Is greenhushing a good thing? Lessons from CSO Futures’ sustainable marketing event
Sustainability reporting and anti-greenwashing regulations are transforming the way companies talk about their sustainability efforts.
Speakers at a recent CSO Futures webinar on sustainable marketing agreed that regulation is necessary to ensure the veracity of sustainability claims. “Anti-greenwashing regulation is just a way to protect consumers from false claims, which I think is always a necessary thing: companies should not be able to lie about the products they create and what they're selling,” said Eva Linderborg, Director at the Institute for Real Growth (IRG).
And while greenhushing – the practice of not talking about sustainability to avoid greenwashing accusations – is generally seen as a negative thing in the sustainability world, Linderborg is of the opinion that sometimes, talking less about sustainability is a good thing.
The two types of greenhushing
“There's almost two types of greenhushing: there's greenhushing where you are talking about ESG reporting, and I think that is a shame when organisations are not able to report what they're doing in the space of sustainability, because all sustainability efforts should be recognised.
“But then the other kind of aspect of greenhushing is where organisations are just less public with promoting what they're doing in space sustainability. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. A lot of organisations share a lot of things about sustainability that quite frankly, not a lot of people are interested in hearing, and it doesn't drive changing consumer behaviour,” she said.
Giving the example of a laundry detergent firm that influences customers to wash their clothes in colder water by putting forward the energy savings this behaviour creates – not because they’re “saving the world”, she advised companies to be more “choiceful” in what they communicate.
“It would be fantastic if organisations were doing all the work in sustainability, making their products more sustainable, developing more sustainable products, and then making sure that they're selling them in the best way possible, which is just about: it’s a great product, it has functional features, etc. Sometimes I think too much communication on sustainability actually almost damages that,” Linderborg warned.
The pitfalls of putting purpose at the heart of your brand messaging
In the transition to a more sustainable economy, it’s tempting for brands that have a strong sustainability or social purpose to base their identity around it – but there are pitfalls to this strategy.
First, tying the brand strongly to sustainability puts extra pressure on the company to deliver. Second, Nicolas Lambert, Consultant and Author of Can marketing save the world? warned that “purpose does not equate sustainability”.
“Brands that have a societal purpose at the heart of their positioning tend to kind of assume that therefore they are fully sustainable, which is not necessarily the case. For instance, Dove is focusing its purpose very much on body positivism, which is fantastic. But does that make the brand as a whole sustainable? No, of course: it says nothing about plastic pollution or environment, or how they treat the stakeholders in the supply chain,” he explained.
The other side of the coin is “fantastically sustainable businesses” whose best way to market may not be to talk about sustainability. Here, Lambert echoed Linderborg’s views: “It's also a mistake that I see very often, especially in companies that are very sustainability minded: they think that everybody is like them, and that the only thing that people care about is sustainability, which is also not true. “You really have to understand what moves people and how you can connect that to the genuine things that you are doing about sustainability,” he said.
The subtle art of sustainability-driven marketing campaigns
Bolton Food and Tri Marine’s Chief Sustainability Officer Luciano Pirovano used to be the firm’s CMO, and as such, he believes communicating about sustainability is crucial.
For instance, Bolton has been running an educational marketing campaign with its NGO partner WWF since 2019, to push mothers with children to buy more sustainable tuna.
“We have a cartoon with a young lady called Ondina, talking with the ocean about what sustainable fishing means, about the threats facing the ocean and all our commitments,” Pirovano explained during the webinar.
The campaign has resulted in stronger brand bonding and loyalty for Bolton – a result Pirovano is particularly proud of. But agreeing with the marketing team on the right tone of voice was not easy.
“Generally speaking, marketing wants to say: ‘I'm the best one’. But obviously in sustainability, you need to be humble, and sustainability is a journey. At the beginning, when we talked with marketing about the ocean campaign, it was very difficult, but now they understand how it works and it’s much easier.
“When you do this kind of communication, you cannot be too aggressive. For instance, we had a very interesting project sharing educational material about sustainable fishing in elementary schools, and at the beginning, marketing wanted to put a huge logo on the materials – and we said no: it’s not advertising. The level of branding we have is very delicate,” he explained.
For him, collaboration with marketing, in the form of regular meetings and honest conversations, is key to finding the right language, the right tone of voice, and to manage the complexity that is behind sustainability.
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