World Wildlife Fund: Building Brand Value and Consumer Trust

In the quest to embed sustainability practices into the seafood industry, Accenture Development Partnerships helped WWF develop a credible eco-labeling strategy.

WWF is a leading global not-for-profit conservation organization with more than 5 million supporters in more than 90 countries. As part of its work, WWF collaborates with private sector organizations to help transform inefficient business practices, making them more sustainable and profitable—delivering benefits to both the environment and the businesses that depend on it.

As ocean fisheries are further depleted and environmental issues gain traction with consumers, the concerns of environmentalists and consumer goods companies are increasingly converging around sustainable consumption.

One good example in this area is the growing importance to consumers of reputable certification and labeling schemes, particularly within the wild catch seafood industry. Adopting effective labeling builds brand value and gains consumer trust. Credible certification schemes thus help promote sustainable fishing and can enhance fishing companies’ access to consumers.

WWF developed a set of criteria that reflect best-practice seafood eco-labeling and asked Accenture Development Partnerships to assess a number of existing wild catch certification schemes’ claims against these criteria. WWF chose to work with Accenture Development Partnerships because of its neutrality, and because it could leverage Accenture’s extensive experience and methodologies in the field of assessment and sustainability analysis. Accenture was also asked to identify best practices in seafood sustainability-labeling in order to help the WWF make recommendations for improvement.

Accenture Development Partnerships conducted a thorough assessment of existing eco-labels within the wild catch seafood sector to provide a framework of quantitative, best-practice criteria. Using publicly available information and our own experience in similar projects, Accenture created an assessment methodology. Accenture set up an open and transparent channel to obtain the most accurate information from the labeling schemes, which could be used to update information in the future. At the end of the process, Accenture submitted a comprehensive research report that scored, aggregated and compared the compliance of each labeling program to WWF criteria.

WWF therefore has a comprehensive assessment of seafood eco-labeling practices plus a set of best practices to improve seafood eco-labeling whilst building brand reputation and consumer trust. It also has a reusable assessment methodology. Additionally, a communications channel with the labeling schemes was established to facilitate continued information flow.

WWF’s drive to introduce consistency and rigor into the process of eco-labeling within the seafood industry was successfully advanced. And the good news: With the help of Accenture Development Partnerships, the World Wildlife Fund’s program to promote sustainable fishing now has a powerful business driver behind it.