Black Friday. Because shopping is fun. (But should it be greener?)

In Europe we look with wonder at the millions of Americans who line up in front of Walmart to get their hands on a good bargain the moment grandpa puts down his fork after a convivial turkey dinner. ‘Black Friday’, the day after Thanksgiving, marks the official start of the holiday shopping season in the United States. Retailers use the hype created around the tradition by offering appealing discounts that move consumers to camp outside of stores waiting for the early openings. This year, the National Retail Federation estimates 147 million Americans will start their holiday shopping during the Black Friday weekend, boosting sales of retailers who hope to clime out the red numbers into the black.

So what exactly is moving American consumers to give up their precious night’s sleep and spend hours on end queuing up to spare a few bugs? Fact is that for many, bargain hunting the day after is just as much of a tradition as the turkey and pumpkin pie on the night before. Especially for women, the rush of finding that two-for-one and being able to give their family members that extra special present under the Christmas tree can be a truly satisfying experience.  

However, not everyone is thrilled about the exorbitant expression of American consumerism that heralds the holiday season every year. Reoccurring stories about fights and stampedes of frenzied shoppers have led to a somewhat tainted reputation of the tradition. In recent years, retailers themselves have become the cause of resentment due to their decision to move up opening times to 9 and even 8 p.m. on Thursday, nibbling their way into the sanctity of Thanksgiving Eve. Both employees and families are starting to grow weary of the relentless efforts of retailers to maximize their profits at the cost of family tradition.

The upside to all this fuss is that an increasing number of citizens and companies are seizing the discussion about Black Friday as an opportunity to push for positive change. Last year, Patagonia published their surprising and inspiring “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad on Black Friday, encouraging consumers to think about the environmental impact of their behavior. This year, too, the call to use Black Friday as a moment to vote with your money and choose for sustainable alternatives is growing louder.

That definitely sounds good to us. Almost as good as a slice of pumpkin pie.

Triple Pundit has collected some interesting articles about Black Friday and consumerism. You can read them here or share your thoughts with us on Twitter @theterraceNL.

Written by Leontine Gast and Jacobien Crol

Talking Heads

The WWF is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. Therefore, they have made a special video series in which key business people and thought leaders share their thoughts on combating climate change. 
CEOs of, for instance, Google and Unilever talk about how businesses will need to develop new business models to be efficient, profitable and sustainable in the near future. 


Watch WWFs Talking Heads series to learn more about how your company can drive transformational change towards a sustainable future too!

by Fleur Embrechts

What is Your Water Footprint?

Harvard students, Joseph Bergen and Nickie Huang, did a remarkable job developing a beautiful visualisation of our global water footprint. They are the winners of the Visualizing.org design contest, Visualizing Urban Water Challenge.

Just by scrolling the map, it provides info about water supply, usage, availability and population without access to water. Another cool option is that you can hover over different goods and check the water footprint of for instance, beer or a sheep, or compare the footprint of tea and coffee.

We love this stuff!

What is Your Water Footprint?

by Fleur Embrechts, strategy consultant @ The Terrace

Interview with founder of The Terrace, Leontine Gast, in Pepper.

source: Pepper 2, april 2011

Driving innovations in the base of the pyramid

The people in the so-called ‘Base of the Pyramid’ (BoP) lack proper access to basic goods and services. These fast-growing BoP markets contain the poorest consumers worldwide and the largest consumer group, with over 4 billion people earning less than US$4 a day. 


One of our favourite organizations to work with is the BoP Innovation Center. The Terrace's team, namely Pierre Hupperts, Lieke Heijnis and myself, have been working with the BoP Innovation Center. Pierre and myself have been working together with the center since before its inception in 2010. 

Market in Ghana, Africa

The mission of the BoP Innovation Center is to develop, learn about and accelerate programs dedicated to sustainable innovation in these markets. All innovations are business-led, which means businesses drive these changes through market-based approaches in the base of the pyramid. This is done through detecting the needs of low-income people in the BoP, developing sustainable business cases and solutions for local supply chains and anchoring new products and services in the local market.


The BoP Innovation Center is currently working on several projects, including the development of innovation pilots (such as a medical test kit for substandard drugs, biogas electricity socket, small scale cold storage for fresh food products and a fuel efficient and smokeless stove) with the aim to learn and share key success factors of these projects with others. These projects will pave the way for other scalable and sustainable products and services for the 4 billion low-income people. As well, the BoP Innovation Center is working with partners to increase food security in the BoP through creating sustainable and inclusive business models in the agri-business sector (for the report I co-authored on this topic in 2010, please click here.) 


These unique approaches rely the development of new models, strategies, products and services. It also requires the forging of new business relationships (between businesses, NGOs, universities, investors and government, among others) and sharing learnings about these challenging yet worthwhile markets. As such, the BoP Innovation Center’s large network spans not only Europe, but also the local BoP countries.


The Terrace is thrilled to be working with the BoP Innovation Center on business & strategy development and marketing & communications as we work towards a sustainable future for those in the base of the pyramid!


For more information about the business and development opportunities in the BoP and the BoP Innovation Center itself, please visit their website.

Written by: Stefanie Beninger

2008-2011: how do sustainability communications in the Netherlands compare?

