www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2008/09/23/green-marketers-disc -
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Published on: 1/1/2008
Last Visited: 7/4/2009
"People are beginning to question labels like organic and fair trade," said John Luff, owner of Sustainable Marketing, an organisation he founded to combine his experience in corporate social responsibility and his experience in marketing with the belief that social value is the direction businesses must go into the future.
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"There is a lot of discussion around IP in the sense of ethical issues," noted Luff, citing the example of patent protection driving up prices for HIV/AIDS medication.
This is also a brand-image issue.
Logos were originally created so that when economies grew beyond small towns and familiar faces, people would still know who to trust, said Luff, and long lasting brands have always "been based on integrity and ethics.
But somewhere along the way some brands started to believe communication could be spun to hide less wholesome parts of a product.
With electronic information in the public domain, said Luff, we have "an age of transparency at the speed of light": if a company does something unethical on a Wednesday afternoon, by Thursday morning people all over the world are aware.
This can have branding, marketing, and trademark implications, as increasingly those products and services businesses seek to protect "are having to build in corporate social responsibility."
But there is an inherent tension.
Some might say, "Maybe you shouldn't protect [something] that's good for the world: make it free!
Luff said.
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Ultimately, "folks that work in the IP area have a lot to offer the corporate social responsibility industry," said Luff.