Christophe Pradère Founder and Chief Executive BETC Design talks to us about the role designers play in influencing sustainability, creativity and behavioural change.
What is the role of the creative community in driving positive sustainable change?
As designers we are in a unique position as we interact with so many different parts of the business. In my role as a designer, I work on the tangibility of my clients’ business. Designers are supposed to reconcile the customer’s point of view and the brand’s point of view, but this creates friction and tension.
Who will pay the cost of sustainable transformation? The suppliers? The brands? The consumers?
Sustainability is a systemic issue – it is a chain of decisions and actions. It has a moral cost, because someone has decided to act and to carry the burden of the commitment.
But there is also a financial cost. If a manager decides to create sustainable products, who will carry the extra cost? Is it the business, the producers, or the client?
We live and operate in a system that has not been designed to be sustainable, it was made to reduce costs. If we now want to change our systems, this comes at an extra cost.
Sustainability comes with responsibility. I foresee a time where Coca-Cola will be fined if there is an empty can left on a beach because they will be considered responsible for the waste. Brands need to think about the way in which they produce, distribute, and sell their products, and about the idea of the circularity of their products and the impact of their waste. I really believe that this responsibility will be the basis for any kind of business growth in the future. If it is not, then brands will collapse.
Can you tell us about the sustainability-themed game you and your team at BETC Design have come up with? What’s the idea behind it?
It’s called The Loop Game and it is made from repurposed and recycled materials. Inspired by Trivial Pursuit, it has nine categories, including recycling, material innovation and user education, which are represented by different colours. Within each category there is a set of questions and once you answer a question correctly, you’ve completed that category and you can move on to the next one. The idea is to learn about sustainability in a fun, engaging way, and at the same time, to start a conversation about sustainability. The insight is that there is no single action that can make you more sustainable, instead a chain of actions is needed. And to kick off that chain reaction, you need someone to make the decision to commit to it and someone to carry the burden of the financial cost.
Let’s say a research and development director wants to create a product with a positive impact on sustainability, then the head of manufacturing must change processes and infrastructure to make this work. If the marketing director, for example, then wants to change things again, this in turn has another knock-on effect on R&D and manufacturing. As we established, there is a cost to implementing these changes, so who pays? If it’s coming up with innovative new packaging, for example, should the brand pay for development, or should it be the packaging producer? And should these costs be passed on to consumers, or should shareholders take the hit? These aren’t easy questions to answer. Of course, The Loop Game isn’t meant to make sustainability seem hard, but to create the conditions to start a conversation. By showing how multi-dimensional sustainability is, and how it impacts many different things, people can start to see how they need to think differently.
We live and operate in a system that has not been designed to be sustainable, it was made to reduce costs. If we now want to change our systems, this comes at an extra cost.
By showing how multi-dimensional sustainability is, and how it impacts many different things, people can start to see how they need to think differently.
Are consumers increasingly demanding in terms of transparency, brand values, environmental and societal responsibilities?
I would say the world is made of three groups: innovators or early adopters, leaders, and followers. When followers and leaders merge with a unified energy, that is when something becomes a mass-market issue. We saw it this summer, with fires burning all over the country and temperatures above 40°C. Suddenly the threat of climate change became a real, pressing problem for people, who weren’t affected before. It wasn’t just a small group saying “be careful, we’re dying”; the message that humanity is in danger was everywhere. The shift in consumer behaviour became visible and simple to understand – they were afraid. Fear made them react. Today companies have an incredible duty, no matter what industry, to show they are making a significant contribution to fight back. Which brands are going to step forward and do the right thing? For example, should mineral water companies also be responsible for clearing the planet of discarded plastic bottles? Even small incremental changes can help. In response to the global energy crisis, a French supermarket recently ran an advertising campaign announcing that from now on when they close their shops, they will also switch off their lights. I think that all commercial businesses will do the same.
If you had one piece of advice on how to act more responsibly as marketers, what would it be?
Many companies have been concerned only about their own skills and their own process. But their products have an impact on all our lives. That is the idea of capitalism, to bring services and products that enhance our lives. But now we have reached a point when our lives are no longer enhanced but disturbed or diminished by this overproduction. If you put humanity at the centre and you think about people first, then you can create a different mindset about your product’s life cycle, and a changed view of your responsibilities. People become your main goal, and not your own profit.
