Ad Net Zero US was on the ground at our second Sustainable Brands annual conference in San Diego this past week, and the learnings and community did not disappoint.
There was a noticeable shift in the content and conversations, to a level of practicality with transparent dialogue and workshop of how to demonstrate the business value of sustainability – moving beyond the why.
There were two clear themes across the week:
#1 The ROI of sustainability – seeking to demonstrate that sustainability drives innovation which drives business value. There were several takeaways and proof points around this:
- Strong business acumen is a necessity, particularly financial and though knowledge of product/business lifecycle. Sustainable Brands is also leading an important study around the key competencies and gaps for CSOs.
- Sustainability leaders need to look to solve problems for other areas of the business. This helps open doors and builds case studies and proof points of sustainability’s value. JoAnn Garbin had powerful examples (“start with who” image).
- ROI can be determined, looking across cost savings, customer growth, employee engagement, reduction of risk. Daniel Aronson of Valutus consulting and Helen Sahi of BIC led powerful workshop sessions that helped to reshape thinking around this and demonstrate how to work toward numbers. Freya Williams of Revolt and Andrew Winston both shared quantifiable research on the value companies get from decarbonization.
#2 Consumer behavior and effective communication – this is drawing broad interest, and the numerous research studies point to the same themes.
- There is ample proof that consumer behavior is changing, rapidly. Yes, the attention-to-action gap still exists, but we know that 75% of consumers want to live more sustainability and be perceived as such,
- And the number of consumers who can name a sustainable brand or product they purchased for that reason is up to 32%; might sound small, but this is significant growth over the past few years. Ellen Jackowski of Mastercard shared the exciting growth in the secondhand market.
- It’s okay for sustainability to be selfish; in fact, it needs to be. This is why we purchase things. Protecting the planet is important enough for ~15% of people to possibly sacrifice some price or performance, but customers shouldn’t have to make this choice. Sustainability needs to be a co-benefit and we have to lead with the category benefits.Finally, a reminder that we must move beyond default language of jargon and climate-focused messaging, and lean into what widespread research tells us about what motivates people and cuts across polarization.A huge thank you to The Estée Lauder Companies, Datonics, Horizon Media, Equativ, Scope3 and the Sustainable Brands team for the support and collaboration across the week.
