Communication in Sustainable Brands

What does it mean to “create and manage brands” – to do branding and marketing – and what does any of this have to do with sustainability?

In the latest event of the Sustainability Cluster of the Valencian Community, we delivered a talk precisely on this topic. We opened the presentation with questions like: “What phrase should I put in my Instagram campaign so our communication isn’t taken as greenwashing?” or “What should my company’s logo look like if I want it to be associated with good sustainability practices?” – questions we posed, of course, with a touch of irony. Because building brands isn’t about these superficial matters, but about building relationships.

By the way, if you want to keep engaged in the conversation with us, you can comment or save this post in Substack.

Building a brand in the 21st century

As we mentioned in our earlier reflection on Sustainable Business Models, brand management today is a strategic and systemic process – it encompasses the alignment of values, promises and experiences that shape relationships between stakeholders, guiding the development of solutions and ultimately fostering trust and the adoption of those solutions. In reality, building a brand is building a business.

And what does this have to do with sustainability? When you produce a sustainability report, the first step is to undertake a materiality analysis – in other words, to determine which topics are material, or relevant, for your stakeholders. That’s what this is about: establishing meaningful dialogues with our stakeholders, creating the appropriate channels for those dialogues to take place, and giving each stakeholder a voice within the company.

In that sense, our brand is the interface between our business and all of these stakeholders. We can view the work of “Branding for Sustainability” as the work of “democratising the business”.

I like to imagine a brand as a knot, at the centre of a complex network, where each stakeholder – each thread – converges at this knot we have created, and where the knot pulls on every thread, tightening them, just as each thread pulls back on the knot.

The brand as an interface between business and stakeholders

Brand communication is the glue between these stakeholders; it is what ties that knot between the different threads. But for it to truly function in this way, as the bonding of our stakeholders around a shared direction towards sustainability…

Firstly, it must be able to build bridges for dialogue with different stakeholders – not only customers and users – and, moreover, it must be a real dialogue, with feedback, rather than a one-directional monologue of “I, as a brand, will tell you how well I’m doing things.” No: “I, as a brand, will engage with you to understand your real needs and motivations, the social and environmental challenges you face, and how we can solve them together.”

In the servitisation project for ABSOTEC, everything was a constant dialogue with customers, suppliers, the organisation carrying out the Life Cycle Assessment and therefore representing the “environmental stakeholder”, and others. But not “talk for the sake of talking” – rather, genuinely co-creating, generating and facilitating spaces where we were collectively shaping the new business model.

Secondly, communication must not remain at the level of simply telling our story; it must be capable of activating our stakeholders towards concrete change.

Returning to the ABSOTEC example, every event, every message, was directed at shaping stakeholder behaviour so that they genuinely adopt this new business model – and that is something you only achieve when you have taken the time to know them through dialogue and when you have built trust with them.

Trends in communication & sustainability

There are many important brand communication trends at this moment in time. We won’t focus on all of them – but if you’re curious, you can connect with us and we’ll explore them in more depth.

I would like to highlight the issue of green claims, which are beginning to be regulated by the European Union – you can no longer simply say things like “this product is green” or “it’s sustainable”; instead you must specify, using more precise language, “it is biodegradable under these conditions”, “it reduces carbon footprint by X% compared to this other product”, etc. Another interesting trend is that of Nature-Positive narratives, meaning a shift from speaking solely about carbon footprint and climate change – which, as you know, is only one of the many planetary boundaries we face – to speaking about the restoration of biodiversity. Naturally, this arises because new types of business are emerging that work in this direction. Narrative and business always go hand in hand.

And I can’t fail to mention the trend around generative AI and brand culture. There is enormous talk about the use of AI to generate marketing images and texts; there are countless gurus out there promoting their method for creating excellent content with AI, and almost everyone is using it today. But beware: the development and use of AI bring complex sustainability-related problems. Generative AI in particular – e.g. ChatGPT – consumes vast amounts of water and energy, producing high emissions and generating severe issues in the territories where data centres are installed. And, of course, this is not going to appear in any sustainability report – “we use ChatGPT for several hours a day to generate our LinkedIn posts and marketing messages”. No – but it does affect your brand in other ways. Academic studies are already showing that messages – whether textual or visual – heavily influenced by AI do not build the same trust or brand culture as messages produced by humans. And with everything we’ve discussed, you can already see how this impacts sustainability: if your brand does not generate trust, who is going to follow you on this path? How are you truly going to activate your stakeholders?

Another interesting trend is Generation Z’s scepticism towards sustainability communication. In conversations with MINI Spain, it turns out they are in the midst of redesigning their business model towards electrification… and yet they have stopped communicating “sustainability”. They explained that sustainability used to be advertised more for younger audiences, who were the ones demanding it… but who have also proven to be the most critical, often calling it greenwashing.

This results in what is called “greenhushing”, which, instead of over-communicating and exaggerating (as in greenwashing), consists of under-communicating, of staying silent, out of fear that communication will be read as greenwashing. But of course, greenhushing is not perceived as prudence; it is read as inaction or even lack of transparency. And it creates an additional problem: earlier we said that communication serves to activate change among stakeholders, but if we communicate nothing about our sustainability efforts… we are not activating that change, we are not raising awareness about industry shifts, we are not generating trust or conviction in the need for this…

How do we deal with this situation? Well, it might sound like common sense, but ultimately it’s about communicating from evidence and with precise language, speaking honestly about both progress and limitations, and sometimes perhaps… not putting the word “sustainability” everywhere to the point where it loses value and credibility. And this opens the door to another trend, which is…

The integration of sustainability into the design of the experience itself. That is, moving from shoehorning it into the discourse, to allowing it to permeate every touchpoint in the customer experience. It’s interesting because MINI, precisely, is going through this process of redefining its customer journey, and there are many opportunities there.

A brand that truly excels at this is LUSH: these ethical cosmetics makers integrate sustainability into every point of the experience – from the moment you enter the store and see almost no packaging, to the message they send you to facilitate returning the packaging if it did have any. It’s not discourse; it’s integrated experience.

And of course, since we have spoken about “servitisation” as a business model in our previous reflection, we must mention the trend towards communicating the value of the service, beyond the product. This requires shifting our conceptual frame: I no longer focus on telling you about the wonderful features of my product; instead, I explain how this whole service I offer will change your life, how it will solve the need you have – and you may not even need to buy a product.

This case also allows us to mention other trends, such as…

• Aligning communication with verifiable, science-based targets – in this case, we spoke of specific carbon reduction targets for the city of Valladolid and for the company, grounding the narrative in the data from the Life Cycle Assessment.

• Or aligning sustainability with finance through communication, explaining how improvements in environmental or social impact combine with benefits in the profit and loss account, whether through savings or increased value and therefore revenues.

Designing and articulating meaningful, intelligent relationships

In short, when we talk about branding, marketing, and communication for Sustainability, we are talking about effectively articulating those relationships with stakeholders to create more intelligent and resilient business models.