Sustainability has been part of brand strategies for some time now. But there is a growing disillusionment trend, writes Mark Kennedy, managing partner – consulting and head of sustainability, Kantar Australia. Marketers shouldn’t give up on sustainability, he argues, but harness it in a way that’s meaningful to connect with consumers and make a positive impact.
‘Go woke, go broke’ is frankly a brilliant piece of marketing – a catchy phrase that captures a whole ethos in four words. I don’t agree with it, but I can’t help feeling just a tinge of jealousy that I didn’t come up with it. The simple clarity of the message seems to be backed up by high profile examples from brands like Jaguar, Pepsi and Budweiser, leaving some people with the irresistible temptation to project very real executional missteps onto sustainability more generally.
“You see, I told you this sustainability stuff is a waste of time”.
Basically, take focused and tangible action to deliver effective sustainability impact and build meaning, difference and salience for your brand through brilliant creative execution and go broke.
I did say I was jealous, remember.
The old saying ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ is central to this. Is culture now rejecting wokeness and by extension sustainability, or is it more complex than this?
The reality is that the real numbers around people’s desire for sustainability action and the power of sustainability to drive brand and business growth don’t support the idea that sustainability is no longer culturally relevant or indeed has even reduced in its importance.
In fact, the opposite is true. Sustainability issues have broken through globally at scale and in essence, sustainability is mainstreaming. Three-quarters of people believe companies should address social issues (74 per cent), and two-thirds expect action on climate concerns (64 per cent). But despite these claims, over half think companies mislead people about their sustainability efforts (52 per cent).
So, there is a trust gap.
Many companies doubt the importance of sustainability in driving growth despite the fact that globally, US$456 billion in consumer spending is targeted at sustainability and this is projected to reach US$1 trillion by 2028.
So, there is a market aspiration brand action gap.
Three-quarters of brands are not confident yet to tell a sustainability action story. So, whilst the other one-quarter believe they have a great story and are willing to tell it, 75 per cent believe they either don’t have a story, lack the confidence to tell it, or both.
So, there is a business confidence gap.
Marketers overwhelmingly believe it is their responsibility to help people live more sustainable lives (93 per cent). And while over nine in 10 also believe they have the right skills to make a difference in consumer behaviour, only a few believe they are actually doing enough.
So, there is a marketing impact gap.
This lack of trust, brand activation, confidence and impact, all point to a simple question: ‘Should we be scared of doing too much or should we be scared of doing nowhere near enough?’.
To try to answer this simple question, an approach that I believe really helps is a measure of concerns and praises. How praiseworthy a brand is for all the effort and hard work in the space of sustainability it is doing and communicating compared to the concerns people have for the category in which it sits.
I may love a brand but be really concerned about the impact that the category more generally has.
This defines the difference between the general concern I have about engaging in a category and the positivity I have towards a specific brand. Is this gap positive, neutral or negative?
If a brand’s action and communication isn’t overcoming the general negativity about the category, then there is a negative pressure on the brand.
If the action of the brand is powerful enough to neutralise negativity about the category, then things are neutral.
If the brand activity overcomes and goes beyond the negative perceptions of the category, then the brand is truly driving meaningful difference.
This puts positioning into context. While understanding how a brand is positioned against key competitors is critical, understanding the brands positioning against consumer perception of the category has a significant mid- to long-term implications.
Is the brand truly meaningfully different or just the best of a bad bunch?
Obviously, if the brand is simply the best of a bad bunch, then we risk growing a slice of an ever-decreasing pie. I believe this is a much better way of assessing sustainability action as it provides a proper measure of consumer context and allows proper assessment of the brand’s action and communication – effectively are we doing too much or simply not enough?
It is easy to assume you are doing too much when your competitors are doing less than you, whilst your market may simply believe you are well off the pace. This is the pattern we are increasingly seeing, with business shy to communicate or concerned they are ‘ahead of the pack’, whilst consumers believe they are laggards and not doing enough. The simple first step is to contemporise basic communication.
But there is some good news for Australia.
We come joint second with France (behind Germany) in the prevalence of sustainable behaviours present in our advertising. A great result – but the percentage is just 10 per cent of advertising – double that of the USA but nowhere near the expectation of consumers globally where three-quarters believe businesses have a responsibility to make society fairer (74 per cent).
So, we are good but nowhere near good enough.
Having grown up in the creative world, the simple truth is the change begins with the brief. By using the brief to raise the floor of brand communication, contemporising communications, including more sustainability behaviours and better aligning brand communication with consumer expectation, we can start to show that businesses and brands are keeping pace with cultural expectation.
This isn’t breakthrough thinking but it does start to get brands back in the communication game.
With a 51 per cent decline in ‘meaningfully different’ brands in Australia over the last decade and where less than half of all brand communication has any market effect whatsoever, change is needed – and needed fast.
The fact is that brands aren’t doing too much.
The evidence shows that marketers are not doing enough to build meaningfully different brands that are needed to outpace the negative association of the category they are in. And to avoid wasting money on communication, communication language needs to keep pace with cultural expectation.
Culture is moving faster than ever and to keep pace brands need to be vibrant and fast moving. Sustainability is not the complete answer, but it is a vitally important aspect of cultural relevance and brand positioning. Rather than go woke go broke, it might be better to think about keeping up rather than getting left behind.
