Category: Fashion

Building sustainability partnerships in International Marketing

This Education for Sustainability case study is from Dr Romas Malevicius, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Marketing at King’s Business School. He is passionate about education for sustainability and is interested in embedding sustainability in the curriculum. He was appointed in March 2022 to lead Level 6 undergraduate International Marketing module with 200 students.

“Authentic assessment and project-based learning brings real clients and real examples into the classroom and empowers students not just to complete the work and do well, but at the same time to feel that they’re doing something meaningful to address global challenges.”

Sustainable development goals addressed Sustainability competencies addressed
12. Responsible consumption and production. Students develop marketing campaigns for events promoting sustainable food and fashion.

4. Quality education. Project-based assessment for lifelong learning.

13. Climate Action. Students investigate the impact of climate change on the food and fashion industries.

 

Systems thinking. Analysing a national context for sustainable food and fashion marketing campaigns.

Strategic thinking. Collectively bringing about food and fashion sustainability events.

Normative competency. Understanding how to market a sustainability event to a target audience.

Critical thinking. Critically evaluating challenges and opportunities in supply chains, manufacturing, consumer behaviour, waste disposal and recycling.

Collaborative competency. Working in teams and engaging in collaborative and participatory problem-solving.

What is the purpose of your module and why is sustainability important to it?

The module teaches the theory and practice of international marketing – strategy, planning and consumer behaviour. Key elements are internationalisation, branding, creativity and building partnerships. King’s is part of Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) and Education for Sustainability is a research interest of mine, so when I took up leadership of this module, I naturally looked for ways to embed these principles into my learning and teaching practice.

I generally tend to do the groundwork to find an organisation with a marketing problem for students to work on. To bring in sustainability I look for organisations with a strong social and/or environmental sustainability focus – in fact, my friend introduced me to the founder of Sustainable Gastro, Jennifer Avci. We share objectives – they organise events and dialogues in Baltic countries to address our broken food systems and challenges and opportunities in the fashion industry.

What do students do?

I put my students in groups to collaborate in the role of a marketing agency. They have to promote a sustainable food or fashion event in one of three Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. They’re analysing the national context of the country they’ve chosen, using marketing methods to target a particular audience and persuade them to come to a sustainable food or fashion event. They’re putting their branding knowledge to work on logos, posters, taglines and social media campaigns for their event. Additionally, students have to create a promotional video for the target audience.

Visual branding created by a student group. Yellow disc containing white anglepoise lamp and black text: SMA. Spotlight Marketing Agency. We put a spotlight on real world issues.   Visual branding created by a student group. A sun rises over a watery horizon into a pink sky. Text reads: digital horizon. Broadening possibilities everyday

Visual branding created by a student group. Four students wear t-shirts with their 'Eco Friends' logo - many-coloured hands surround planet earth

Some of the visual branding created by International Marketing students in 2023

How do you assess the work?

I keep with the Education for Sustainability emphasis on authentic assessment and project- or problem-based learning. The assignment brief was designed in consultation with the founder of Sustainable Gastro, Jennifer Avci. The groups produce a Pecha Kucha presentation with a one-minute promotional campaign video for a particular target audience and an individual report. I highlight the Sustainable Development Goals in the assessment brief, and many students have foregrounded them in their work. There are two elements of peer assessment. They assess each other’s contribution to the group work, and they also vote on which groups should be given a Student Voice Award for the best presentation. Presentations are in hybrid format on campus and streamed to eight international industry experts and academics, our external expert reviewers. Students fed back that they found the written comments from experts extremely valuable alongside the overall feedback they received. The prospect of the expert reviewers and The Student Voice Awards motivated them to participate actively in the module.

Map of Europe with pins dropped in Spain, France, England, Sweden and Latvia. There were 49 student groups, 406 votes cast and 8 reviewers.

About the students’ projects – groups, reviewers and locations

What support do students need?

I’m building in complexity and choice so that students have the opportunity to select a topic they are passionate about and oversee their own learning. I tend to bring uncertainty – an authentic quality and crucial for employability, but needing support. Because of this element of choice, the first assessment brief was one of the longest I ever wrote, and some students struggled to get started.

Students who are good at research may need encouragement with the more creative aspects of the assessment. I give them some famous marketing campaign examples for inspiration but avoid anything too close to the Sustainable Gastro brief because I want them to be original and creative. Teamwork and presenting are essentials for students’ employability, so I coach them about the format of the PechaKucha and about how to overcome nerves when presenting.

