Ten first steps for brands to make a start on sustainability
Sustainability is an increasingly critical marketing topic, with investors, consumers and employees playing a heightened role in driving sustainable business practices across the private sector.
To achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, sustainability needs to become everyone’s business and while most marketers want to address it, as there is little training on the subject in our industry, many understandably don’t know where to start.
As a starting point, understanding the sustainability issues that are most relevant for your company, your industry, and the advertising and marketing sector is key to developing a sustainability roadmap with clear metrics to measure progress.
From our own experience, the SASB Materiality Map, developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, is a great tool that can help with this.
Areas of sustainability that marketing can address with a “top 10” list of actions marketers can take to help drive forward.
Society
Diversity & Inclusion
1. Include D&I objectives in briefs with agency partners, media owners and tech providers. It sounds obvious but is often forgotten.
2. Ensure a diverse team of individuals are developing and reviewing work to create inclusive marketing that is reflective of society and is shared with audiences through a diverse portfolio of channels. For further insight see: Representation of a Nation
Culture
3.Marketing communications can be a force for good in influencing society’s culture, views and behaviours.
To help contribute fresh perspectives, hire new and diverse creative talent (ie photographers, writers, film makers, musicians, production companies etc). Also recognizing their work to help further their creative careers and businesses. See: Free the Work
Digital and adtech ethics
4. Work with your agency partners, media owners and tech providers to ensure you have visibility of your advertising investments to stop the inadvertent funding of fake news, hate speech, and misinformation. See: Global Alliance for Responsible Media , Conscious Advertising Network
5. Review your commercial contracts to ensure brand safety measures are included with clear protocols, roles and responsibilities. See: Evolving Media Agency Contracts
Consumer data protection and privacy
6. Understand what data will be used for targeting your consumers and if they have genuine control on how their data will be used. Also ensure clarity on who owns the data, how it will be managed and stored, by whom and for how long? See: IAB Data & Privacy
Environment
Net Zero Goals
7. Work with agency partners to understand how your marketing assets and activities are being produced and how environmental impact can be minimized (ie eliminating plastic, reducing water use, using recycled materials, minimizing air travel etc). Also utilize a carbon calculator to help measure and track your environmental impact. See: Doconomy 2030 Calculator, Ad Green , Ad Net Zero, WFA Planet Pledge
Responsible Consumption
8. Collaborate with your product development, CRM and retailer teams to help communicate to consumers how they can sustainably act through the use of your product or service. See: UN SDG Goal 12, P&G Drives Responsible Consumption
Biodiversity
9. Understand what is the impact that your brand has on biodiversity, from both a product and marketing communication stand point, and what partnerships you can create or support to have a positive impact on biodiversity. See: Mars and the Lion’s Share Fund
Economy
Building sustainable brands for long term growth
10. Collaborate with your finance team in developing sustainable business strategies to ensure alignment on how marketing communications can contribute to achieving long term business growth, not just quarterly targets. See: From the Stockholder to the Stakeholder – how sustainability can drive financial performance
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We hope the above recommendations and guide contributes to the ongoing dialogue and education we need on marketing sustainability, and look forward to supporting and collaborating with others who share our passion for becoming sustainable marketers.
To help support, we’ve recently published “The Sustainable Marketer”, a Flock Associates Think Piece that provides marketers practical steps on how to translate the theory of sustainability into action.
Natalie Morris is global media and marketing consultant at Flock Associates