💚 Sustainability as a competitive advantage
How can companies communicate about sustainability in an authentic, trustworthy, powerful and future-oriented way? By having a sustainability strategy - created in 5 steps.
Hi 👋 I’m Florian Schleicher. This is the FutureStrategies newsletter of FUTURES. Thank you so much for reading along 💚
Do you think sustainability is important?
Probably yes.
And do you think you contribute a lot to it yourself?
I and many others would tend to say no.
That's the problem. Sustainability has an image problem!
One of the biggest mistakes we made was to talk about statistics and figures - all of which are correct - in relation to the green future and the climate crisis.
However, this does not inspire the masses because, as I have already written in recent posts, they are one thing above all: overloaded.
And that unfortunately leads us to a clear result:
The last decade has been a massive failure for climate policies worldwide. Instead of meaningfully reducing emissions, we mostly did: nothing. A lost decade with one negative record after another causes many people to feel helpless and hopeless.
And while this story is true, it is not the whole picture. The situation is serious but not hopeless. Many things have started to change for the better in recent years, and scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs everywhere are working on solutions. There are things we can do, and it is not too late.
If we want to change this, we need to inspire people.
We need an overarching story. We need to make sustainability sexy.
But if we simply implement random campaigns or launch a big sustainability campaign once every few years, that won't get us anywhere.
We need a sustainability strategy.
In the strategy, we define our approach to sustainability and what, how and why we communicate about it.
Today I describe how I develop these fundamental ideas and solutions together with my clients.
At the heart of this are a few key points. We need
a potential for why we want to promote sustainability.
a definition of what sustainability means for us as a brand.
a commitment from the very top - no strategy without a CEO.
actions that we take to improve our impact.
marketing activities to make our contribution visible.
The most important thing is: first the sustainability strategy. Then the appropriate marketing.
The basic principle of good communication is not without reason:
“Do good and talk about it.”
And not
“Talk a lot and then do some things”
So here's how I work this out together with my clients:
1️⃣ Why sustainability?
In hundreds of conversations with CEOs, CMOs, founders and marketing managers, I always hear the same message:
“I care deeply about sustainability.”
And yet we still see little progress. According to the latest UN 2024 report, we will only achieve 16% of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And that means even more extreme weather events in the coming years.
Why do we have little progress?
Because sustainability is an investment.
Sustainability is a business thing, not a marketing thing, first and foremost. In other words, it’s something you should do at a wider business level, not something that is a quarterly spike of activity or anything like that.
Rob Estreitinho
A strong sustainability strategy will not directly bring us better results next quarter or year.
But it will ensure the continued existence of our company (and pleasant temperatures) over the next 5-10 years. So what are good reasons for a brand and company to invest in and focus on sustainability right now?
We can gain a competitive advantage over our competitors. Companies that have sustainability strategies achieve on average 11% higher profits than their unsustainable competitors. This is because their customers are more loyal and satisfied.
We can already create a framework for future legislation. Because when it comes to legislative amendments, pioneers such as the EU or California will always look to the market for inspiration.
We can be more attractive suppliers for big companies that have to integrate their sustainability impact into their reporting. 73% of all B2B buyers are already planning to delist partners if their sustainability efforts are insufficient.
And the most important thing from my point of view: we will find it easier to attract young talent as employees. This is because they increasingly no longer want to work for non-sustainable brands:
The most important thing in this first step is to determine together:
