Once we look more deeply at marketing’s roots and more fully comprehend them, we discover 10 indisputable credos that integrate marketing and values. For each credo, we will mention some companies that have applied the credo in the way they do marketing. Some companies do it through their contributions to United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight time-bound and measurable goals and targets agreed to by 189 world leaders in September 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit.¹

The Millennium Development Goals are as follows.

MDGs began as a government-to-government initiative. However, corporations are starting to see the business side of the goals. Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Holcim, Philips, Vodafone, S.C. Johnson, BP, ConocoPhilips, and Rabobank to name a few, are big companies that are already making profits from incorporating the goals into their operations in developing countries. These companies demonstrate how they make a difference to the world and how the difference redounds to their monetary and nonmonetary benefit. Some of the cases in this chapter are taken from Business for Development: Business Solutions in Support of the Millennium Development Goals to show the linkage between Marketing 3.0 and the effort toward achieving the MDGs.²

Campbell Soup Company, for instance, changed the color of its packaging to pink during Breast Cancer Awareness Month and managed to improve demand significantly.⁴ Since typical soup consumers are women and breast cancer is a cause many women are emotionally connected to, sales to women went up. This example shows that emphasizing emotion over reason does pay off.

Furthermore, you have to respect your competitors. It is competitors that enlarge the whole market, because without any competitors, an industry will grow more slowly. From monitoring our competitors, we can learn our own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of competitors; something that can prove very useful for our company.

The strategy of growing the market by allowing competition to happen can be done through vertical or horizontal technology transfers. Look at Unilever in Vietnam, for example.⁵ Unilever provides training of best practices to all local suppliers. During training, suppliers learn about standard quality and the necessary technology to achieve this standard. Not only that, Unilever also provides financial support to the suppliers. By doing this, Unilever is able to maintain low cost from local suppliers and manage quality at the same time. One thing to consider is the possibility of Unilever’s suppliers serving competitors. And interestingly, Unilever allows that to happen because it helps to develop the overall market.

On the other hand, horizontal technology transfer is even more difficult to comprehend. Not many companies are willing to transfer their technology to competitors directly. But this is possible when a company feels that it is incapable of growing the market alone.⁶ Such a company wants to share the risk. It needs alliances to achieve economies of scale. A prominent example is the cooperation of seven pharmaceutical companies (Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Roche, Abbot, and Gilead) that collaboratively brought down the price of HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries in pursuit of MDGs.⁷

Another example is when multiple telecommunications companies in the United Kingdom (Motorola, Carphone Warehouse, O2, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Tesco, Virgin Mobile, and Fresh) collaborated with Bono and Bobby Shriver to introduce a new RED mobile phone designed to help fight AIDS in Africa. Tens of millions of pounds for AIDS treatment and prevention was raised from this launch.⁸

Before Prius, Toyota was never considered a disruptive innovator that relied on breakthrough products.⁹ Instead, the company was known for its continuous innovation combined with its slow-but-sure decision making process. However, Toyota sensed the trends in the market and realized that it had to introduce a hybrid car quickly before it became obsolete. Thus, in introducing the Prius, it broke many of its strict Japanese management systems and acted quickly in product development.

Even Wal-Mart, the retail giant, cannot avoid transforming itself. ¹⁰ The world’s largest retailer has been criticized for many things and attacked by many for its employment, environmental, and supply chain practices. In the past few years, the company has transformed itself into a green giant. Wal-Mart finally realized that the low price strategy that made it a winner might not work in the future as consumer behavior changed.

The Body Shop is one of the world’s leading examples of a values-driven business. The British company’s prominent practice of community trade—buying natural ingredients from local and poor communities around the world—is probably the best sourcing know-how that attempts to eradicate poverty at the same time.

Another business practice that The Body Shop is famous for is its commitment to opposition of animal testing. The progressive company has forbidden the testing of its products on animals long before a regulation was enforced in the EU. These unusual practices are neither efficient nor make common business sense, for sure. Nevertheless, they have helped The Body Shop to become one of the United Kingdom’s most successful retailers by creating a niche market for naturally-inspired products.

