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ESG – Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance – issues are growing in importance.

Greater public awareness, increasing regulatory pressure and investor activism have combined to focus companies’ minds on their performance when it comes to ethical issues.

If you’re a marketer, what does this mean for you? Your supply chain is one of the ways you can make a difference to your business’s ESG strategy and success – here, we explore how.

Why ESG matters now

Whether you call it ESG, CSR (corporate social responsibility) or something else, organisations’ ethics are in the spotlight as never before.

When it comes to investments and operations, a lot of progress has been made – but businesses have often overlooked the marketing and communications supply chain as an opportunity to improve their ESG credentials.

ESG in the marketing supply chain

Like most business operations, there’s often a complex supply chain attached to marketing and communications. This is particularly the case if you’re delivering services across multiple territories, where the central marketing team may be far-removed from local suppliers and approaches.

And yet the marketing supply chain often trails other areas when it comes to enforcing ESG credentials. This means companies are missing opportunities – not just to enhance their ESG performance, but to capitalise on the other benefits an ESG-focused marketing supply chain can deliver. As a report from Allianz notes, ‘Having a sustainable supply chain may…uncover potential for innovation and market differentiation’.

How a robust marketing supply chain can reduce ESG risk

If you properly manage your marketing supply chain to reduce ESG risk, you can:

• Minimise any risks to your company’s reputation
• Reduce the risk of supply chain disruption due to ESG issues
• Cut compliance and regulatory risks

In addition, creating a sustainable supply chain for your printed marketing and communications collateral can often unearth other benefits, by uncovering valuable new partnerships, driving potential innovations and making your business more attractive to customers.

How can marketing technology help?

As with many things – the search for greater efficiency; a drive to cut marketing admin; a faster collateral production process – martech can be a real help here.

A good marketing technology solution can:

• Evidence existing supply chain ESG performance
• Ensure print specifications align with your corporate ESG policy
• Track the improvements you make in plastic, carbon and energy performance
• Provide evidence that you are achieving your supply chain ESG objectives
• Help you to implement supply chain ESG initiatives

As well as delivering a tranche of non-ESG related benefits such as:

• Faster production of marketing and communications collateral
• Improved security
• Optimised efficiency via automated processes
• Reduced risk of regulatory compliance breaches
• Improved usability and user-friendliness

ESG in the marketing supply chain – a case study

Perivan recently worked with a client to review a high-volume printed product they used. The process resulted in a report on the ESG credentials of both the product itself, and the supply chain partner who manufactured it.

After reviewing the report, the client and Perivan worked together to create a revised specification that removed all single-use plastics from the process, introduced paper that could be carbon offset, and changed the delivery courier requirements to a revised model with a much-reduced carbon footprint.

Once the revised specification had been added to Perivan’s Enable martech platform, all suppliers in all territories used the new specification product, with the client able to evidence and report measurable gains.

Perivan’s Enable is a market-leading automation tool that can deliver step changes in your ability to identify, measure and reduce the ESG risks in your marketing supply chain – as well as providing an efficient, secure solution to producing brand-compliant marketing and communications materials.

You can find out more about Enable, and how it can improve your marketing supply chain, on our website.

Nothing in this document should be treated as an authoritative statement of the law. Action should not be taken as a result of this document alone. We make no warranty and accept no responsibility for consequences arising from relying on this document.