INTEGRATING ACTION AND COMMUNICATION FOR AN ENVIRONMETAL MARKETING STRATEGY: THE ARACRUZ CELULOSE CASE

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the communication in an environmental marketing strategy, using as case study the company Aracruz Celulose. With the increase of importance in the environmental questions and transparency in the business practices, the interference of new stakeholders (interest groups which influence an organization) connected to the social environmental actions of the company could have fundamental role in the performance of the organizations. It is not enough to make the necessary investments to have an improvement in the social environmental quality or make a massive investment in advertisement without implementing the legitimate demands of the stakeholders. It has become even more crucial to learn how to make the proper environmental investments and also communicate the actions and results to the different stakeholders, so that an improvement in the image is promoted for these actors and meet their social environmental demands. Therefore, the need to understand the communication tools to identify and expose the company's problems and social environmental results increases as well as the monitorisation of the main stakeholders' perception. In this article, we analyse how the Aracruz Celulose developed its strategy for the environmental improvement and marketing throughout the 1990-2001, in order to understand the role of communication in this effort for the improvement in the image of different sectors: forest, industrial, social economical development.