Behind the Work: Act for Food
With conventional agriculture the number one cause of global warming and biodiversity loss, addressing food sourcing is a huge part of halting the climate crisis. French supermarket chain Carrefour has led the transition to more responsible sourcing to astonishing business success.
Carrefour teamed up with Marcel/Publicis Conseil to launch its Act for Food campaign – a programme of specific actions for a full-scale food transition by 2022. By restructuring and redirecting its business to be more sustainable, Carrefour was able to effect real change in the ecological and economic ecosystem, benefit both customers and farmers, and also increase its profitability.
Rather than simply talk about solutions, they had to act and so Act For Food saw the company alter its operations from stores and farming to transportation. There was even a dedicated team at Marcel made up of creatives, strategists and accountants who helped to change the business.
We had to identify these actions and create new ones which are not that simple actually. We had to be really proactive to convince Carrefour to go further with new ideas, new acts and give the platform ongoing substance.”
As the initiative was such a success in France it was rolled out to ten countries worldwide, where it saw an improvement in food standards in its Chinese stores and stabilised pricing in Brazilian stores. “The biggest obstacle was the scale of it – the more people who are involved the more difficult it gets. It had to work on a worldwide scale because it was a platform for ten countries, but it was also about the scope of the players impacted by this platform, from marketing to supply chain,” explains Lemarié.
Act for Food is an indisputable success. This impossibly ambitious project not only saw the value of Carrefour rise substantially but it also saw a general rise in the purchase of organic vegetables.
