Introduction
Being the brand leader and more so being an environmental champion is a double-edged sword that brand leaders need to beware of. On one side, it can help a company clutter gain its glory and be distinguished from other companies and brands (Makower, & Pike, 2008). On the other hand, it can pierce the heart of your company’s core mandate and reveal to customers and the general public some of the weaknesses the company has in addressing the environmental challenges facing the company. The two sides of the double-edged sword are practically explained by two well-known companies in the world that were and are great environmental champions.
In one of the cases, Levi Strauss & Co. decided to go green by championing environmental safety by incorporating the use of organic cotton. The company is an apparel company and decided to go green by making sure that quite a significant percentage of cotton they procure is organic. Levi’s company started by outsourcing 2 percent of the total cotton they bought being organic of which at this time it was the largest buyer of cotton in the world. It is worth noting that the company decided to keep quiet about its noble move of going organic.
Competitive Advantage for Levi’s Company
Instead, the company opted to blend in organic with inorganic cotton just the same way paper companies usually blend in virgin with recycled pulp to come up with a paper that is partially recycled. The blend-in of the two types of cotton was in the hope of increasing the organic cotton percentage over time. Levi’s was doing this intending to meet the demands of the ever-growing market for organic apparel products which after some time would enable the company to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors.
Levi’s Company Strategy
For quite some time, the company had not issued a press release explaining the move. When contacted, the management of the company responded that the reason why the company avoids going public out of the risk of receiving questions from the general public on the fitness of the products made with 98% of inorganic cotton. However, Levi’s might have been avoiding committing to a higher percentage of organic cotton out the fear of the ability to sustain a bigger percentage from year to year given the climatic shocks that may affect the supply of organic cotton.
Coca-Cola Company
The other case is of the Coca-Cola company which is perhaps one biggest brands in the world. The company was faced with activists targeting it for failing to keep the promise of the inclusion of more recycled plastic material in its packaging containers. Each of the companies committed to recycling 25 percent of the plastic containers once they are used up. Each of the companies aimed at outgreening the other in which case both Pepsi and Coca-Cola wanted to reach the target before the other.
How Starbucks Met its “Challenge”
Social media plays a crucial role to consumers who travel to places to access what pleases them from wikis, and blogs among others. Using inappropriate techniques to post adverts may impact the company negatively and put off consumers completely. The ‘Starbucks Challenge’ a blog from a graduate appraised Starbucks for fair-trade coffee, this included purchasing coffee from farmers at a good price and ensuring the same farmers are the major beneficiaries of the company. Starbucks is also a certified market leader in North America and amongst the largest companies in the coffee trade owing to the fact that it emphasizes the customer and activist needs.
Starbuck’s Establishments
Starbucks has also established other branches in twenty-one countries such as Germany and New Zealand and all these branches uphold the company’s policies for fair trade coffee. Starbucks is rich in devices and personnel necessary to brew fair trade coffee for any consumer upon making a request. The 26-year-old graduate from the University of Southern California can be equated to research on the ease of getting a fair trade cup of coffee in any branch around the world. Her blog compelled consumers to visit any Starbucks outlet for a cup of coffee and post their feedback and experiences, the blog went viral and other companies and bloggers joined hands to promote the challenge.
Networking with Consumers
Starbucks’s networks with its consumers are off the beaten track, Siel who created the blog engaged in a chat with Cindy one of the Starbucks employees, and their conversation went on so well to the extent that they covered other stories besides fair trade coffee. Siel was so pleased with the conversation and imagined how the caring attitude from Cindy translated to other employees whose aim is to accomplish Starbucks’s objectives while upholding the company’s policies. The main goal behind Starbucks’ challenge was fair coffee trade and corporate responsibility. Public relations and perfect communications through creative digital means improve the performance of a company.
Public relations
Addressing public relations and communications does not necessarily impact the operations of a company positively, in some instances engaging politics and rationalism may diffuse the situation to produce undesired outcomes. Critics’ demands should be resolved with great wisdom because critics may have negative aims toward the company and should such concerns be addressed in favor of the critics then the company might be at a risk. If the company takes a different approach in addressing the critic’s demands it’s prone to excel in its activities; companies such as Patagonia Starbucks and Stonyfield Farm have kept their standards high attracting large numbers of loyal customers.
Conclusion
Natural assets are to continue producing the resources that human lives rely on and other living organisms. The lessons learned from the Starbucks case study can be used to promote sales of a particular brand in a competitive environment.
Development that is sustainable cannot be replaced by green growth. Instead, it offers a realistic and adaptable strategy for making demonstrable, concrete progress across its economic and environmental pillars, while fully taking into consideration the social repercussions of greening nations’ growth dynamics. The main goal of green growth strategies is to make sure that natural resources can sustainably fulfill their full economic potential.
References
Makower, J., & Pike, C. (2008). Strategies for the green economy: Opportunities and challenges in the new world of business. Web.