What you need to know:

• Colgate Palmolive regional marketing chief, Anthony Crewes, said his team has helped re-engineer supply chains, i.e. product, to make plastic toothpaste tubes 80 per cent recyclable over the last 12 months following five years of R&D.
• Next year it’s aiming for 100 per cent, and has outsourced its IP to rivals in a bid to drive network effects and shift consumer behaviour en-masse.
• Packaging has also been overhauled - people literally can’t miss the recycling message every time they brush their teeth – but Crewes says behavioural change is another long haul.
• Other CPG giants, such as P&G have realised purpose before profit – and getting people to change behaviour – is counter-intuitive and are re-engineering product to drive social and environmental good.
• Locally Telstra marketers have also driven product-packaging sustainability initiatives – and say ecom could be the next frontier for easy wins.

Someone else's problem?

Brands are tripping over themselves to communicate purpose, but early runners such as P&G are reversing early mistakes that put the ESG cart before the horse. Meanwhile, Colgate Palmolive regional marketing chief, Anthony Crewes, said his team has helped re-engineer supply chains – i.e. product – to make plastic toothpaste tubes 80 per cent recyclable in the last 12 months, while redesigning packaging to try and get customers to actually recycle them. That’s 50 million tubes a year in Australia.

Next year the US$62bn CPG giant is gunning for 100 per cent, and has open-sourced its technology and processes for competitors. Across the market, as world leaders fly into Egypt to talk climate and pose for COP27 pictures, it may be time for a little less conversation and a little more action. Marketers need not accept being relegated to comms.

“We're in more homes across the world than any other brand,” said Crewes. “So we have a real opportunity to make a big difference.”

Pre-covid, the firm started to look at how to remove plastics from its toothpaste tubes – no mean feat, and something Lego has struggled with, despite early promise.

“It took about five years of R&D, it’s very complicated to remove problematic materials,” said Crewes. But Colgate is now sitting at 80 per cent recyclable materials.

Marketing bites back

Next year the target is 100 per cent – and marketers have been instrumental in re-engineering the product.

“In the early stages [of development], we had brand managers going out to materials recycling facilities with our packaging managers to actually try and validate if the recyclable tubes could be picked up by the automated sorting mechanisms on the conveyor belts – not really traditional marketing work. But the team were really energised by the end goal and learning about a different aspect,” said Crewes.

“That’s so important, because it’s where [marketing] is really making an impact. There's much more to recycling than just making something that's able to be recycled,” he added. “You actually have to get it into the system: We’ve learned that waste collection in Australia is a very complicated and fragmented industry; we know legislation varies from state to territory; it's very, very complicated and it’s a long journey. But we're now working with all of the 200 or so materials recovery centres to start that process of building momentum and adoption and acceptance of these recyclable tubes at these facilities.”

Now Colgate Palmolive's marketing team is harnessing packaging to nudge consumers to actually recycle the product. While the pack messaging could hardly be clearer, that's no mean feat, as anyone riled by the state of their communal recycling bins will attest. Crewes accepts it takes time to bridge the "say-do" gap. 

“We've got a big programme to communicate from the shelf, our owned assets, so all of the packaging communicates the recyclability of the tubes and how to get it recycled,” per Crewes.

“We started a campaign in the back half of this year – which is communicating, firstly, the fact that the tubes are now recyclable … and really engaging [customers] in that area. So it's just starting. But I have to say it's a long journey. It really is a long journey and it's going to take some time.”

Product before comms

Other CPG giants are taking a similar approach. P&G spent some years famously putting purpose before profit, before flipping the mantra last year.

“We were saying 'a force for good to be a force for growth'. But we found we spent so much time on the good, you know, we need to make sure we pay enough attention to the growth,” CMO Marc Pritchard said in Cannes earlier this year.

It’s now focused on building and selling purposeful product before purpose-driven comms. Pritchard cited washing powder brand Tide as an example of sustainability with practicality baked-in.

“People want clean clothes and they want to be environmentally conscious. We designed our formulas to clean in cold water. When they clean in cold water, that actually reduces the energy emissions by 80 per cent, because it all comes from heating the water. It takes carbon out of the atmosphere and actually saves you enough in a month so that it pays for your wash,” said Pritchard. “That is a force for growth and a force for good. Our job is to be able to help people understand that linkage – and if we do that then people can get motivated.”

Telstra’s former CMO turned digital chief Jeremy Nicholas has taken a similar approach, with marketing driving major cost savings – upwards of 50 per cent – by leading initiatives including packaging. The firm has also developed a “smart modem … which is probably in about two million people’s homes, working with the supplier to make the components 95 per cent renewable” as well as recyclable, per Nicholas.

But he said comms has its place – and suggested marketers working in tandem with commerce teams can influence more sustainable distribution.

“Even just offering people the choice on deliveries – so if you want same day or overnight, communicating that the carbon impact is high, but a one week delivery may be low or neutral. If we give people that option … make people think about that [carbon impact] within the customer experience … there are definitely opportunities there,” Nicholas told the recent Mi3-LinkedIn B2B Summit.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Colgate Palmolive’s Anthony Crewes was part of an Mi3 podcast sponsored by VMLY&R, along with strategy chief Ali Tilling and Rip Curl Chief Customer Officer Michael Scott. It’s genuinely as good as any of our unsponsored editorial, if not better. If you’re interested in where the smart money’s headed on sustainability, purpose and new model loyalty-community programmes, listen here.