Andy Last comments in Creative Salon

 

Andy Last, Executive Partner Purpose and Sustainability, MullenLowe
Marketers have been talking about sustainability because investors are demanding ESG commitments from their companies, and their boards are looking to the marketing department for a return on those investments. Why isn’t this showing up in more briefs? For three reasons in particular:

Increasingly well-policed anti-greenwash regulation is forcing marketers to think twice about what they brief. When the ASA banned a series of Shell ads earlier this year, they ruled that the company couldn’t oversell its environmental initiatives as long as it remained a major polluter. For while the company did indeed spend $4.3 billion on low carbon projects in 2022, the vast majority of its $25 billion capital expenditure was spent on extracting oil and gas. While you can understand why this might make marketers hesitant to include sustainability in briefs, that silence is increasingly taken as an admission of guilt;

Sustainability is complicated and few agencies have the specialist capability to understand the nuances and identify a creative route for sustainability that can be taken without fear of backlash;

Marketers and agencies have also been squeamish about demanding commercial returns from ‘doing good’ briefs – reserving them for awards season. Without the same commercial rigour and targets, the case becomes harder to make in a safety-first marketing world.

But sustainability is no longer a choice for business. The regulatory environment is only moving in one direction (even Rishi Sunak’s recent announcement deferring the ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 doesn’t affect the overall 2050 net zero goal and was met with a series of confirmations from the motor industry that they would be sticking with their 2030 plans for electric new cars); sustainability reporting is now a requirement from investors and the majority of supply chain partners; and sustainability is increasingly a driver for retail customers.

Which makes it no longer a choice for marketers. Agencies with any sort of eye on the future need to develop their sustainability capability, integrate it into strategy and creative to unlock the competitive opportunities it offers, and challenge clients who are misrepresenting their companies’ strategy by excluding it from briefs.