Sustainability + Ethical Funds Brand: Alignment for Business Growth and Brand Value
Canada’s leading socially responsible investment brand needed cutting edge research and insight on consumers’ relationship with sustainability. Having a big picture understanding of sustainability beyond ‘green only’ that revealed brand alignment and opportunity was key to Ethical Funds as the business was less about ‘green’ and crunchy than it was a continuing to grow as Canada’s leading SR financial brand with a holistic perspective on people, planet and profit. Their audience was Wall Street and Bay Street, individual investors and fund managers, not the niche ‘eco’ consumer.
A skeptical audience of Fund Managers and Financial Advisors needed to see data to know the opportunity for their clients in an Ethical Funds investment product. Current investors wanted to know Ethical Funds was keeping track of the marketplace. Ethical Funds needed consumer intelligence and an approach to sustainability + brand opportunity, that reflected this.
To deliver across four key areas of the business: product development, sales, consumer marketing and business to business marketing, Ethical Funds leveraged The SHIFT Report and it’s consumer segmentation model, The Sustainability Passion Index™ to arm its sales team, guide its advertising agency for consumer brand communications and communicate directly to current investors.
