Can you spot your sustainability win-win-wins?

Having set up an eco-beer brand, as co-founder of customer research agency, Mingle Connections and with 25 years’ experience leading insight teams in global companies including P&G, Boots, Allied Domecq and Kimberly-Clark, Morgan Arnell has an all-round perspective on how brands can tackle sustainability issues. 

“We need to stay close to customers and their needs and wants.”

How important is sustainability to your brand’s success?

My beer brand, Crumbs Brewing, is proud to be a B-Corp and there are many sustainability marks and conferences we can go to. But the risk is that we end up in a hot house with other people who are already sold on the importance of sustainability. That’s a dangerous place to be. We need to stay close to customers and their needs and wants. 

I go to pubs and talk directly to consumers with other brands, and what I see is this: everybody drinks and goes out because they want a delicious drink while hanging out with their mates. It’s about joy, it’s about connection. We have to remember that while we care about sustainability, there are lots of other considerations at play – quality, experience, price – these are all still really key too. 

That’s why at Crumbs, we’re trying to show that brands can make something desirable and environmentally friendly. Of course, it has to be financially viable too or else there is no long-term future in it. It’s about finding the sweet spot – the win-win-win between sustainability, consumer joy and profitability. 

“It’s about finding the sweet spot – the win-win-win between sustainability, consumer joy and profitability.”

How do you achieve that? 

In our case, we reduce the amount of food that’s going to waste by diverting it into our products. The bread we use impacts the flavour and mouth-feel of the beer, making it interesting, unique, differentiated and tasty – there’s the joy. And it’s financially viable too. 

Packaging is another space where we’ve looked for that win-win-win where we can make a tangible impact on the product and the bottom-line while doing what will excite consumers. Our beer used to be bottled but we transitioned to cans because carbon footprint and lifecycle analysis showed we’d cut our packaging carbon footprint in half. I’ll admit, I didn’t realise it would have such a huge impact. From the business side, cans are cheaper than bottles to transport and produce, plus we can use the can space to visually differentiate the brand. 

Who do you look to for inspiration? 

“[B]y constantly looking at how we can do better and being willing to change, we can make a difference.”

It’s interesting thinking of what brands like Liquid Death are doing in disrupting the water space – making hydration as exciting an experience as drinking beer using great branding and marketing. We look to Elvis & Kresse too who take leftover hoses from London Fire Brigade and turn them into the most sought after handbags. For both these brands, sustainability is a focus and driver, but their messaging around it doesn’t feel earnest and it’s far from the only thing that makes them special to their customers. 

I don’t have all the answers but I do believe that by constantly looking at how we can do better and being willing to change, we can make a difference. 

If you’d like to read more on sustainability, which I’m sure you do, read Duncan Smith’s article on Is sustainability taking a back seat?