Procter & Gamble's Sustainability Marketing Tackles Consumers’ Intention-to-Action Gap

If marketing incorporating sustainability appears to be well-intentioned, but ineffective, there’s a pretty good reason: Most consumers have a desire to do better for the planet, but they’re unsure how to make eco-friendly choices. Those consumer pain points are at the center of Procter & Gamble’s multi-brand, sustainability-focused “It’s Our Home” campaign that’s rolling out online, on social media and on TV. P&G’s effort, with the creative handled by Saatchi & Saatchi New York, is timed for Earth Week, which begins April 16 and runs through April 22. This year marks the 51st celebration of Earth Day. The tone of the campaign is informational, helping consumers reduce waste and pollution. At the same time, the marketing is diligent in eschewing lectures to shoppers or presenting ads with anodyne, “feel-good” hymns to “Mother Earth.” ‘Responsible consumption’ “What we're trying to do is make our communications useful,” Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief brand officer, told Adweek. “We want to help people understand how to use the product and what the benefit is. We want to make using our products easier for consumers to do what's right for the environment, simply by using it.” The underlying theme of “It’s Our Home” is “responsible consumption,” as Pritchard called it. In P&G’s view, there’s a false dichotomy between choosing premium brand products and bargain items whose no-frills stance is presented as proof of environmental purity. You can have both premium and virtue. As Pritchard put it, P&G’s message is that you can have your favorite detergent, dishwashing liquid, toothpaste, and shampoo. And the company wants you to trust that the brand is not contributing to trapping greenhouse gases and polluting the ocean and air. To drive home that “win-win” proposition, P&G’s campaign also seems to anticipate the cynicism and uncertainty that consumers have felt about brands’ pronouncements about supporting the environment. It zeroes in on consumers’ ambivalence about the products by guiding consumers on small, meaningful actions they can pursue at home to reduce harm to the planet. Closing the intention-to-action gap A one-minute film accompanying the campaign captures P&G’s pitch to consumers on several fronts. It deals with what the company’s research identified as the “intention-to-action gap” consumers experience when there's a gap between the products they buy and their larger environmental goals. The film also illustrates data P&G has gathered about the way consumers struggle with those twin poles. Market research firm Toluna conducted a February survey of 1,125 U.S. consumers on behalf of P&G and found that 72% of respondents said they want to do more to be sustainable at home. However, fewer than half of people act on their desire to be more environmentally responsible. The reason most give? They don’t know how to be more sustainable. Parents also play a crucial role, which is reflected in the film: 90% of surveyed parents said their kids inspire them to be more environmentally conscious. The main character in the spot is a young girl named Luisa, who shows her family simple tips for conserving energy and reducing waste. Where the culture is From an individual brand standpoint, P&G’s message of sustainability is told through a number of product examples. Ads for Tide point out that washing clothes in cold water can save consumers $150 a year in energy costs. Likewise, Cascade dishwasher machine liquid stresses skipping the pre-rinse cycle to save 100 gallons of water a week. And if you still want to wash your dishes by hand, P&G posits that there's a better way to do it with Dawn Powerwash’s spray activated cleaning that obviates the need to soak dishes. “With Crest and Oral-B, we’re saying if you turn off the tap, as demonstrated in our film, you can save 3000 gallons of water every year, while you're brushing your teeth,” Pritchard added. “Crest and Oral-B also have toothbrushes with brush heads, toothpaste tubes and dental floss—which you can send those to Recycle On Us, which is an organization that basically cleans, sanitizes and recycles something you give to them.” In the past, most marketers have shied away from wading too deeply into polarizing issues such as the environment. But Pritchard doesn’t see sustainability as a potential battleground between partisans. It’s simply at point where the culture at large is—and brands need to be there. “Nine out of 10 consumers feel better about a brand if it supports a social or environmental cause,” Pritchard said, pointing to the company’s survey. “Eighty percent of consumers are expecting brands to give them a sustainable solution. It's our job to do that. What we need to do and what our unique approach to this is innovate to make sure we give you a superior performing product, and it's also better for the environment. That's the end part of what this is." "We like to say a force for good and a force for growth—that it has to be both.” P&G’s Marc Pritchard, UN’s Maher Nasser Talk Sustainability and DEI