The benefits of Sustainable Efficiency

Saving the planet without it costing the Earth.

The need for us all to adopt more sustainable practices is headline news more than ever before and our industry can make a real difference, proactively delivering sustainable solutions that meet the increasing demands of both brands and their customers.

A barrier to this has been a perception that sustainable choices compromise the experience – negatively affecting cost, and quality.

However, in our experience, we are finding quite the opposite, and that if the right solutions are adopted, sustainable also means efficient.

Sustainable Efficiency

The economic strategy – the ‘triple bottom line’ of Sustainable Efficiency – highlights how the planet, people, and profits are all connected. Like a three-legged stool, truly sustainable success benefits each in unison.

This holistic approach to sustainability holds everybody’s attention by addressing the needs of everyone, from brands to agencies, from clients to customers – we all have a vested interest in making this work.

What is remarkable is that sustainable business solutions and practices by their very nature, promote efficiency – in supply chains, in manufacture and distribution, in re-use and through the circular economy.

Real examples of sustainable efficiency

We are seeing this right across our business when clients are adopting new approaches to their brand engagement.

At a recent product launch, we designed the experience to maximise sustainable efficiencies at every touchpoint, not least to amplify the brand and product message at the event for every audience – Press, Media and Consumers.

By focusing on sustainable solutions, we minimised the carbon footprint of the event and saved money. Local supply chain solutions actually worked out cheaper. We made inhouse AV our first choice, and thereby reduced all associated bought in costs – and created a net zero carbon footprint.

As importantly, we chose a venue that was designed to benefit the local community, and the reduced impact of production and increased economic spend locally benefited them too.

Another project that is demonstrating ongoing sustainable efficiency is an annual academy programme for one of our global clients. In the heat of the first lockdown, we helped our client deliver on their continued objectives to engage and educate graduate intakes in the global brand by transitioning their extended F2F residential event to a fully virtual experience.

Although driven by the travel limitations of the pandemic, this new approach has provided our client with a more efficient format in every area. By designing a participative, highly engaging platform and content agenda, and then measuring it – we proved equal performance levels for attendees, and built a compelling business case to continue to use this approach even as restrictions were lifted.

Now planning its third year, we continue to reduce carbon emissions by avoiding the need for hundreds of global flights, improving attendance to nearly 100%, and reduced budget spend by 40%, even with increased content production levels.

Hybrid, or pure virtual, will become a conscious choice for sustainable reasons – as we all know, it doesn’t have to compromise the experience and our clients know it is more cost efficient too. It won’t replace live F2F completely, but it can be part of the event programme mix, and it would be short sighted to ignore the benefits.

Endless benefits

There are of course endless ways small changes can add up to make a big difference. Whether you change your catering plan – lower food miles, or a vegan menu, reduces carbon emissions, and cost – or make venue choices for ease of public transport links, or use inhouse digital wayfinding to avoid unnecessary single use print, it is about embedding this new sustainable efficiency into every decision made throughout a project lifecycle.

Ultimately, we recognise that solutions need to be good for people, the planet, and businesses, to deliver true sustainable efficiency.

Speak to us today if you want to benefit from sustainable efficiency through your brand engagement.