Bérénice | Consultant, Transformation Positive

For me, marketing isn't just about business, it's also about assessing the needs of a consumer, a producer, a supplier, a market, and, above all, the needs of today's society. These needs will be influenced by factors like the environment, the finances... Marketing is all about assessing these needs until selling a product or service, and that's exactly what I found at Sciences Po, not necessarily in the other business schools.

I worked for an events agency that offered companies events designed to bring together good understanding and cohesion in the workplace, for company employees. As we all know, the events industry is a very energy-intensive, carbon-intensive, and my mission was to make that the events we offer were as low-carbon as possible, and also to show our corporate clients that it was possible to do events with lower carbon emissions.

To this end, I co-created with an organization called Greenly, a carbon emissions calculator for events. Companies could use these results to report back to their management, but also to their customers, to improve their own carbon footprint. This tool also enabled us to show and prove that it is possible to run responsible events.

For me, responsible marketing is marketing that thinks about consumers, products, producers/suppliers/partners, but that also thinks about the needs of the planet, because today this is absolutely essential in the production of materials, products, and services.

Impact means proposing actions that are meaningful and that will lead to an improvement, a change in the correct meaning of the term. In other words, a change towards improved living conditions, but also towards improved conditions of action towards the planet. Everything we produce must not harm the planet or ourselves. It's really a balance between financial needs, societal needs, and environmental needs.

Be informed, always have arguments and know your subject, and above all go forward with your heart. It may sound silly to say it like that, but it's by understanding the issues and taking them to heart that we'll be able to move things forward and take action for responsible marketing.