The Power of Sustainable Practices in Today's Business Landscape

Hello everyone. Today we have with us Charlene Moore, our Co-founder and CMO at Kind Marketing. Hey Charlene, it’s nice to meet you.

Hey Dawood nice to meet you as well.

Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking out time for us and talking to us.

Absolutely. It’s my pleasure. Excited to share

It would be great. Before we dive deep into questions, it would be great if you could, introduce yourself and your company?

Yeah. So I’m Charlene Moore. I’m CEO and Co-Founder of Kind Marketing. We are a branding go-to-market strategy Blue Ocean and new opportunity seeker and creator. We are public relations and full-service marketing agency.

I said how would your university professors describe you as a student?

Curious. Passionate. Ready to dig into science as a student I’m looking at everything and every angle possible to see where the nuggets of newness can come in. I don’t know if I said that well,

No, you did. Thank you so much for, answering it so well. What inspired you to start kind marketing?

I I’ve been marketing and brand strategy and public relations for over 25 years within companies and through my agencies.

I love helping businesses turn the corner with growth strategies and understanding getting to their core brand elements and then breathing life into it. With the client retainers that we have, we’re able to sync deeply into companies and see where their pain points are and where the opportunities are.

So I just, I love growing businesses and brands and As I said earlier, I love creating new markets as well, so we’re able to do that right now and I’m just, I’m having a blast and our team’s having a blast, so that’s something that we do.

Congratulations. You guys are doing an amazing job and I wish you all the best. Thank you. Why do you think it’s important for a business to adopt sustainable practices?

I’m just gonna start with a little story. So I’ve been doing this for about 35 years now. And back then sustainability was not on the radar at all. It’s something I had tried to push and it wasn’t on the radar, but right now I think the time is ripe for it. Everybody’s hearing it in the news. The governments are aware of the climate issues. And so I think this is, just a perfect time to get into this. Aside from that, why we got into it is just that I’m just very passionate about Nature and our environment and what companies are putting out there.

So we’re trying to help companies put out products that have value not just to the clients, but how they put it out so that there’s less carbon footprint. And I believe it will be inevitable that all businesses will have to adopt practices because of the SCC and climate regulations that are coming forward now.

I think there’s a huge opportunity for investors and companies to get with the program. Do your reporting and how you operate and what you put out into the marketplace is gonna be how you’re rated in the market’s future state.

What are your thoughts on the current state of marketing, for health and sustainability products?

I’m gonna talk more about starting with food and food insecurity with sustainability. Sure. I think that this is an issue and it’s also a huge opportunity. I think that, If you look at some of the investments that are happening right now, this is the one area where investment has not slowed.

So like right now there are a lot of products out there you may have heard of, like Bill Gates investing in GHG reduction products and for methane reduction in animals. And cows are specifically are one of the largest contributors to methane and global warming.

His investment is far out there, but it’s an investment and there’s a lot of it going on right now, and when I say it’s far out there, it’s not like something we’re gonna see the benefits of anytime soon. But there are great natural products out there right now that can reduce methane by up to 90%. It just needs to be adopted. I think there’s a lot of opportunity happening right now in that area with food, and water Around, how do we make it last so that we can be a species for longer than, 20 years from now.

As to health and sustainability, where we start, I think people are tired of hearing the facts that we’re, already losing species in water which is what I just did. And like even on the West Coast, it’s becoming a commodity. I think it’s so in our face that people in the industry need to figure out a way to inspire people with products, labels and educate and give them some hope that what they buy matters. So,Yeah. I think that answers your question.

No. Very well. And I think you said a very important line that, what you buy matters. So it’s so much more important in today’s world now with things changing. Absolutely. Now, talking about challenges are there any specific challenges, that you have faced while marketing, these products?

I think anytime you’re creating a new market, there’s a challenge and it’s to get people to adopt it. When you’re from a B2B standpoint large companies have processes in place and it’s never easy to get them to change that big shift direction and have their processes and how they operate and getting them to report.

So these are really big challenges that are gonna have to happen that are gonna have to be dealt with, I should say. And it’s not gonna be quick, but I do think those are really big challenges. I think a lot of mid-sized companies are trying to do it all, and there’s just no way that they’re gonna be able to do everything.

They’re gonna need to have specialists come in and help hold their hand to get them where they need to go. I think the other challenge is, companies work in they’re compartmentalized a lot of the bigger companies. So yeah, departments don’t necessarily talk to each other and I think that there needs to be and there’s a risk in that the brand is not always playing out throughout how things are developed.