As a result, the world’s largest cosmetic company, L’Oreal, acquired the company in a phenomenal deal worth a premium of 34.2 percent. The challenge for The Body Shop is to guard its name externally while internally influencing L’Oreal—a company that has been criticized for testing certain ingredients on animals—to strengthen its business values.

Most product markets comprise four distinct tiers.¹¹

The bottom-of-the-pyramid segment is the appropriate segment for local companies to challenge their multinational rivals in developing countries. It is also the appropriate segment for Marketing 3.0.

Holcim is addressing the need of the poor for affordable housing in Sri Lanka. The company collaborated with a microfinance company to build shop houses: homes that are designed to be places to run small businesses as well. Holcim sees these low-income consumers as the future market as they climb up the economic pyramid. On the other hand, this project transforms the community by providing better houses and giving poor people access to a source of income. For that reason, it helps achieve Goals 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8 of MDGs.¹²

Unilever tries to bring down the price of iodized salt so that it can replace the noniodized salt heavily used in Ghana. To improve the health of the local community, Unilever uses its global capability. With experience in consumer product marketing, Unilever brings affordability through sachet marketing. The backbone of this effort is Unilever’s application of its expertise in supply chain to reduce the distribution costs. This project specifically targets Goals 1, 2, and 5 of the MDGs.¹³

Another example is Procter & Gamble’s effort to provide safe drinking water. Like Unilever, the company is equipped with expertise in sachet marketing. With its proprietary water-treatment technology, the company delivers safe water around the world. Interestingly, the technology is in a size of a sachet to ensure affordability. Local people can pour the content of the sachet to clean 10 liters of water for drinking. With this effort, the company is helping the world to achieve Goals 5, 6, and 10 of the MDGs.¹⁴

Since 2005, Hewlett-Packard has been trying to bridge the divide by collaborating with partners across sectors to bring information technology to developing nations.¹⁵ In pursuit of growth, the company targets the low-income communities as its future market. In the process of market creation, it progressively bridges the digital divide and provides poor people with access to technology. These consumers are the hope for companies in mature markets that seek growth.

PetSmart Charities has saved the lives of millions of homeless pets through its in-store adoption centers. ¹⁶ The program brings visitors to the stores and improves the sales of PetSmart products. While helping the pets, the company attracts new customers and cross-sells to them at the point-of-sale. Because the company demonstrates its care for pets, consumers will be touched and become loyal.

Whole Foods sees its business as service to consumers and service to society. That is why the company tries to transform the lifestyles of consumers into healthier ones. Moreover, it is practicing the sense of service to employees as well by letting them vote on the company’s strategic direction.

S.C. Johnson is well-known for doing business with local suppliers. It works with local farmers to improve productivity and delivery. To maintain a sustainable supply of Pyrethrum, for instance, the company engages the local farmers in Kenya. In partnership with KickStart and the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya, the company helps the farmers with irrigation. Farmers achieve higher productivity with new irrigation pumps and therefore can better supply S.C. Johnson. Furthermore, the farmers get additional income because the pump enables them to plant other crops. While improving the supply chain of the company, S.C. Johnson contributes to Goals 1, 2, and 6 of MDGs directly and indirectly. ¹⁷

An interesting story about Hershey Foods in The Triple Bottom Line by Andrew Savitz and Karl Weber describes this.¹⁸ In 2001, the board members of Hershey Trust considered selling its stake in Hershey Foods because of the emergence of a powerful competitor in the market and a likely future large increase in the price of cocoa. From a financial perspective, these would decrease the value of the trust fund that the board maintained. To guard its pursuit of maximum shareholder value, the board of trustees sold its entire stake to Wrigley.

To the board’s surprise, a group of angry employees refused this acquisition. They rallied and then gathered on Chocolatetown Square to protest the sale. The board finally realized its decision was wrong. Financially, the decision was sound. However, it was not wise because it didn’t consider the social impact of the decision, especially to the employees.