Monsanto Marketing Strategy: Ethics, Trust, and CSR

Overview of Monsanto's Marketing Challenges

Monsanto's history is marked by a continual tension between its Research & Development (R&D) expertise on one hand and the ethical challenges its products create on the other. Its marketing problems are complex, multidimensional in scope, and will require significant effort and expense to resolve. In addition to the inherent ethical conflicts surrounding its products, Monsanto has repeatedly violated consumer trust over the course of decades.

Current issues around the ethics of its products — even with the distinction between "Old Monsanto" and "New Monsanto," and the ability to generate $8.6 billion in revenues from biotechnology — still leave the company with significant marketing challenges. These challenges are being addressed through marketing strategies that seek to quantify the good the company is doing with such controversial products as genetically modified seeds, grains, and foods, as well as the aggressive marketing of Posilac, the Bovine Growth Hormone. Successfully lobbying for FDA approval of Posilac was a major win for the company, yet it placed Monsanto squarely in the middle of another ethics debate with activists.

Roundup, the best-selling weed deterrent and an ingredient in many of Monsanto's best-selling modified seeds used for feeding livestock, has also faced significant opposition. After confronting so many challenges in these core business areas, Monsanto ultimately reverted to a metrics-driven series of value propositions intended to demonstrate clearly that the company is making the world a better place through its many R&D advances.

The company is essentially attempting to rebuild the trust of the global public by showing that, despite controlling 60% of the market for genetically modified seeds, it can still increase crop yields — from 70 bushels per acre historically to 150 bushels per acre today. Its goal is to deliver 300 bushels per acre by 2030.

In addition to these marketing strategies, Monsanto maintains a series of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives aimed at increasing crop yields, conserving resources, and improving the lives of farmers. Its Project Malawi program is one such example. All of these strategies, however, will remain incremental relative to the broader — and far more complex — challenge of regaining the trust of the global public.

Problem Statement

Monsanto continues to incrementally improve its level of authenticity and transparency with global consumers, yet trust will remain elusive for decades until its customers' success levels outweigh the social and ethical controversies the company has repeatedly generated for itself.

Three Strategic Alternatives

There are three strategic alternatives the company should consider pursuing:

1. Completely reorder R&D to concentrate only on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance that align with the needs of developing nations for affordable, healthy food. This approach would give the company a level of credibility it has historically lacked.

2. Redefine CSR initiatives to include active monitoring of their environmental impact. Monsanto needs to be genuinely sustainable if it claims to be. Making sustainability best practices a core part of the organization — measured through advanced Total Quality Management techniques — would signal a meaningful commitment to environmental stewardship.

3. Create a series of customer success stories that illustrate how Monsanto's food products have saved the lives of entire villages and how the company is working to reshape the economics of food distribution in the developing world.