As environmental concerns climb the ladder of consumer priorities, brands face the challenge of keeping their sustainability promises genuine. Sustainability News turns to Meabh Quoirin, CEO of Foresight Factory, for guidance.
If you are a marketing manager tasked with helping make your brand more sustainable, an initial port of call will likely be to consult the nearest global brand sustainability trends report. Yet if you are looking for an easy step-by-step guide, then you will be out of luck.
Take Ipsos, who said earlier this year that consumers ‘more than ever are pushing brands to become more sustainable’ but added that ‘being a sustainable brand has different meanings to different consumers.’ Deloitte notes the rising cost of living as a factor prohibiting consumers, but said that companies ‘need to manage the risks and seize the opportunities created, from enhanced reputation and new revenue streams, to better risk management and business continuity.’
The truth is, with 2024 here, getting such a vital part of your role right means traversing a path full of pitfalls and booby traps. Consumers want to be sustainable, but economic concerns will come first. They feel technology is a vital tool to solving the climate crisis, yet are concerned about its intrusive nature and effects. They want advice on sustainability, but don’t like being told what to do.
As you look upon your current campaign – where your brief is to promote your new product whilst encouraging an anti-consumption ethos – each word of your copy seems to dissolve on the page, turning into a mush of mealy-mouthed platitudes.
But help is at hand. Instead of being pummelled with reams of insight, it’s time to focus with a bit of foresight.
The landscape
The cost of living crisis continues to bite. In the UK, survey data revealed almost one in 10 UK households failed to pay an essential bill. When paying the bills may no longer be a given, other purchases will fall by the wayside. Yet the desire for consumers to contribute to a sustainable future remains.
According to figures from consumer trends analyst Foresight Factory, 57% of global consumer citizens polled say they feel at risk from threats such as climate change. 42% admit that economic priorities need to come first, even if it comes at an environmental cost. 22% of global citizens agree with both statements.
This is therefore a minefield for companies to traverse – and this is where a company such as Foresight Factory comes in. Meabh Quoirin, co-owner and CEO, notes that Foresight’s data tools aim to ‘take as much of the subjectivity out’ of things. The company’s Trending 2024 report looks at this landscape and attempts to answer four questions: what it means to be human, sustainable, healthy, and to belong.
Foresight Factory admits that the name of the report is something of a misnomer; there is nothing trending – or indeed, new – here. Instead, the offering is one of clarity amid the tension; not least with a small amount of sympathy attached.
“I don’t envy brands trying to fight their way through this,” Quoirin tells Sustainable Future News. “Especially when you think one of the principles we should all probably hold true – inarguable from an environmental point of view – is less is more. All these brands need to promote consumption, and everything to do with sustainability says we need to reduce the volume of what we consume.”
An example of how the economics can win out in spite of all is with a personal care product brand. The poor environmental impact of disposable razors, particularly for women, is well known. Yet for this particular brand, who is described by Quoirin as committed and human-first, its research and development arm has simply been unable to make anything sustainable at a price point that is acceptable for its consumers.
If they stopped manufacturing an important hygiene product, their custom would go to competitors who had fewer qualms about the environmental impact. While Quoirin notes that her company has some ideas to help the client out, she notes: “It’s not an issue that they’re going to solve quickly.”
Being sustainable
So what is the best way for brands to communicate their interests? “It’s about where the rubber hits the road in between ‘well, I don’t just have to sort out sustainability, I also have to please my shareholders, I also have to grow this brand over here, I also have to make sure we’re honouring our purpose statement and our internal culture’,” explains Quoirin.
The relationship between stakeholders is understandably nuanced, as Standard Chartered shows. Speaking to SFN in 2022, the bank’s chief sustainability officer Marisa Drew notes that companies ‘observing best practice serve a much wider universe than that’. This includes civil society, to regulators, to employees, to non-governmental organisations (NGOs). NGOs can “not only be the pressure point for us to raise our game, but we’re increasingly finding that they can be fantastic collaboration partners with us,” as Drew puts it.
Inevitably, when brands try to put their voice into the conversation, accusations of greenwashing soon follow. A study from PicoNext in November found 91% of the 1,000 consumers polled expressed a belief that some brands engaged in the practice.
The easiest thing to do would be to keep your head down and not engage. Foresight Factory calls this ‘greenhushing’, and it’s an even more egregious sin than greenwashing. “I’ve heard it so many times, particularly in the boardroom, by brands – who will have to remain nameless – who said these carbon commitment targets out loud and then thought ‘oh shit, how do we do that?’”, says Quoirin. As it turns out, they have no idea; but they have to keep up appearances, and so they stay quiet.
Honesty and humility can be seen as the best policies. ‘Realism should prevail over idealism’, the company notes, ‘with clear acknowledgement of barriers to adoption such as cost or reduced efficacy.’
On September 7, 2021, eyewear brand Ace & Tate published a press release and a report. The press release confirmed that the company had achieved certified B Corp status. The report was a summary of the brand’s sustainable actions as well as a document of their B Corp journey, good and bad. The latter was not exactly swept under the carpet as the headline to a blog post made clear: ‘Look, we fucked up’.
