After all the talk and announcements at COP26, what can businesses do to make sustainable change happen faster?

To discuss this, MSQ hosted special guest Justin Adams - Executive Director at the World Economic Forum and Special Advisor to COP26. Eloquent, thoughtful, insightful and inspiring in equal measure, Justin shared his unique perspective on the successes and shortcomings of Glasgow, and 100 days on, what that means now for brands and businesses as we look to turn ‘words into action’.

With some senior Marketing, Communications and Sustainability people in the room, representing a wide range of different sectors - from retail to alcohol, from finance to FMCG - the discussion covered a lot of ground.

Here’s our take on some of the big themes emerging from the roundtable.

Cooperation, not (just) competition

●      As marketing and communications experts, competition is hard-wired into how we think and act but evidence of a new way of thinking and acting is evident. The complexity and scale of the twin climate and nature crises mean that no one company can solve things acting alone. And so, cooperation between brands and companies, collective action across supply-chains and systems, unexpected partnerships between governments, NGOs and the private sector have all clearly emerged - driven by a new spirit of generosity and collective responsibility.

●      Perhaps initially led by those in Sustainability roles, but taken up by the C-suite, there are both commercial and ethical reasons for better collaboration - to make supply chains more resilient and sustainable, to fast-track best practices, and to get ahead of regulatory changes.

●      It was reassuring to hear how the sustainability community across all sectors seem to be motivated by different values than old school cut-and-thrust competition alone - a genuine desire to share, to learn from each other, to take collective action and support multilateral initiatives in order to accelerate change for the better.

The Four Levers of Change

●      As well as finding out a little more about what happens behind closed doors in the Blue Zone at COPs, we found out too about the limits of what a bureaucratic, diplomatic, legalistic and political process such as COP can achieve.

●      Some breakthrough commitments, yes. Some staggering financial announcements. Lots of progress and promises, and many significant wins. Not all ‘blah blah blah’, then.

●      But Policy is only one lever of change. And alone, it is always going to be too slow, too cumbersome and too watered-down to solve it all.

●      In a room full of private sector brands, this put the spotlight back on us. Without exception, the brands represented in the room had all taken significant action - working on sourcing sustainable commodities, reducing emissions, rethinking their packaging, committing to science-based targets and B Corps status, aligning around the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

●      For change to really happen at the pace and scale required, we discussed the need for all four big levers to be pulling simultaneously in the same direction: Policy, Finance, Brands & Businesses.

Breaking out of the sustainability silo

●      There was general consensus that until sustainability crosses over the corridor to the marketing department, it is restricted to being a specialist comms niche - corporate communications to investors, to employees, in ESG reports and to fellow travellers in the green pages.

●      For brands to really deliver on change-at-scale and unlock the power of the demand-side of the equation, sustainability has to be stitched into every part of the marketing mix to infect not just brand marketing, but product development, sales, promotion, even point-of-sale and packaging.

●      But that’s not at all simple - who chooses their beer based on carbon emissions? Who declines a BOGOF based on supply-chain integrity? Not enough of us yet, certainly not enough for CMOs to be convinced to use proper marketing budgets to promote proper sustainable credentials.

●      How can we convince our colleagues to think differently? was a question without a ready answer…yet. Supply follows demand. But like a classic catch-22, it’s usually brands and advertising that create that demand in the first place.

Coming in from the E.A.S.T.

●      How can we, as communications experts, accelerate change? Everyday behavioural change - at home, on the commute, at work, at play. And on holiday. If individual action really can add up to significant societal change, we need millions (and billions) of people to think, act, buy and consume differently. Hence the discussion turned to the E.A.S.T.

●      The idea is if we want to encourage a behaviour, we need to make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely.

●      An easy acronym to remember, slightly harder to implement. Right now, sightings of the Conscious Consumer making informed decisions at the point-of-purchase, wielding immense purchasing power that creates winners and dinosaurs…are plentiful, but not on a mass-market scale. EVs are still priced as luxury items, plastic-free is still the exception, green tariffs are still the minority, heat pumps still on the fringe, sustainable palm oil is hard to come by, and green hydrogen is nowhere to be found.

●      That said, it is rare for clients today to issue briefs, or agencies to work on briefs that don’t at least reference sustainability, environmental impact or responsible behaviours. Great change is upon us.

●      We are living through the fastest economic transition ever recorded. The groundrush towards a net-zero economy has tripped through every tipping point, and it’s only getting faster as 2030 hurtles towards us.

●      As communicators, we have a huge role to play in making the right choices Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely for our intended audiences.

●      Individual action, repeated trillions of times, is just as essential as policy, investment and sourcing decisions. What this highlights is the opportunity and responsibility brands have for educating, nudging and incentivising their consumers to take that action. To create a culture in which sustainable consumption is normalised. It’s the kind of brief all of us working in sustainability comms have been itching to get cracking on.

There’s gold in the shadow

●      For all the talk of marketing and communications, something deeper was also lurking at the table. Responsibility.

●      It is (relatively) easy for a brand to want to be part of the solution. But there was a strong sense around the room that we also need to acknowledge a few other things: that we’ve been part of the problem for a long, long time; that we don’t have all the answers; that those most affected by the climate emergency are not the stale, pale, middle-aged white men crafting the ‘solutions’.

●      There were no easy conclusions, other than to observe that ‘sustainability’ encompasses so much more than just a pathway to 1.5 degrees. It means many things - from social justice to diversity; an equitable transition to net-zero; and a rethinking of profit, purpose and consumerism itself. It calls for honesty and integrity, and a need for all voices to be included and heard.

●      In other words, to be ‘sustainable’ we also need to spend some time interrogating our own shadows. And we will be better communicators and better brands as a result

The Sustainability Sessions are a quarterly roundtable hosted by MSQ/Sustain and The Gate - an informal opportunity for speakers and guests to discuss sustainability, brands and communications