Sustainability has a brand problem

Today, I want to tackle a question that may be a bit provocative: Does 'sustainability' have a brand problem? We will look at this from the perspective of how the climate movement is using language to achieve its objectives.

Before diving in, for readers who haven't worked in brand or marketing, it might be useful to clear up some terminology. 'Brand' as a discipline is often conflated with 'a brand' as a company. In simple terms, I like to think of brand as an association made about a particular thing. It comes from a set of impressions: from using the thing, seeing it advertised, how it looks, how it behaves, or what the cultural narrative about the thing is.

Next term to clarify: 'sustainability'. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm using 'sustainability' as a catch-all word for any industry, innovation, regulation or movement that is environmentally-focused. For example, climate (tech), green (tech), clean (tech), regeneration, eco, etc.

When I ask 'does sustainability have a brand problem?', what I'm trying to explore is this. Is the association sparked by 'sustainability' a barrier to progressing its cause even further?

Language matters

As we've all familiar with, our public and social discourse has become increasingly ideological, partisan, polarized and in many cases, toxic.

Culturally, we live in a society of ideological echo chambers. This isn't just online, it's reflected in the real world too.

The environment and climate change are the most polarizing topics in US politics. Terms like 'climate', 'green', 'clean' and 'sustainable' have been weaponized by media outlets. This adds to the rhetoric that influences perceptions (both positively and negatively) by the public and with policy makers.

What's interesting is that, until recently, environmental matters have a history of bipartisan support. With Roosevelt establishing the national park system, George Bush creating a cap and trade program to address acid rain and Nixon establishing the EPA, the Republicans have a legacy of environmental protection behind them. However, environmental matters have since been de-prioritized in the party. Now we have a tension between narratives of environmental protection versus economic progress and institutional distrust.

Putting aside opinions on the cause of climate change, it's important to understand that today, conservatives simply don’t feel as strongly about environmental issues as their progressive counterparts:

Pew research outlines the complicated (and frankly incoherent) relationship between political leaning and level of science knowledge across different environmental issues. So how to make sense of all of this?

Ezra Klein dug into the nature of the world's polarization and what he discovered might lend some helpful context. Studies show that if you take people who are deeply entrenched in their political identities and make them watch, listen to or read those who have opposite views, it causes them to dig even more deeply into their core identities. It doesn't alter or soften their views of the topic - quite the opposite. The impact of all this is greater on those who pay the most attention to issues and politics than it is on the more disengaged, and in an environment of 24-hour news channels and doom-scrolling, that has a significant effect.

Change for change

Given these Pew Research statistics, we can assume that most of those who are inclined to side with environmental issues have already made a personal decision to do so. And yes, at a consumer brand level, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that purpose-led brands fare better than those who don't and I believe that is true up to a point. However, these studies are limited in scope (n < 10,000) and the indicative results skew strongly towards younger consumers. Which will be wonderful for the future, but finding immediate solutions for the present requires a different approach. Continuing with the same strategies will only achieve incremental gains. Instead, we should be thinking about how to increase the addressable market - to grow the category. As a means to do that, let's consider the language that is used around sustainability.

Is alarmist language a barrier to progress?

An Oxford Dictionary study found that the language around climate has become more urgent. The Guardian even publicly announced their intentional shift of language. I argue that in order to make meaningful progress, we should consider our words more carefully, especially in light of Klein's findings regarding polarization.

It's not only alarmist language that that could be the biggest barrier to progress. It's also the more functional or pragmatic language as well. Take the Green New Deal as one example. The branding of and language used in that policy, in my view, was a mistake. In a world of context shedding clickbait headlines and cable news soundbites, it immediately sets up an easy partisan divide, weaponizing the language to skew opinion over time:

In brand management, we go to great lengths to understand who our customers are. Audience segmentations and mapping customer personas are methods to know how to resonate with people. With an issue that has clear benefits across the political spectrum, we need to look at how to resonate with an audience we haven't broken through with yet. Sam Blumenthal's piece on the importance of stories in culture, explains that:

A 'story' is a system of communication where the output of information is greater than the input information. The best stories inspire, challenge and cause wonder, and often produce outputs that are many orders of magnitude greater than the original inputs.

To adapt his visuals, in today's sustainability narrative, the structure looks something like this:

Here, we have a single narrative that is presented. This singular narrative is construed by different audiences to land on different meanings.