The way to be empathetic is just to be having really honest conversations about what you’re doing, what you’re not getting right, what you haven’t got to yet, and what your plans are.
This disarming honesty, regarding mistakes from overlooking social impact to setting unrealistic climate goals, was focused around helping the wider industry along. Yet it felt somehow on-brand for Ace & Tate as well, with a recent publication describing its campaigns as ‘refreshing’ (subscriber access required). “It felt pretty authentic,” notes Quoirin. “They have got quite a nice, quirky, young brand, and it’s arguably easier for them to do.
“I think consumers don’t want to be patronised, and I think a lot of the time they feel quite suspicious that people are just saying these things, and not really living up to it,” Quoirin adds. “I think the way to be empathetic is just to be having really honest conversations about what you’re doing, what you’re not getting right, what you haven’t got to yet, what your plans are.”
Being healthy
Some brands look to influence the behaviour of stakeholders. For partners and suppliers, as well as B2B customers, with scope 3 emissions on the horizon, this is already happening to a degree. “If a client says, ‘I don’t care, I’m just going to keep doing things the way I used to do them and you don’t have any right to tell me what to do’, it will be hard to defend the allocation of capital in that direction,” as Drew put it.
But what about B2C brands attempting to directly influence individual customers’ habits? Electrolux is an example in this instance. The household appliance manufacturer offers various consumer advice across its products, from washing machines to ovens. Customers are advised to put their laundry at 30°C cycles as opposed to 40°C, as well as encouraged towards sustainable eating.
Should an appliance brand be telling its customers to eat more plant-based food? Sarah Schaefer, VP sustainability Europe, believed so. “I think people want to make a change but it’s very unclear how to,” she told SFN. “I think there’s probably quite a lot we can do, and behaviours we can nudge, by just bringing it to life. So that makes me very optimistic. Because why wouldn’t you, once you know?”
Another example of this is NatWest. In November, the Telegraph reported that the bank was ‘combing [customers’] accounts to calculate their carbon footprint.’ A carbon footprint tracker on the NatWest app uses customers’ transaction data and makes recommendations in how to reduce carbon production. Customers can switch between spending and footprint in the app, and are told the impact of typical purchases.
Quoirin does not pass comment on the outcome of that campaign, but takes a wider view. “I think it’s easy to get that quite badly wrong, but done with the right tone, and with the right people, I think there’s a million ways to have an empathetic conversation around sustainability and recognise that, from the consumer’s point of view, they don’t really want to spend more money, especially not at the minute,” she says. “They need industry and business to come up with the solutions.
“I don’t think you have to be right, or perfect – I just think you have to be honest.”
Being human
The report also explored consumers’ relationships with technology – in particular artificial intelligence (AI). Again, for brands, there is a conflict. Only 28% of British consumers believe AI will have a positive impact on society, compared with 39% who see it as a negative. For millennials however, positivity rises to 38%. More than one in five global consumers cite the loss of human interaction as a key drawback.
Utilising AI for greater process and data efficiency will inevitably become a key tool in the sustainability race – indeed, one book on sustainable leadership devoted an entire chapter to it – but as you embrace the environmental gains, don’t neglect the social side.
Foresight Factory advises that brands need to ‘reassure customers and employees that even as you embrace new technologies, human wellbeing will always be a principle of your brand’. Brands also – again potentially leaning into influencing behaviour – need to help consumers ‘recognise the invisible algorithms that assert influence over their choices.’
Who’s to say that AI won’t come up with lots of creative ways to get people to consume differently, or to think about how to put industries together that should collaborate?
“I think I’ll not be the only person to say this, but there’s an absolute stark reality: companies who do not invest in human-centric behaviours and critical thinking skills for their staff are going to find themselves in quite hot water,” says Quoirin. “I think there’s a real ethical point of upskilling and investing in your staff to make them ready for a future with AI.”
Yet there is a more positive spin to this as well. “One of the things that AI is really brilliant at is finding creative ways to look at problems,” says Quoirin. “Who’s to say that AI won’t come up with lots of creative ways to get people to consume differently, or to think about how to put industries together that should collaborate, or to think about supply chain problems that are causing environmental damage?”
What brand and marketing managers need to consider
For brand managers and those in marketing looking for a one-size-fits-all path to follow, the bad news is there isn’t one. Embracing uncertainty and risk is an important attribute, according to Quoirin, and there are others which will help you make the right decisions.
If you don’t give your people permission to feel, then they will not try to solve difficult problems for you.
“Human-centricity is really important,” Quoirin adds. “You’re nothing without your people, and I think figuring out why people show up to work with you, for you – arguably sometimes against you – is absolutely critical. I think it’s important in terms of the investment you make in them, and I think it is how you show up to the world. If you don’t do that authentically, on the inside, no consumer is going to believe that you’re innovating products for a sustainable future on the outside.
“I think a lot of businesses will say things, but then internally, and even externally, they have a huge fear of failure. We used to have a trend that ‘building in failure’ was something that’s attractive for consumers. But I think it’s really attractive and, truly, if you don’t give your people permission to feel, then they will not try to solve difficult problems for you.
“They won’t go the extra mile, and they won’t take on the biggest questions our planet is facing.”
