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Marks & Spencer is greenest brand
Following the announcement in February that it would be charging 5p for plastic bag use from May, Marks & Spencer has been voted the greenest brand in the UK by "a huge margin", according to a recent poll by Marketing Week.
By Nick Morgan
The YouGov poll surveyed 1,006 marketers working in a range of commercial and public organisations between February 20 and 29. When asked to name the UK company making the greatest environmental commitment, nearly a quarter spontaneously named M&S without any prompt - that's more than double the number garnered by any other brand.
(The plastic bag charge) “undoubtedly contributed to (Marks & Spencer's) strong showing in our survey, although the findings appear to also reveal a residual belief in the retailer's commitment to saving the environment,” said Marketing Week in a statement. “This may be carried over from the launch of its “Plan A, because there is no plan B” campaign.”
Certainly the Plan A campaign announced in January last year, which will plough ?200m over five years into environmental initiatives, seems to have had a huge effect on marketers and shoppers alike. M&S also topped the list of greenest supermarkets in a Times survey back in March 2007.
The strength of Plan A is also to be seen in the fact that M&S even outscored more traditionally green brands in the Marketing Week survey. When asked which brand they thought has the best green reputation, M&S scored 60 mentions, ahead of The Body Shop and Innocent Drinks, with The Co-Op and Ecover trailing well behind.
Interestingly, while M&S topped the poll, Tesco was revealed as the brand most haunted by Greenwash. Despite a plethora of green initiatives and announcements in the previous twelve months, it garnered the highest number of mentions when marketers were asked to say which brands had made the fewest real inroads on green issues over recent years.
The survey also found that the majority of companies do not have a green budget but still want to be seen as more green and a high number think they already have green credentials. However, when the poll examined their behaviour in detail, it emerged that many companies do little more than recycling. Few offset their carbon emissions or are carbon neutral.
“A green policy seems to be enough,” said one marketer. “On the one hand there is strong interest in showing you are aware and doing something about it, but on the other a high degree of cynicism over greenwash when a brand makes too much of their green credentials.”
Another interesting finding was that senior staff tend to be the main force pushing green issues rather than younger marketers lower down the scale.
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