Changing the conversation: marketing for sustainability

Sustainable marketing and marketing has changed quite dramatically. It used to be that we told stories, advertising stories. But this was just simply the tip of the iceberg. Now everything underneath that water level really matters. Obviously, today, what we tend to see is lots of companies being out there and talking about their green efforts. But obviously, we're witnessing more and more, what I would call, a pushback or the problem about what you say might not be what you do. How do you align what you say with what you do?

In the world of sustainability, everything tends to be very rational. You can talk about carbon emissions down to the gram per kilometer. But that could be quite hard for people to understand and emotionally engaged around. The world of marketing it's quite a different effort.

It's about creating an emotional message. Yes, the world might not explode because of carbon emissions, let's hope it won't, but obviously, this is an example of communication that involves you emotionally. You see the difference - rational in the world of sustainability and emotional in the world of marketing.

Let me give some more examples. The world of sustainability, everything is very complex and so often it's on you to take these very complex issues and make them more simple to make them easier to communicate.

What I want you to think about is that the world of advertising, it used to be very much about telling stories. Sitting in a room, coming up with an amazing story around a cheeseburger or something like that. What I want you to think about is in the world of sustainability, you want to discover the stories, almost like a documentary filmmaker on the hunt for something that's exciting.