This year’s Sustainable Brands conference provided attendees a unique vantage point from which to listen in on the dialogue taking place currently at the intersection of consumers and marketeers in the conversation around sustainability strategies and branding strategies. And one thing is clear: sustainability strategies continue to evolve, across brands and industries.

A milieu consisting of those both not new to the dialogue as well as those newer to it, those managing both domestic as well as international brands, SB '09 brought together brand managers, marketeers, designers, social media specialists, corporate venture executives, non profit managers, ceos, technologists and communications executives.

All told, more than 650 brands participated in this year’s SB ’09 – included Adidas, Ben & Jerry's, Bumble Bee Tuna, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Dell, eBay, Frito Lay, HP, Kaiser Permanente, Nestle Purina, Office Depot, REI, SC Johnson, Starbucks, Williams Sonoma, and Yahoo, along with a score of other brands.

With those kinds of numbers, it's fair to say that companies do now recognize the real economic pay-backs inherent within sustainability strategies, and in starting to see the returns, the dialogue at SB '09 indicated that companies are continuing to look for ways to ferret out opportunities and cost savings from their sustainability agendas, including further involving their consumer bases in sustainability related activities - all part of an effort by corporations to take their sustainability strategies to the next level of evolution.

So it was interesting for me this year to walk away with the impression that now more than ever, one can see a line pretty clearly delineating those companies who have evolved their sustainability strategies - and are benefiting from doing so - from those who are not moving quite so quickly. I saw some marked progress where sustainability and corporate social responsibility strategies are now truly shaping brands - and profits, and clearly, the tools to measure and observe and strategize to make better sustainability decisions are there - more readily available and more sophisticated than a year ago - to both corporations and consumers. The net net of this is that such tools are enabling real competition now between brands pursuing sustainability strategies, enabling corporations to step to the next level of 'decision-making' in looking at their sustainability strategies and related investment initiatives.

Here and there, too, it was clear at the conference there's been and continues to be real innovation - whether in products, services, solutions, or marketing. But what was also apparent was that for many, the dialogue between consumers and brands is still taking just a lot of hard work, and advice on branding strategies can be mixed, or at least confusing; certainly figuring out where the low hanging 'sustainability' fruit is from the stuff that's harder to reach is -- some brands are clearly more easily up to the challenge than others.

This shouldn't really come as a surprise - after all, brand managers and those advising them are struggling with how to integrate sustainability strategies into marketing messages and brands while at the same time faced with the reality that generally, the hockey stick on comsumption (sales) is supposed to go up, not down, and if you're not generating sales, you're probably out of a job in this economy. So where to look for the savings, the messages that your consumers will bite on - that's still a challenge for retailers. And with so many communities to appeal to – from moms, the “power influencers” in green, to communities of faith, who are increasingly playing a role in driving action and dialogue around sustainability in communities in general forward – to new kinds of social media evolving at the speed of light - it can be hard to decide sometimes where to start, especially if there are internal cultural challenges, or consumer behavioral challenges, or otherwise, to be faced when implementing a sustainability strategy across a brand or brands successfully.

Highlights from SB '09:

• Steve Newcomb’s vision for Lend Me Some Sugar, a way to crowd-source corporate philanthropy, was fascinating. http://www.virgance.com/lend.php

• Recycle Bank claimed it now has the world’s largest rewards program by partners – with over 1700 rewards partners – regional, local, and global

• Vestergard Frandsen showed off their Life Straw, which will purify water by removing 99% of bacteria and viruses. Last year, the company launched a companion product, Life Straw Family; it’ll also purify 99% of virus and bacteria, but also more than 99% of pathogens and parasites - and also brings water up to US EPA standards.

• EkoHub (www.ekohub.com) announced the formation of CSRHUB, a business that delivers values-based ratings of corporate social responsibility. The ratings allow evaluation and comparison of company environmental, governance, social, employment and community issues.

• UL Environment Inc. (www.ulenvironment.com) announced it validated environmental claims for Serious Materials' new drywall product, EcoRock(TM), representing the first validation of claims by UL Environment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of UL, since its launch. Serious Materials has to date been involved in some 50,000 building projects.

• Earth Aid, a new service that measures home energy consumption trends and pays users based on how much they save, won the New Venture Exchange contest.

• Audience favorite Localicious, provider of fresh and locally sourced meals for people on the go, was runner up for its healthy fleet of "taco truck" model. One would expect this company to take off like a rocket in urban areas...

• Waste Management showcased its end-of-lifecycle GreenOps Tracking System - http://greenopolis.com/greenops/about. Look for these recycling stations in a Whole Foods near you very soon.

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Lara is the founder and principal of Lara Abrams Communications, LLC, a business development and strategy consultancy advising early stage and growth companies. She is also the Founding Editor of The Abrams Clean Tech Report