The alternative would be something like this:

In this scenario, we take the input and craft that into different narratives, based on who we are speaking with. It's not a one size fits all box that appeases half the audience but alienates the rest.

Scaling pains

The tools of behavioral influence used in sustainability have largely been defensive in nature, not growth oriented. A combination of policy and market disincentives have been designed to increase complexity and increase costs, acting as vehicles for change. These includes taxes, cap & trade programs and removal of subsidies, just to name a few. To be clear, the 1800 laws that have been put in place globally to combat climate change are working. As calculated by LSE's Shaikh Eskander and Sam Fankhauser, the savings between 1999 and 2016 amounted to the equivalent of another United States on the emissions tally.

Yet, defensive instruments can only do so much and they aren't viable solutions in isolation, as they're not driving demand for alternatives.

I spoke with an investment specialist focused on climate finance. They provided a take on the reality of sustainable initiatives:

“Climate right now is a luxury. You have to realize that it’s not considered an immediate need within the wider investment community. There are a few investors who can afford to lose money on climate investments, but the reality is that it lacks the track record to be investible. That’s why more often than not, concessional finance is the only pathway to viability.”

Traditional investors have demanded unrealistic returns and until recently, have waited until replicable models were proven out in projects before parting with their capital. That said, we're seeing a shift in that mindset. As reported by PWC, the past two years have seen a flurry of activity from funds, with a 210% increase in funding between 2020 and 2021, shifting climate tech's portion of venture dollars to 14% of total expenditure.

‘Climate is a luxury’ is a sobering thought and not isolated to the investor class. For those who are sitting atop of Maslow’s hierarchy with the privilege and inclination to think and act deeply on sustainability, it’s worth remembering that sustainability in itself may not be the most compelling benefit for many audiences.

Sarah Kay of Create A Bold Future is an expert in the intersection between brand and purpose. She explains:

“Early stage companies are laser focused on solving a problem. But once companies scale to a certain size, they serve a different master: from the problem to the marketplace.”

This is intuitive but perhaps under recognized. The reason it’s important, is that the marketplace is made up of polarized individuals. So if a scaling, purpose-led brand is to succeed in serving its ‘new master’, alienating half of the population with its language may not be the strongest stepping off point. This line of thinking isn’t just applicable to companies, but also to policy and movements. If scaling sustainability is the objective, the language we use matters.

Reframing benefits

For category shifting impact, environmentally-friendly message isn't enough. In the consumer space, innovation needs to be focused on products that are better than the status quo, not merely more sustainable. We see this most prominently with the monumental shift of momentum towards EVs. Of course, Tesla ignited the industry and now we have the Ford F-150, the world's most popular vehicle, as an EV. Faster, quieter, and can power your tools on-site. By speaking to a different audience, Ford is helping accelerate the transition far more than by creating another sporty sedan.

Another good example is Plenty, a vertical farming startup. Plenty uses 99% less land and 95% less water than conventional farming, with no pesticides. Plus, they are able to build farms close to urban centers, significantly reducing transportation. Yet, the bulk of their messaging is focused around taste and nutritional value, not their environmental impact. Whilst the latter might be important to many people, the former is what matters to all.

This approach also allows us to navigate around the growing instances of greenwashing in consumer advertising, which sows confusion, alienation and distrust.

So how can we take inspiration from these consumer brands to reframe how we talk about sustainability at the altitude of policy and political discourse? Well, instead of relying on defensive instruments to curb emissions, we can use positioning and language to alter perception and demand. These are tools for demand generation. It's about finding the middle ground about what matters and have that middle ground lead the messaging. In other words, what are the benefits outside of the environment? Some examples:

An argument could be made to dispel entirely of terms like 'climate tech', 'green tech' or 'clean tech' and rather categorize those activities under existing industries where possible. Just like EV companies are categorized under Automotive. This would assimilate actions that need to be taken within existing market structures to avoid the pitfalls of polarization and grease the wheels of progress.

We have reached a point where our serviceable obtainable market for sustainability-aligned citizens is almost at capacity. Due to a confluence of entrenched and weaponized language, divided priorities and deep polarization, incremental gains in perception shifts will become increasingly difficult. Instead, we need to grow our serviceable addressable market and to do this, we need to speak to new audiences with different perspectives. Then, position the benefits in a way that completely detaches them from the issues which make them polarizing.

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Sustainability has a brand problem

Language matters

Change for change

Scaling pains

Reframing benefits

Economics 🤝 Storytelling

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