Communicate Sustainability highly effectively

Sustainability and ecological responsibility are not only among the most pressing social issues of our time, but also the most important marketing topic in 2023.
However, scepticism among consumers is as great as their expectations for brands: 56% suspect economic motives behind companies' sustainability commitments - greenwashing.

Jack Wolfskin was therefore faced with the difficult question: Is it worth adding the topic of sustainability to brand and product communication - or could we even be risking negative reactions and damage to the brand?

In order to quantify the suitability and impact of sustainability communication, evaluate the influence of individual message elements and minimise potential negative reactions, we developed a sophisticated, customised sustainability test grid for Jack Wolfskin.

We segmented the test persons according to their value profile and their ecological orientation into "generally sustainably oriented", "green connoisseurs" and "active environmentalists" and addressed each test person segment with specific sustainability as well as generic product messages.

We tested various combinations of sustainability headline, product headline, sustainability copy and product copy. Additionally, we also examined the effect of an explicit reference to climate neutrality through CO2 compensation of the campaign.

Our most important learning from the complex set-up: sustainability works! The optimised sustainability communication achieved significant increases in brand values compared to the generic product communication. Tailor-made sustainability messages also led to very positive results among the more demanding sustainability-oriented customers. And the additional reference to climate compensation led to increases in credibility of up to 11% in certain target group segments.