How to Incorporate Sustainability Into Positioning (if at all!)
This article is the third in a 3-part series on positioning. Other articles in this series include:
Picture a sustainable brand.
Most likely, images of “green,” “crunchy,” and “granola” companies come to mind. Perhaps you think of Toyota Prius, Seventh Generation, or Patagonia. These brands have effectively carved out a “better for the environment” offering in the category they operate and, in many cases, were among the first to do so.
The ways to communicate sustainability are nuanced and diverse. However, most brands follow a typical path, believing there’s one proven way to be known as a sustainable brand.
The stereotypical sustainable brand may prioritize:
Green as a dominant color
Brown recycled paper as packaging
Imagery of trees and nature
Intense emphasis on numerical environmental claims for energy, water, and waste
Extensive use of common symbols such as the recycling or infinity symbols
Generic claims such as “better for the world” and “save the planet”
None of these choices is inherently bad. But when executed en mass, they lack creativity and present a generic offering, irrespective of the brand or product’s category, benefits, or unique performance. Moreover, this typical path can be easily abused and lead to greenwashing, common among brands that desire the perception of sustainability without the substance of real environmental improvements.
Most importantly, brands frequently underleverage sustainability as a tool to support growth.
There are numerous factors that contribute to how customers perceive a brand. These include whether it’s known and appreciated for its sustainability attributes and whether those factors drive purchase.
If you are making meaningful investments in sustainability, being mindful of how you – or don’t – incorporate sustainability into your positioning can create a meaningful strategic advantage to accelerate business growth.
Let’s use the framework I introduced in part 2 of this series to consider if and how you should incorporate sustainability into your positioning. When focusing specifically on sustainability, it can be helpful to look at category first.
Category: Sustainability Impact on Product Performance
The relationship between sustainability attributes and the product’s primary functional benefit must be considered. Do the sustainability features result in better, worse, or no impact on product performance compared to the other products in the category?
Here are a few examples to illustrate this point.
Better Performance: LED Light Bulbs
These light bulbs offer equal or improved light quality while using less energy. The bulbs produce less heat, are more efficient, and last longer than incandescent bulbs. As a result, LED bulbs require less frequent replacement, saving customers money and time.
No Impact: AI Large Language Models (ChatGPT, Claude, Co-Pilot, etc.)
Nearly all of these companies have enormous energy demands and are working on increasing renewable energy sources. However, powering these data centers with renewable energy vs. fossil fuels does not impact the product’s core benefits–accuracy, speed, capabilities, and user experience.
Worse Performance: Paper Straws
Maybe these have improved recently, but early experiences with paper straws were frequently negative. The use of paper reduced the functional performance of the straw – it got soggy, lost its rigidity, and acquired a mushy texture in one’s mouth that most found unappealing. In this case, the sustainability benefit of using paper over plastic resulted in a lower quality usage experience than the traditional straw.
Because most products and services offer multiple benefits, and each has a different relationship with sustainability, brands have flexibility to focus on the benefits that have the strongest connection.
For example, sustainability may not impact the quality of light in LED light bulbs. Still, it does affect the cost to use the product, thanks to reduced energy consumption. Similarly, with ChatGPT, using renewable energy may not impact the content of the AI response. However, a model such as DeepSeek, which claims to use significantly less energy, could reduce operational costs, appealing to funders and enterprise customers.
Even if your product’s actual performance might be superior or neutral to traditional products in the category, your customers’ initial perception of product performance matters most.
Customer: Preferences for Sustainability Attributes
Now, let’s forget for a moment the impact sustainability has on your product’s performance and consider your core customers’ preference for sustainability. Highly conscious sustainable shoppers are known by various names, such as “greens,” “sustainable consumers,” “eco-warriors,” or “LOHAS” (an old-school segmentation that stands for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability).