When I arrived in the country almost 3 years, I was surprised by the lack of sustainability-related messages in media, especially in comparison to my home country of Canada. This phenomenon was so noticeable to a fellow student and myself that we decided to focus our final MBA thesis project on the topic of sustainability marketing in the Netherlands. Both coming from a North American context, from either side of the 49^th parallel, we were used to seeing sustainability topics present in all forms of marketing and communications. Though quantity does not necessary denote quality (the amount of ‘greenwashing’ in the world tells us there is still needed improvements), we were still interested to find our why there was such a dearth of sustainability coverage on this side of the Atlantic.

Though our final thesis project became primarily focused a range of companies in two industries, it became an interesting point of conversation with our Dutch counterparts, even after our thesis was delivered and defended. We heard all sorts of responses from the average Dutch professional, but they generally fell into two general categories: 1| we aren’t doing enough to talk about or 2| we don’t want to boast. That was almost 3 years ago- and huge changes are noticeable in the Netherlands.

Sustainability communications are becoming more common, as companies decide to communicate to the general public about what they have been doing, instead of just filling it quietly away into an annual corporate social responsibility report. What more, the overall quality of the communications, in terms of authenticity and honesty, at least from this North American’s perspective, seemed to have far surpassed those from my home continent. It could be that the very thing that was holding back Dutch professionals regarding marketing their sustainability initiatives is the very thing that brings an air of authenticity to them. 

Dutch companies are also becoming more committed to the sustainability initiatives, even if they are not yet communicating about them. And the rest of the world is noticing: Dutch organizations are introducing more then their fair share of Cradle-to-Cradle certified products, ISO 26000 (the international guidance on social responsibility) is quickly being integrated into Dutch business strategies and Dutch firms has the most top-ranking companies in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

As time goes on, there will be even more for Dutch professionals and consumers to celebrate: the sustainability movement in the Netherlands shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. For this North American who is working as a consultant on the topic of sustainability marketing and strategy, the Dutch market just keeps getting more interesting.

Keep up the good work, Holland!

Written by: Stefanie Beninger

Follow the leaders

Global corporate leaders like Unilever, Procter & Gamble and HSBC focus on sustainability in the belief it will lead to significant competitive advantages. The MIT Sloan Management Reviews and The Boston Consulting Group polled 3,000 thought leaders and business executives from around the world through a global survey and a series of of in-depth interviews.

Corporate commitments to sustainability-driven management are strengthening, with approaches far more active than the other. A gap has emerged between sustainability strategy leaders, called ‘embracers’, and laggards, called ‘cautious adopters’. While embracers treat sustainability as a business core, cautious adopters attend to it as a layer on top of their business strategy.

Companies increasingly believe sustainability will become a source of advantage, should be incorporated strategically in all aspects of business operations and eventually will require a change in competitive behavior. Santiago Gowland, vp of brand and global corporate responsibility at Unilever, says: “The only way to continue growing and continue being a successful business is to treat sustainability as a key business lever in the same way that you treat marketing, finance, culture, HR or supply chain. So really it’s core to the ability of the business to grow.”

“So really it’s core to the ability of the business to grow.”

One important finding of the study reveals that cautious adopters see the sustainability business case in terms of risk management and efficiency gains, while embracers see the payoff mostly in intangible advantages, process improvements, the ability to innovate and, most importantly, in the opportunity to grow. And the embracers, are the highest performing businesses in the study.

Embracers say that one way they outperform competitors is by providing new products valued by customers who care about issues such as energy efficiency and ethical supply chains which leads to sales increase. As Peter White, P&G director of global sustainability, points out: “products that allow consumers to save energy and save money, products that have clear social sustainability benefits in terms of saving people, time, empowering women and so on.” Developing these products, he argues, is a way “to actually build your business.”

“..a way to actually build your business.”

Another focus point of embracers are intangible benefits. Many companies understand that resource efficiency is a benefit and measuring resource use and waste efficiency is a good way to start. But what is equally, if not more, important to business success is acting on the more intangible rewards of embracing sustainability, such as employee engagement or the ability to innovate.

Scarcities of natural resources, the effects of carbon dioxide on global warming, and the external pressures of activists groups, consumers and investors put sustainability on the agenda. When viewing their business through a sustainability frame, companies find out that opportunities emerge that might not have otherwise been identified. This relates to the readiness of embracers to start while accepting they did not have all the answers in place, but pushed ahead regardless. Companies are learning by doing in this journey and experiencing new insights along the way.

The embracing companies are already finding out the advantages of more sustainability-driven practices and approaches. Please use the checklist below to see to what extent you have the embracer-mindset or how you can become one!


How do I become an embracer-checklist:

1. Move early - even if information is incomplete
2. Balance a long term vision with short term goals
3. Drive sustainability top-down and bottom-up
4. Integrate sustainability in all business processes
5. Measure, measure, measure
6. Value intangible benefits seriously
7. Be authentic and transparent


by Fleur Embrechts

The Terrace reflects on 'Creating Shared Value'

We read this amazing article: Creating Shared Value from Michael Porter & Mark Kramer. For us, it was confirmation of what we have already been doing at The Terrace.

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