They also have resources about methods, including a mid-semester checklist to help them focus. And towards the deadline, they are making excellent use of my office hours. I take an organic approach to the groups – these are final-year undergraduates, so I didn’t want to micromanage them with team agreements or record-keeping, though I did coach them about what intervened if I knew that somebody wasn’t contributing.

What benefits did you see?

The variety in the videos they made was inspired. What they achieved is amazing, and the diversity of presentations was great – one group combined pecha kucha and role play. I was very pleased to receive highly favourable remarks from the client and reviewers. Sustainable Gastro has decided to increase its focus on sustainable food and is planning a series of events – students have already attended three further meetings about organising those. Around 60% of students said they wanted to carry on working with Sustainable Gastro. For the first time, I submitted some of the group videos to the Principles of Responsible Management Education writing competition and three groups were shortlisted as finalists. This was the first win for King’s.

Project-based learning in groups with case scenarios in the real world gives students something meaningful to do and a reason to deepen their knowledge. Their feedback tells me that the opportunity to influence these changes motivated their engagement with the module.

What are your next steps?

I’m thinking about ways to strengthen students-as-partners relationships in ways that keep students engaged with sustainability marketing. That’s often a matter of starting off quite broad and open to possibilities and having discussions to narrow down our decisions about purposes, what to work on, and ways to work together. I want students to gain real experiences in marketing sustainability and produce creative work that they can show to their future employers. I also working on supporting students with the dynamics of presenting and communicating as a team.

Around 25 International Marketing students and staff pose for a photo on a stage under the King's College London logo

Students from the International Marketing module after their presentations

 

 

Vintage, Vintage, Vintage?

This blog post was written by Molly Nuttall, student at King’s Business School and founder of Robbin Hood UK


I wouldn’t be surprised if Brick Lane started selling COVID test kits and calling them vintage.

Oh, how we love vintage clothes. They are chic and can be quite affordable. But where is the best place to buy? In my opinion, in charity shops as there is nothing better than a good hunt for a bargain and cherishing the clothing items while giving back to a cause such as Age UK.

Where you should not buy is online ‘vintage’ and be cautious when in areas such as Brick Lane.

Online vintage stores have mastered the word ‘re-worked’ which basically means that they buy a plain pair of black trousers from Alibaba and stick a Carhartt label on them. This happens a lot more often than you think, so be wary.

Brick Lane, however, is a larger problem. I love some items of clothes that I have bought, but that is because I have researched the clothing labels and materials that should be called Vintage. Additionally, I do know that a lot of the clothes being sold are sourced from charity shops, bought at as little as £1 and resold for £40. My problem with this is that £39 goes to the business and only £1 goes to charity.

Clothes donated to charity shops are done because of a good cause, however, ‘vintage’ shops make deals with charity shops to find items of clothing before it even hits the shop floor, this then means that the worker and the business are profiting but not the charity, in my eyes it’s immoral.

So I started a social enterprise called @robbinhooduk on Instagram. I pick up donated clothes and sort them out into two categories: 1) straight to donations (clothes such as plain shirts and comfy clothes) therefore they cannot be sold on and go to people that really need them; 2) the more colourful clothes that you might see on Brick Lane we sell them on Vinted and to independent vetted businesses, donating all the profit to chosen charities by the donees. No sneaky deals, just transparent transactions and getting the real price for clothes not inflated just because they are on Brick Lane or a swanky website.

Do your research and love pre-loved clothing.

The best Black Friday bargain? Not buying into it!

Today on Black Friday 2021, we would like to highlight a blog post written in 2016 by Sustainability Officer Maria Rabanser. It seems that Black Friday has not changed much in the past five years – let’s hope that in another five years our approach to overconsumption will have shifted.


In the US, Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – has been regarded as one of the biggest shopping days of the year since 1932, with news reports and viral videos of fights breaking out at large stores being a regular fixture. Some retailers such as Amazon and Asda started bringing Black Friday to the UK in the 2000s, and more stores joined in 2014. This year in 2021, shoppers are expected to spend almost £9.2bn over the weekend.

This surge in sales, particularly in electronics, can have huge environmental impacts. Their production is often resource-intensive, while lifespans are short, and disposal is often problematic. According to the UN’s Global E-Waste Monitor, only 17.4% of the document global e-waste was collected and properly recycled in 2020.

