• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 23, 2016

Saving the world is nice and all, but, of course, most brands can’t see past their bottom lines.

Luckily (for the future of humanity and all living things), doing good and good business are increasingly one and the same, according to Keith Weed, CMO at Unilever.

“If we look at our sustainable living brands -- our brands with ‘purpose’ in our portfolio -- if we analyze them at a growth level, in 2015 these brands grew faster than they did in 2014,” Weed told a rapt audience at the Lumiere Theatre, in Cannes, on Wednesday.

“But, more than that, I think one of the things that is exciting is [these brands are] delivering nearly half our [total] growth,” Weed said.

“And, even more interesting than that, they grew 30% faster than the rest of our portfolio,” Weed told his surprised listeners.

“So, those of you out there saying, ‘Ah, yeah, sustainability is about future proofing the business [and] maybe we’ll get some eco-efficiencies out of it as well,’ I think, no(!), our top five brands are now sustainable living brands,” said Weed.

“These are brands with purpose, and brands that matter,” he said. “These are brands will real meaning, and people are engaging with them, and engaging with them at scale.”

But, Unilever isn’t succeeding simply by slapping by making its products more socially and environmentally sustainable.

That just wouldn’t work, Weed said. Regarding consumers, he assured: “They won’t buy a product if it’s more expensive and inferior in its performance, and I think a lot of environmentally positioned brands are exactly that.”

“No, this has to be a parity price, a parity performance [and] in addition, you should offer products that are more socially and environmentally sustainable,” he said.

By Unilever’s analysis, in fact, 54% of consumers around the world prefer sustainable products if they measure up in terms of price and performance.

“In doing that, I think we can really start moving forward the whole of this [saving the world] agenda.”