And so I think that there’s a need for companies to hire somebody who can just look at the full picture and help if they don’t have a sustainability person there. And even now, marketing plays a role in sustainability, not from a greenwashing standpoint, but from a reality standpoint, and keeping true to the brand and letting people know exactly where the brand is right now.

No brand is perfect, but where it wants to go so here’s your reporting, Here’s where we we’re falling a little bit, but we, here’s our plan to get beyond that so that if somebody follows a brand and they follow that reporting, or if financial, the financial industry’s following it, being transparent is key. And a lot of companies that I’ve known of, they just, they don’t necessarily want to communicate those things where they’re not doing well, and I think nobody expects you to do well. Yeah. If a consumer expects you to do well a hundred percent of the time, they don’t know the business, and that’s not reality.

Those are some of the challenges. And then, for wellness, I meant some of the consumer challenges are its claims. You don’t want to claim anything that can be construed as a drug. Yeah, but the opportunity there is verification. Just third-party verification on everything, so that you are not making claims and in your reporting you gotta have third-party verification. And I think that is what’s gonna hold people true and not going down the path of greenwashing.

What marketing strategies, have you found to be most effective for such businesses?

Nutraceuticals, I’ll use that one as an example. Because you’re talking about organic products as well so Yeah. I’d say get in deep with the natural channel events. There are some real movers in the industry such as Natural Products Expo West and East. There are opportunities to have new trends with them and speaking opportunities. There’s the N B J which also has new trends in the industry. Which is primarily focused on nutraceuticals as well. But natural products are not, it has, it does everything in the natural products industry from all the food. And then also create a good channel marketing team that is different from the consumer marketing team. A lot of smaller companies or mid-sized companies don’t, blend the roles and I think that hurts them.

So I think channel marketing is B2B and understanding how to talk to your business constituents and educate them right is key to selling in the consumer channels. Because you’re educating them and you’re educating them for the in-store people as well on how to sell your products. So that’s key. And then, of course, educate your consumers. And that’s also a big deal. Especially if you’re in the natural channels, you want to tell them what they want to hear. You want to tell them that you’ve got sustainable packaging. You want to educate them on how they can recycle the packaging.

You wanna talk about your products and the verifications and you wanna engage with them in some way, shape, or form. Whether it be a QR code where they get to learn and perhaps get a discount for something else, or just a fold-out thing on the label so that they can see your journey from A to Z on how, what your carbon footprint looks like.

I don’t know, there’s a lot of different ways you can engage with them, right? Absolute. But it all goes towards education and furthering your brand to just that you care and that you care about your customer, you care about the environment, and you care about their wellbeing.

You do a lot of branding strategy for your clients.

Like how important is the branding strategy for businesses dealing in natural and organic products?

I don’t think it matters what industry you’re in, whether you’re in natural products or you’re in cybersecurity or you’re in some new channel altogether. Branding is everything. When your company is creating white-label products to sell into Trader Joe’s then it may not be as critical, but when you are having something that’s known in public, branding is essential because it talks about your DNA who you are, what you wanna be, and what you wanna be when you grow up.

What’s your vision and purpose? I meant your employees need to know this and they need to be educated on how to talk about the company and people that are on your channel here know about the elevator pitch. It’s amazing how many people I’ve interviewed executives and I ask ’em to gimme the elevator pitch and they all tell me a different story.

What do you think that does to the market? Yeah, it’s confusing. So if you can’t, if you’re not all aligned on what the brand is, but it does, what its goals are, and how to communicate that’s whether you’re a branded house or a house of brands, you still need to be able to communicate that.

Right? How do you think packaging can be used to communicate the brand’s values?

Oh, I actually, I have one more thing about the brand. Over the past, I don’t know, five years I’ve worked with a couple companies, but one in particular comes to mind and they were always chasing brands.

The market is a fast-moving market, so they’re always chasing brands that had the new product, the new spin on things. So, their brand changed no less than five times in one year. Again, creating massive market confusion. Even the analysts are like, what is it that you guys wanna be when you grow up?

It can backfire if you don’t do it right. Okay. Yep. Yeah, that was what I wanted to say.

No, it, it was a good story to share, yeah. Perfectly explains the importance of branding so much. My next question was how do you think packaging can be used to communicate the brand’s values?