Source: Hubbub Foundation

Source: Hubbub Foundation

Clothes can be a problem too, with large amounts being thrown away every day. And many of us seem to not enjoy Black Friday as much as retailers are trying to tell us: Polls by the charity Hubbub suggest that 2 in 3 people say they do not enjoy Black Friday, and 6 in 10 said they bought things they never used.

So what are the alternatives?

More businesses and charities are now promoting the idea of either using Black Friday as an opportunity to only buy something they were planning to buy anyway, or to stay away from shops (and online stores!) entirely, and spend the day in a different way.

This movement against impulsive purchasing behaviour has grown into Green Friday. IKEA, for example, has started a sell-back program where you can sell your preloved IKEA products back to them for a store credit or hand in your used home furnishing and electronics in return for a coupon. Ketonico will donate 30% of all purchases to the Spanish Food Bank Foundation, an organisation that responds to the food demand of socially vulnerable communities and individuals.

If you do want to make the most of Black Friday discounts, WRAP recommended SMART shopping in 2016:

Shortlist – Research products you want to buy in advance.
Make a decision – Choose the product you want to go for before you go out.
Act! – Don’t impulse buy, stick to your plan and the products you researched.
Register – For appliances, register your new purchase online as a safety precaution, and you might be entitled to an extended warranty by the manufacturer.
Trade-in – Trade your old products to save money on your new purchases. If something is broken, make sure you recycle it. RecycleNow have a handy guide to find your nearest recycling point!

With Christmas, and the high levels of waste and packaging that come with it, around the corner, opting out of excessive shopping on Black Friday is the first step towards a more sustainable festive season. Adopting a more sustainable approach to consumption will also contribute to achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production. How will you be spending the day?


Having a wardrobe clearout inspired by the Trade-in element of SMART?

Then check out Smart Works. This charity helps women to regain the confidence they need to return to employment and transform their lives by providing them with quality clothing and job interview coaching. Drop off points for Elevate’s clothes donation campaign for Smart Works are now open until Friday 17 December, with locations across our campuses.

Sustainability Week 2020

Each year, we hold Sustainability Week to raise awareness and educate King’s staff and students about sustainability at King’s. Sustainability Week revolves around how to ‘#MakeADifference’. The Sustainability Team, alongside students, student societies, staff Sustainability Champions and charities, put on events with the aim to educate and inspire around various topics relating to sustainability (whether that be social, environmental or economic), give back to society and most of all – have fun!

We had a total of 522 people come to take part in the events throughout the week.

Here is a summary of some of the events we had throughout the week…

GEOGFEST

GeogFest’ was a charity event for King’s staff and students, organised by GeogSoc and the Geography Sustainability Champions to raise money for the International Tree Foundation.

The event took place in the KCLSU bar The Vault on Friday 7th February as an early kick of to Sustainability Week.

There was entertainment from the Worn out Shoes ceilidh band formed by academics from across the Geography department, PhD candidate George Warren and a dance materclass by UG student Pia Fletcher.

There was a live count of the money raised through the night, in total the Geography department raised £243.38 for the ITF, which will be used to help offset the flights from second year Portugal and Morocco fieldwork trips.

 

DIY lip balm & craft your own zero-waste products

Gathered in the KCLSU zero-waste store, Nought, 24 students got together to learn how to make their own zero-waste lip balms (recipe here – made without the honey) and how to crochet their own face scrubbie, instructed by King’s Energy Manager and star crafter, Julie Allen.

During sustainability week, Nought held a competition to win a zero-waste hamper for all those who spent over £10 – so this event was also a chance for the students to stock up on their essentials to be in with a chance to win!

A Green Threaded Corridor

Artist and Goldsmiths University student, Margaret Jennings came to Kings to deliver ‘A Green Threaded Corridor: Tree Art Workshop’. The workshop started with a conversation about our natural environment in the middle of Guy’s campus memorial garden and an insight into Margaret’s background and artwork. This was followed by a silent walk around the gardens, taking notice of the trees and life which surrounds them.

Natural materials from the gardens were gathered and used in the art section of the workshop. The art was inspired by our individual tree stories (e.g. a cherry tree in a grandfathers garden or the grief you feel when a tree is cut down) – the art could be painting, drawing, poems. These were passed around and altered by others – as a comment to nature and its ever evolving state.

