11th March 2024
2030 is looming – and with it a multitude of corporate sustainability commitments are up against the clock. For companies to have a hope of delivering them they, need to deploy their brands. They are the ones on the front line, connecting with consumers and customers, shaping attitudes and behaviours. BUT we must give them the right tools to succeed so they can step up to plate as a united force and deliver the ultimate corporate sustainability vision and strategy.
However, implementing strategies, commitments and plans at brand level presents unique and complex challenges. Group-level corporate strategies have rarely been developed with one specific brand in mind. The result – many businesses will face the challenge of retro-fitting corporate-led strategies to credibly fit individual brand needs, often with diverse ambitions, market positions, target audiences, and value propositions. With such an array of different issues, attitudes and audiences to cater for, it’s no wonder corporate sustainability strategies are failing to authentically translate at individual brand level. This misalignment is leading to disengagement with brand teams and the audiences, in particular the consumers that they are trying to engage with.
Salterbaxter has been collaborating with Group and brand level clients for the last 25 years to help develop, articulate and activate strategic sustainability frameworks. We identified six key actions to galvanise the power of brands to help deliver group visions:
1. Segment your portfolio
Corporate sustainability teams shouldn’t force a one size fits all approach but segment their brands to help focus efforts and support them to take action. It can be helpful to tier brands. ‘Hero’ brands have a significant role to play and should have a fully integrated and ownable sustainability approach (aligned to the Group strategy). ‘Supporting’ brands have an opportunity to focus on one area of the Group strategy to deliver consumer sustainability activations. And lastly ‘Backstage’ brands need to align to the Group framework, report internally but with minimal or no external communications.
2. Identify material issues at brand level
Brands can be tempted to pick a hot sustainability topic and start publicly talking about it – and risk greenwash accusations. Identifying a brand’s social and environmental material issues (those where the impacts are the greatest) across the full value chain will help to avoid this. Also helping with business planning and ensuring that the chosen issue(s) is where the brand can have the biggest impact towards the Corporate 2030 vision.
3. Give them freedom!
Let them set individual goals and ambitions. We have observed so many brands straight jacketed by rigid and broad Group strategies. Give them ‘freedom within a framework’ and the space to develop an ambition, set of goals and targets that address the brand’s unique set of material issues and business objectives – while of course laddering up to the corporate sustainability commitments. Finding the ‘white space’ for each brand can make them much more powerful and effective agents of change. It can enable them to deploy the right level of resources, set the right tone and resonate with their audiences – in particular customers and consumers. And of course, help to smash those illusive 2030 Group goals!
4. Let brands tell their story
Allow them to create a powerful narrative for their own version of sustainability hardwired to the brand essence. It needs to feel authentic and pertinent to the brand to be believable. This will get buy in and drive action internally and externally. Although it should never be the main objective, injecting the brand’s own unique personality into these communications, will ultimately be beneficial in brand building too. While making a bold and unique contribution to the collective mission.
5. Bring commercial and sustainability strategies together
Successful brands are flexible. They adapt their marketing and commercial strategies in response to changing market conditions, innovations, customers, consumers, and unforeseen global events. Sustainability strategies should have their ear to the ground too, adapting and staying relevant in a global context. Done right, a brand’s strategic, commercial and sustainability objectives should work together to deliver the business objectives and unlock growth and value.
6.Taking a bottom-up approach can make a refreshing change
Corporates often don’t take their brands into consideration when designing Group strategies – we’d suggest a different approach. We recommend engaging brands at the start of creating a corporate sustainability strategy. Getting them to feed into the process in shaping or evolving a Group strategy. This will focus and galvanise everyone – across Group and brands – to take ownership and bring together seismic action!
Corporate sustainability teams can’t afford to leave their brands behind, disconnected and heading off in different, incohesive directions. Brand-level sustainability initiatives that bear no correlation to overarching corporate objectives are at best weak, but almost certainly missing a trick. Seize the opportunity to attract brand teams and get behind one vision. The odds are, you are much more likely to hit those looming 2030 targets.