I think if you have a really good brand communication and strategy that your packaging should sell, the value of your company brand and the product brand if they are two entities, it has to be clear, consistent, high level enough that it can be memorable. And always be present so that you’re starting to brand, as it sticks to people’s minds. I think some ways you can do this again as I already touched on this a little bit as you could do, like QR codes that tell your story or a pullout label, engagement offers through stores.

Then, one of the things you were talking about packaging too, is that

I think that there are a lot of new opportunities for packaging right now, and I just did another interview with a CPJ company that was asking like, how do we get rid of all these bottles? What are we gonna do? This is like millions of bottles that are going into the ocean and rivers and what not.

So what’s the next packaging thing? And there’s a ton of science out there right now, being done in investment and packaging to make it more sustainable. One of the things I found that was cool was there’s a new technology out there for seaweed. They’re creating packaging out of seaweed now, it’s a far way off, but I’m just saying there’s a ton of really fun new technology out there. So, people, are they are searching for new ways to do sustainable packaging.

what would be your top social media marketing tips for such businesses?

I think for B2C social media is super viable and you can do a lot of really great sales still on even through social media.

I think it’s important that you have a brand ambassador or that your internal teams are brand ambassadors. You have a dedicated person that’s running it and your team is educated on how to communicate If there are issues that’s on. Within the personality of your brand, if you’re dealing with health and wellness, what those landmines are of what you can and can’t say. But I think that it’s, I think it’s critical and it’s a great investment. I also think if you’re with nutraceuticals, having an expert talking periodically on those social channels, whether it’s vlogs or blogs or, Facebook or LinkedIn, gets the expert out there talking and gives your brand some real credit validity that you’re not just a gimmicky thing that’s out there, but something people can trust and believe in.

What are the latest trends that you see happening in the industry, in the coming time?

I’m not the trends for social, TikTok is really taking off but it also has a lot of companies that don’t wanna touch it. Yeah.

I think in this industry, TikTok is also a little bit tricky, right? Do you want to go that route? Do you not wanna go that route? Yeah. But in terms of even let’s say Facebook, and Instagram like trend point of view what kind of content have you seen get more traction.? Is it Video content? Is it long-form guides? Like blog posts.

Again, it depends on the industry. I have a client right now and I don’t disagree with their decision as they do, they just want B2B and they just wanna be on LinkedIn. They may consider Twitter, but they don’t wanna play on Facebook Or Instagram because they just, it’s not serious enough for what they’re trying to do. It’s not the kind of movement that they’ll need for that industry to get to where it needs to go. But when you start talking about b2c, I think that Yes, you can get millions of likes or millions of followers. It could drop off as quickly. What is the value though? Is it improving the brand? It’s that tangible versus the intangible, so unless you’re doing sales, then it also can show some value. I think that there’s a huge drop-off in

How people shop and what’s important to them. And social is chatting it, it’s videos,
I don’t know. I think people are getting tired of the bad stuff on social. So I think it’s getting a bad rap right now. I’ll just say that.

What is that one big takeaway that you want listeners to get from this episode?

The one big impact or takeaway is I think that for us, making a positive impact starts from the inside. And so whether it’s with you and how you can do that for your clients or how companies can do that themselves you need to get the internal teams aligned so that it’s part of the company’s DNA and if something needs to shift, make it shift because you won’t be successful if you don’t have everybody on the same page and behind you, it has to come from the top down. And for us, I meant it’s not about height, but rather integrity, continuity, and the truth. So truth and reporting let’s stop the greenwashing and just make the change as painless as possible on this transition from, reporting and sustainability and how we get there and making the world a better place.

Charlene, in the end, I like playing a quick rapid-fire round of, three to five questions. Okay. Ready? Yep. Perfect.

Mornings or late nights?

Mornings.

Favorite movie genre?

Sci-Fi

Beach or Mountain?

Mountains.

What was your last Google search, if you remember?

I don’t remember.

No problem. That’s okay. This means it has been a long time since you have done any Google search.

No, it’s not a long time. It was just oh, it was on Apple. I did Apple on Apple search.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. What was the last book you read? Are you into books?

I am into books. I’m reading it right now.

It’s the Tony Robbins Life Force.

Okay. Thank you so much for your time. It was lovely having you. Thank you for sharing all the advice and the nuggets. I had a good time. I did too, Dawood.

Thank you so much.