The art and poems created in the workshop will form the body of Margaret’s research at Goldsmiths university – alongside other university and community group tree stories.

The event ended with planting a Birch sapling on Guys Campus gifted by Goldsmiths University. This will form part of a tree corridor, as King’s will be mirroring this by gifting an Alder tree to Goldsmiths University.

 

King’s Think Tank: Post-Environmental Regulations Debate

See the blog post below, for an event summary from the Director and Researcher of the King’s Think Tank Energy and Environment policy centre.

Vegan Sushi Class

King’s Vegetarian and Vegan society ran a vegan sushi class at Great Dover Street Apartments (GDSA) café. Over 30 students came to learn how to make their vegan sushi from scratch – how to cook the perfect sushi rice, prepare the vegetables, tofu or tempeh and do the perfect sushi roll.

Circular Economy Workshop with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

On the final day in Sustainability Week, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation came to deliver a workshop on circular economy.

They gave attendees an overview of what the circular economy is, and what businesses and services using circular economy principles may look like. As it was Valentine’s Day, they tasked students with coming up with circular economy alternatives to common Valentine’s presents, including re-used cards and potted flowers.

 

 

Slow Fashion, Explained

The fashion industry has been going through a wave of change over the last few years. Powered by consumer demands for transparent supply chains powered by revelations the fashion industry has on the planet, people and animals. Brands are increasingly rejecting the principles of Fast Fashion, and instead, developing a slow fashion approach to fashion, for a more sustainable approach to making clothes.

What is Slow Fashion?

Slow Fashion is an approach and awareness to fashion, which considers the resources  and process required to make clothing. It is a sustainable mindset and action which involves  buying better-quality products, which will last longer and holds value for the fair treatment of people, animals and the planet.

The term ‘Slow Fashion’ was coined by Kate Fletcher, from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, following the slow food movement. Slow Fashion opposes the fast fashion model which emerged around 20-years ago.  As with the slow food movement, Fletcher saw the need for a slower pace in the fashion industry.

Some characteristics of a Slow Fashion brand

  • Made from high quality, sustainable materials (e.g. organic Fairtrade cotton, hemp, bamboo, Tencel)
  • Often in smaller (local) stores rather than large chain companies
  • Locally sourced, produced and sold garments

The movement of Slow Fashion

Pre-industrial revolution, clothing were locally sourced and produced. Clothing was typically more durable and could serve them for a long time. Clothing reflected the place and culture of the people wearing them.

Today’s Slow Fashion is seen as some these old ways coming back into focus.

Awareness from consumers demanding higher sustainability and ethical standards in clothing is increasing. Research shows, 19% of the top fast fashion-related searches are linked to the environment, ethics and sustainability. Slow fashion encourages us to buy less – and less often, but at higher quality and made from more sustainable processes.  It puts the emphasis on the skills of the people who make them and the quality resources gone into the product.

#GreenFriday

Swap Shop with F&SD champions!

On 13 May 2015, we held the first ever Fundraising & Supporter Development swap shop to encourage sustainable behaviour change across our team of 113 staff members. It was held in Virginia Woolf Building on Kingsway, lasted for two hours and more than 50 people attended.

The swap shop raised £107 toward the King’s Helipad Appeal, donated 120 items to Oxfam and 30 items to the homeless shelter in St Martin’s In the Fields.

We also had some regular and some Fairtrade home-baked goods to accompany the swapping, and people could donate what they thought their items were worth. Things baked included Fairtrade sponge cake, flapjacks, banana bread and Guinness cake, all of which went down a treat.

There was also music and this turned the event into a bit of a social for our team. We also gave away free Fairtrade tea samples, and also sustainably-produced Green Reggie branded canvas bags, in which people could carry away their booty.

Some people were incredibly generous and donated literally dozens of items, and we also had many clothes given to us by popular fashion label Warehouse, as they are one of our charity supporters. image2Overall, we had a mixture of men and women’s clothes, accessories, shoes, books and homeware items.

The swap shop helped to raise the profile of the F&SD sustainability team, build awareness of our activities and encouraged other team members to get involved. Colleagues straightaway insisted we hold another one, and we currently have plans to host one again after August, once the other half of our team joins us from across the bridge in JCMB.

Please contact Catherine.heath@kcl.ac.uk if you would like any more information about the swap shop.