Sustainable Telecoms Marketing Shifts From Enhancement To Innovation
For decades telecoms services have delivered sustainability benefits. Since the first telegraph cable was laid across the Atlantic seabed in 1866 people could communicate virtually. But its only in the last decade that customers have been sufficiently interested in the environmental benefits of telecoms services to be receptive to marketing messages that go beyond speed, reliability and convenience. Verdantix telecoms sector benchmarks have tracked sustainable telecoms marketing since 2009. Recently we have seen a step-change in sustainability marketing.
COLT Telecom, a €1.6 billion revenue European telco, offers pre-fabricated, modular data centres with free air cooling. What’s new about this innovation is that sustainability benefits are baked in from the day of launch – energy efficient, constructed from recycled materials and designed to be recyclable. Swisscom, another plucky pioneer in the market, recently launched holistic eco-marketing which wraps a standard telecoms offering – web hosting – with power from renewable energy, energy efficiency certificates backed by the Swiss government, an energy efficient data centre and tools for customers to calculate CO2 reductions.
Are customers ready for propositions which embed multiple dimensions of sustainability into the core proposition? Our independent panel of ICT buyers surveyed for the recent Green Quadrant on telecoms told us that they are: 13% said sustainability benefits had a primary influence on their purchase decisions; 40% said a significant influence; and 33% a minor influence. The recent appointment by BT Group of Niall Dunne as Chief Sustainability Officer, an executive with a background in PR and marketing most recently at Saatchi & Saatchi S, confirms the direction of travel for the telecoms industry.
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