Credibility and the relevance of sustainable communication
Almost one year ago we started the ProjectC! Podcast. A sustainably themed podcast with Edwin Van der Vennet, C!O and co-owner of beMatrix. Sustainability is in our DNA and we aim to inspire and connect stakeholders in the event industry to do better for the environment.
Every three months we invite one inspiring person with a big heart for sustainability to come and talk about what they do to make a long lasting difference. As a first guest, we had Oguzhan Sengül, true beMatrix fan and co-founder of stand building company GO-Exhibitions. Who came to talk about reusability. Next, Pauline Teyssedre, strategy and sustainable director at the Galis agency who reminded us to rethink about our choices and the ISO20121 standards.
All the way from Australia, Bernard Stephaens from company Harry the Hirer. They think big and do whatever they can to mitigate their environmental footprint by implementing greener and more sustainable ways of working. David Dolum is CEO and designer of No Limits Design Group and pioneer in the implementation of sustainability. The latest episode we reviewed the social side of events with Lori Maes, inspirer of the Value Factory, Camp2Camp and Talents for Events.
These were all truly inspiring conversations all pointing out a different side of the sustainable changes that you are making. We know you are totally in on sustainability and want to communicate this to the outside world. Therefore we invited Wim Vermeulen, author, documentary maker and partner of BUBKA, a sustainable communication agency. His mission is to use the power of communication to change the norms.
Frictions in the sustainable transition
The influence of customers and the credibility gap
First thing that comes into our mind when we think about sustainable communication is how to integrate it in the company? Therefore, you must research these frictions to understand the rules of that world before communicating about them.
They help businesses identifying the frictions in their transition to the new sustainable world and solve them with communication. Frictions can be: corporate reputation, business modelling, advertising and stakeholder engagement.
The transitional world is a new world without provided governmental rules on how to communicate. Therefore, you have to research those frictions to understand what the rules are in the that world before communication on them. Mostly you do this by applying the rules of the conventional world in the transitional world. A mouth full but you will understand this by the end of the podcast.
The big question here is: Do customers still believe in sustainable claims? Well, they never did … Did you know that only 9% of them trust in politics and 83% look at businesses? You know why? Because they both need to continue to live, they need to have plans to become better, wealthier, happier …
Customers look at businesses to take them through the transition. BUT, when businesses say “we do this, or we do that”, only 6% believes that. And this is what we call the credibility gap, an apparent difference between what is said or promised and what happens or is true. This credibility gap has a mayor influence on the frictions and worth researching on.
5 things that drive credibility
Back in the days marketeers used the dramatizing benefit technique to sell and be credible or be trusted and believed in. For example they sell toothpaste that whitens the teeth 100% and more. We know that this could never have been true but we took it, because we needed it. But the problem with this technique is that it encourages greenwashing with big humanity problems. Those problems cannot be communicated with a dramatizing technique.
Communication agencies searched on what consumers find important in sustainable communication and communicating about the transition and the answer is credibility. This is driven by 5 important factors that consumers want to recognise in your communication:
- Honesty in the consumer’s mind
- Commitment to transaction
- The urgency of the transition (we are already too late)
- The proof points
- The value for society
Make the good sustainable claim
The sustainable claim comes in phases. From 2020 till 2021, we were in the moral pledge phase: We have a moral duty and we are going to express that in a sustainability promise that we are going to keep. We were making claims without knowing how to execute them. We had to come back from this because the made pledge was not easy to accomplish and new regulations are set.
We’re now in the risk phase where companies understand the risks and try to mitigate them. This comes in different levels like the green hushing level: companies preferring not to talk about the transition. This pushed by the legal departments, because the work is going on behind the scenes. They don’t want to take the risk to be called a greenwasher for a work that is still going on.
Another level is the physical infrastructural risk. The EU will stress test all the infrastructures of a company like the factory, mobility and the value chain on degrees, because we are the fastest warming continent of the planet. They have to.
The last level is the consumer risk, a political risk. Climate problems like extreme floods and fires trigger extreme right political preferences and raise unrest among us.
The signal and the noise
Take the lead and encourage everyone to live the 20% move
Companies don’t want to talk about their efforts anymore and this maybe will cause that they put not as much money anymore in the whole sustainability because it will not bring them money in the short term. This is what we call the signal and the noise.
The signal is clear: climate change will be 3° temperature change by 2050. Politicians are looking for the pause button and look at the industry first. The noise is greenhushing, silence, a gap.
And here companies can grab the opportunity to take the lead in the new transition while the others remain silent. They can create an even bigger gap by standing up, integrating sustainability in their DNA. The claim is their DNA (e.g. Oddbox fruits: weird fruits, less foodwaste). Speak up now!
This process is also going on in the head of the consumers and influences them. It can go two ways. Either, the politicians and companies remain silent because they have it under control or they remain silent because it’s so big and bad that they don’t want to talk about it.
Greenhushing reinforces both ways and either way it doesn’t help. We don’t need activists that live the 100%, but we need all people to live the 20%, we absolutely need people to move and they will move if someone leads them.
The big question here is how much time do we have to act? Well, that’s hard to say because even climate scientist can’t tell us when. We cannot predict when the extreme and different will happen. There’s stuff going on and the best thing to do is take the lead, act now and model your growth.
What can we learn from greenwashing?
People don’t want to greenwash in the first place. It’s just a lack of discipline. It’s not difficult to not greenwash, you just have to master the rules. You know what the rules are today and you know which rules are coming and you can understand which apply on your industry. That’s why in this phase greenwashing is fading out.
The legal department won’t allow you anymore and big companies are now working CSR-management. Numbers and reports are important. The turnover of a company has to grow to become more sustainable. The conventional revenue streams have to go down for the new revenue streams that will grow. Here we will unleash marketing power.
Challenges and opportunities
Encourage to do things differently and think on the long term.
The biggest opportunity for businesses that want to take the lead is to counter the impression that consumers have that transition means consuming less, because this is not true. Transition means doing things differently but not less, living the 1.5 lifestyle.
For example we don’t need 20 pairs of shoes in our closet or order 5 pairs at the same time and have them delivered the next day with a free return. The industry has to change this into a paid delivery one time at a week and nobody will complain, everyone will understand this and it doesn’t have to hurt. It’s important that the message has to come from the business world or nothing will change.
Another challenge is that businesses have to change their business model and take the costs of nature into account. For example with an included carbon tax that already exists. They have to think about the way they do business in because the product will cost more than it used to be.
A shoe will cost more, and not because it’s more fancy, but because the cost of nature has to be taken into account. Here we can take family businesses as an example. They think for their future generation, they think on the long term and taking the carbon tax already into account for the next 5-10 years.
Speak up now!
Understand and start measuring credibility
In this last paragraph we want to highlight the book of Wim Vermeulen, Speak up now! A book for the marketing heroes on the barricades for a sustainable future. A message that marketers need to speak up now and lead the transition.
The first part of the book explains marketeers what the actual problem is nowadays, because if they don’t understand the problem, they won’t come up with a solution. The problem is being explained with everything that stops us from moving forward like the Paris Agreement, COP and more regulations.
In the next chapter you get plenty of examples of businesses that go fully in the transition, how you put the transition into your DNA, how people will react …
And the last part is on the credibility. Marketeers have to start measure and manage credibility because it defines your corporate reputation, brand reputation, the engagement of stakeholders … it defines everything.
So, with this powerful message we conclude the podcast episode and this accompanying blog. Sustainable communication is a difficult but defining factor in a company's transition. The main message is not to remain silent, but to take the lead and possibly even join forces with a communications agency like BUBKA to guide you through this process and help bring about change in the business.
