Marketing for Impact — Grow Botané Without Greenwashing

A four-round, advanced purpose-led-branding simulation set inside Botané SAS, a Lyon-based EUR 78M natural personal-care brand (9% EBIT, 240 staff) whose entire price premium rests on one fragile asset: 71% of customers buy it 'because of what it stands for'. The board has just demanded +18% revenue (EUR 14M incremental) via a national campaign for a new 'Climate Positive' hair-care line and entry into the supermarkets — in the same week the EU Green Claims Directive and France's Loi Climat (Art. 12) tightened the rules and a rival was fined EUR 2M for an unsubstantiated 'carbon neutral' claim. Playing the CMO's leadership team with a EUR 3.2M campaign budget, you (1) audit the seven proposed claims against an evidence standard and the 'seven sins of greenwashing', rating each Defensible / Conditional / Drop and identifying which fragile claim would do the most damage; (2) design the launch — split the EUR 3.2M across mass-reach and owned/earned channels under the authenticity-vs-reach trade-off, lock the claim set, and decide the supermarket listing (on the buyer's −12% terms, on Botané's terms, or decline); (3) decide three partnerships under pressure — a poor-fit 4.1M-follower influencer, an eco-label co-brand costing 30% control, and an NGO endorsement demanding full (92%-traceable) supply-chain disclosure; and (4) respond when a watchdog challenges the 'Climate Positive' claim 72 hours after go-live — substantiate, reframe, partially or fully withdraw — then institutionalise claim governance. The math rewards genuine, substantiated, well-fit marketing and punishes the five classic errors: claim maximalism (greenwashing fines up to 80% of spend, ~EUR 2.56M), over-correction to a bland 'safe' campaign that forfeits the +18%, renting credibility through poor-fit partners, treating transparency as optional, and PR-ing a substance problem. Final KPIs track Sales Lift % against the +18% mandate, Brand Credibility (the values segment, starting at 71), Greenwashing Risk, and budget used against the EUR 3.2M cap.