significant link: that is to say, the sectors to which a high involvement is recognized in the three dimensions mentioned are also sectors of which there is a very positive general opinion. This opinion is naturally also nourished by other factors, the relevance of which is prevalent, which are related to the quality of the offer of products and services specific to each sector.
What can we learn from this analysis?
- That the company resources invested in Sustainability have, to all intents and purposes, the ability to positively reverberate on the opinion that consumers have of the Companies – contributing to the positive driving force of the main KPIs and the entire Brand Funnel – and that this effect is virtuously triggered for companies already accredited to consumers for their “knowing how to do well” , each in their field.
Therefore
- That in markets that are mostly mature and saturated – in which the characteristics of products or services are often overwhelmed, and in which the successful innovation processes have become tiring and sometimes ‘cosmetic’ – the Brand with its Values, including more than ever the “triad” of Sustainability, today it constitutes a fertile territory of differentiation. The strategic component of this evidence lies in the opportunity to be accredited – NOW! – making themselves distinctive as credible actors of Sustainability, aware that this investment will contribute to increasing the value of the Brand and the attractiveness of its offer.
In summary,
- That investing (and of course communicating, and acting consistently) in Sustainability is – today, still a differentiating and certainly relevant element: therefore innovative – and therefore a potential territory for success, as well as, but not least, a medium-term “win-win” strategy for the future of both companies and of the Planet.
The analysis in question has also enabled us to define a measure of the intensity of this link, and to analyse it across different economic sectors. This measure constitutes a sort of ‘point 0’ – a time but also a market benchmark – that we will monitor in the next editions of our observatories, in general and for all the companies that want to confront this benchmark.
We at Eumetra, therefore, will supervise. Because we like to imagine this measure as if it were “the force of the lever” with which, as Archimedes said, to raise the – or rather give relief to – the World.
