Sustainable businesses must walk the talk

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Should the practice of branding be different for businesses striving to be sustainable? Chances are about half the readers of this column will say “yes” and the other half “no.”

That’s what my partners in the Sustainable Branding Collaborative of Portland found in a survey of sustainability advocates in business. About half said branding is branding: The pursuit of sustainability shouldn’t alter branding practices that have been honed over many years. The other half felt companies striving to be sustainable need to place a greater emphasis than conventional branding does on authenticity, honesty and “walking the talk.”

Why does this question matter? Because sustainability is a way of conducting business — for most companies, a much different way. Just ask firms such as Walmart, whose embrace of sustainability has caused profound change in how they and their suppliers operate.

The question then is whether those changes should also apply to the practice of branding. I’m among the half that believes it does.

A new KPMG study fuels my belief. It found “enhancing brand reputation” to be the number one business driver for sustainability among the surveyed companies. Leaders of those businesses would do well to remember that reputations can be just as easily damaged as enhanced when leaning on sustainability for brand value. BP, anyone?

BP relied on conventional branding — where the mantra is creating “an emotional connection” — to suggest the company was moving beyond petroleum. In branding, the job of connecting emotionally is typically left to marketing and advertising. History suggests that works for many product categories where competitive differentiation is scant and great advertising is their only hope of making consumers care.

Once a company starts hanging its hat on sustainability, however, the rules change. Branding is no longer a game of emotions alone. It becomes a game of facts and emotions. That takes the practice of branding outside the narrow zone of marketing and advertising and into the broad realm of operations and employee engagement to ensure sustainability practices are, in fact, implemented.

Respondents to our survey repeatedly mentioned transparency, honesty and authenticity as traits that must be present in businesses touting sustainability. In other words, let your walk lead your talk.

Conventional branding is communications-driven. And it’s not a given that those who own the message also own the truth of their business practices. The result is widespread greenwashing in which the message overstates or, worse, deceives.

Those responsible for a sustainable brand must be vigilant about facts. Customers today are skeptical of green claims, to say the least. A survey released in March found only 7 percent of citizens polled in the U.K. believe what companies are communicating about their actions to reduce climate impacts.

When it comes to sustainability, actions truly speak louder than words. If you want to build a business reputation for social and environmental responsibility, the solution is relatively obvious: Be responsible. Then document as specifically as possible what you’re doing and what you’ve accomplished. If the facts don’t tell a good story, then do more, measure the results and let your story wait.

As brands embrace sustainability the onus shifts from a promise communicated to a promise kept. Authentic and transparent behavior displaces clever advertising as the primary source of emotional connections. And brand reputations get built one fact at a time.

Conventional branding engages marketing to build an image. Sustainable branding engages the entire organization to deliver an experience that is distinct, relevant and rooted in sustainability. Consider these 10 steps to build your sustainable brand:

1. Assess organizational brand and sustainability: Develop an accurate baseline appraisal of how customers, employees and other stakeholders perceive your business, how you stack up against your competition and how far you’ve gone in implementing sustainable practices.
2. Review Mission: A great brand takes its cue from an extraordinary mission. Does your mission inspire or gather dust?
3. Identify Sustainable Branding Team: Involve representatives from across your business in defining your brand. Don’t leave it to marketing alone.
4. Define Brand Identity: Get clear on who you are as a business. What do you stand for? And how does that create competitive distinction and customer relevance? Do you want sustainability to lead your brand or live in the background?
5. Engage Employees: Get your employees on board with your new brand. Ask them to identify how they and their groups can deliver the experience your brand promises.
6. Produce Brand Marketing Plan: Determine how you will create and keep customers through the communications and presentation of your brand identity.
7. Produce Sustainability Plan: A sustainable brand is built on sustainable business practices. Determine how far you are willing and able to go with implementing sustainability in the short and long term.
8. Execute Sustainability Strategies: Prevent greenwashing by not letting marketing charge ahead of your sustainability practices. Walk first, then talk.
9. Execute Brand Marketing Strategies: Balance your natural enthusiasm for storytelling with a resolve to portray your business as it is, especially when it comes to sustainability.
10. Measure, Report and Adjust: Sustainable brands celebrate what they do well, hold themselves publicly accountable for their shortcomings and continuously strive to do better.

Rich Bruer is principal of R.Bruer Company, a branding and strategic communications firm in Portland serving environmentally and socially responsible businesses and organizations.