But even highly conscious, sustainable shoppers can’t be labeled as “green” in every category. For example, you might desire an electric car but despise cloth diapers. Sustainability values and preferences vary by category and must be evaluated as such.
We can generally categorize customers into three category-specific groups:
Positive preference for sustainability attributes
Neutral on sustainability
Dislike or even an aversion to sustainability
We can determine the level of priority we should give to sustainability in our positioning by mapping the relationship between the impact of sustainability on our product’s performance and our core customers’ desire for sustainability within our product’s category,
Here, I build upon the ideas first introduced in Frédéric Dalsace and Goutam Challagalla’s article, “How to Market Sustainable Products,” in Harvard Business Review.
This matrix can help us determine whether we should pursue sustainability as a strategic pillar within our positioning and, if so, how much we should prioritize it.
Every product has multiple benefits. Some benefits may be a result of sustainability attributes and others may be loosely connected to sustainability. As long as the core functional benefit is not harmed by sustainability (for example, paper straws), these sustainability performance benefits could become the foundation of the sustainability performance message.
After assessing Category and Customer, let’s revisit our Core Positioning Framework to map our Competitive Alternatives and Compelling Differentiators to understand how to differentiate with sustainability.
Competitive Alternatives
Review competitive alternatives to understand if and how they incorporate sustainability into their functional benefits and positioning. For some categories, like solar panels or carbon offsets, sustainability is a central benefit but common and undifferentiating. Sustainability positioning would be highly differentiated in other categories, such as video conference services like Zoom.
Compelling Differentiators
Brands can think creatively about compelling differentiators to find connections between distinct product attributes and sustainability. In part 2 of this series, I outlined six categories of differentiation. Here are a few questions to explore how to activate sustainability benefits across those categories:
Product Performance: Does it last longer or require fewer replacements?
Brand & Authority: Can you take a culturally relevant point of view on the sustainability topic with a unique brand voice that surprises or entertains? (for example, Liquid Death’s anti-plastic stance)
Usage Experience: Does it require fewer resources during use? Do the materials create a positive usage experience (for example, Allbirds’ sustainably sourced wool)?
Access and Distribution: Does ease of access or distribution coincide with lower resource use (for example, digital distribution vs. retail footprint)?
Pricing Model: Does lower resource use reduce the product’s cost?
Product or Package Design: Does a sustainable package enable additional benefits such as being reusable (for example, Lululemon bags) or easier to open (for example, molded fiber vs. plastic clamshell)?
Example: Rothy’s
Rothy’s is a premium footwear brand that offers high-end flats, clogs, and bags made from recycled plastic and wool. While their customers may be neutral or positive on sustainability values, most buy because of style, durability, and brand image.
Rothy’s highlights how its shoes are made from recycled plastic and can be recycled. However, the primary links between sustainability and product performance are durability and ease of maintenance – the shoes are machine washable. Because the shoes look newer for longer and last, buyers don’t need a new pair as frequently, saving them time and money (however they are a premium brand, so money “savings” may be questionable.)
There is minimal green across Rothy’s website and no generic images of trees or nature. The brand seamlessly connects its sustainability message to core functional product benefits: style, comfort, and durability. For shoppers who care about sustainability, the brand delivers, and for those who don’t it still embodies style and durability.
When it comes to sustainability positioning, brands have choices. They do not need to, nor should they, in most circumstances, follow the generic “green” path. A truly effective sustainability positioning strategy requires careful analysis of the Core Positioning Framework and is built upon product performance and the brand’s compelling differentiators.
Deciding not to make sustainability a central part of your positioning doesn’t mean you can’t communicate it. This simply means it’s not one of the core attributes your brand is built on. Sustainability content can still be meaningful, compelling messaging for the right audience in specific contexts. As a secondary message, this content can live on the website, in social media and email, in sales conversation, and lower priority packaging locations.
When done right, whether as core positioning or secondary messaging, brands can uncover the link between sustainability and topline sales to incentivize more investment into sustainable business models.
