Can Marketing Save the Planet?

“Marketers need to get into the nitty gritty and learn about lifecyle assessments and how they are used, their limitations and their advantages, it might seem boring - but it’s really, really important.” In this episode, we’re joined by Oliver-Bealby-Wright, Lead, Consumers in the Energy System who formerly led Consumers International’s GreenCommerce project in 2022 on improving consumer sustainab...

“The best companies look at their ESG disclosures as a type of social contract to tell the world, why they are here, what they are trying to achieve as a business, why the world is arguably a better place because they are here. ESG disclosure is an opportunity for an organisation to show how it is creating value - financial value and non-financial value.” It was an absolute privilege to have some...

  “Incremental change isn’t going to work. It's time to move now from shallow small change to systemic change at speed.” What a way to kick off conversations with marketing pros for 2023 with not one, but three courageous pacesetters leading the way and shaking things up and shining a light on the necessary change required in the advertising industry. Lisa Merrick Lawless, Rob McFaul and Jonathan...

“Sustainability is making marketing exciting again…” Gemma and I are used to asking the questions on our Can Marketing Save the Planet podcast - but in this episode, we were interviewed for a live ‘MarketingKind Digital Fireside’ session hosted by Caroline Taylor, sustainable marketing trailblazer and former CMO at IBM - together with the wonderful founders of Marketing Kind and a great bunch of m...

  “If you double your marketing budget, you don’t necessarily get double the sales because of diminishing returns, but when it comes to carbon emissions, doubling your budget, may not just double but quadruple your CO2 emissions. As marketers we need to understand the impact of our plans and activities and consider a new set of priorities and KPIs.”   And we couldn’t agree more… As you’ll hear in...

  Do you ask yourself as a marketer, “with all the decisions I took today, did I accelerate the transition to net zero, or slow it down? If the conclusion at the end of the day is that you slowed it down - well you really don’t want to be there. Accelerating the transition is where marketers need to be.” Wim advises that all marketers should ‘put the planet in the room’ - literally. Tune in to the...

“Marketers have the largest job of the lives ahead of them. They have got to drive systemic behaviour change and move us collectively from this linear extractive wasteful, entirely unsustainable model of consumption, that our whole economy and economics is currently based on, and move people over to the sustainable circular economy.” Summarising the conversation we had with Tessa is a bit of a cha...

“How are we (marketers) going to tell a true story about climate and our impact on the climate, so that we can change the systems in our lives, so that we tread more resiliently on the earth, and are more proud of what we are doing, and as a byproduct, build better communities with more equity and fairness?" A question we explore in-depth with the marketing legend, Seth Godin. It was an absolute p...

  “Advertising can be important as it can make new ideas win and kick out old ideas – but campaigns aren’t trying to kick anything out – they’re just saying, you can have us as well. Where are the train campaigns that are aggressively going after the airliners, where are the co-owned car services that are aggressively going after the SUVs?”   Needless to say, we loved this conversation. We hear ho...

“The fossil fuel industry is an industry in decline - being outcompeted by better technologies. The narrative we’re fighting against is that solving climate change is a sacrifice. We cannot afford not to have the best marketers around the world world focused on exactly this.” A truly informative episode where we talk with Zach Stein, Co Founder of The Carbon Collective about the realities of susta...

“As an industry we can go from seriously being part of the problem to leading the solution. We’re the final piece of the machine slotting into the climate movement, speeding up solutions. But we cannot be doing that whilst we’re also serving the destruction. We can’t do both. And that tension is growing every day.” When we heard Solitaire’s Ted Talk, ‘Are ad agencies, PR firms and lobbyists destro...

“Everything is completely interconnected - we’re not separate from nature, we are nature.” It’s fair to say that Gemma and I were on a bit of a downer on the day we interviewed Rob Harrison-Plastow - Co-Founder of Time Agency, writer, and author of work in progress and soon to be published, ‘How to Be Happy at the End of the World.’ As you’ll hear, by the end of our conversation with Rob, whilst w...

“If people are aware… they can make a conscious choice.”  When enjoying a delicious chocolate treat, like most, it’s unlikely you’ve pondered where the cocoa comes from, whether farmers have been paid fairly, or whether production is fuelled by child labour and modern slavery. The reality is that 1.6M children are working illegally on chocolate farms in Africa - and a minimum of 30,000 are kept as...

“If you didn’t have a marketing budget but you still had the same KPIs what would you do?”  Great question… and one we explore further with founders of the Sustainable Marketing Compass, Alexis Eyre and Paul Randle. We learn how the question… ‘Daddy is your job good for the environment?’ - led Paul to join the 8 week Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership course, where he met fellow mar...

“If we chase perfection… we’ll lose.”  Amongst the 455 (and some) eco labels and sparkling greenwash, how’s a person to figure out which products and brands they can truly have confidence in when wanting to make more sustainable and ethical choices in their shopping trolleys?  What can we trust? What can we understand? When rushing round the supermarket aisles are we realistically going to scan QR...

Advertising and marketing has an important role to play in doing good in the world.’  Agree? Well we certainly do – and in this episode, Guy Jones and Ollie - co-founders of The Goodnet, a sustainable media organisation, share their story, of how a pre-Christmas zoom drink sparked them moving away from their roles at one of the largest UK media organisations. Following their passion and values led...

“The fastest accelerator in FMCG is the shopper… “   We loved this conversation with Helen Hepworth, Director of Collective Stories – a - Category Management and Shopper Insight Consultancy  Helen’s been an FMCG expert for many years, working with a number of retailers, with a passion for product and category management. In this conversation we discuss the role shoppers and retailers play in drivi...

“Education comes first, knowledge sparks the curiosity to change lifestyle - but what comes next? What as an individual can I do? “ When it comes to your own personal carbon impact - do you ‘know your number’? ‘Know your number’ is the mantra from the team at Giki - and in this podcast we speak to Richard Campbell, Marketing Director at Giki. We learn about Giki’s purpose, how it got started - and...

“Something always seems more achievable if someone else has done it.” In this highly practical and engaging episode, we speak to Russ Avery, CEO of Avery & Brown, a sustainable marketing agency, supporting businesses on their purpose driven path, putting people and planet on par with profit. When it comes to supporting businesses to be a practical force for good, Russ and team are very much walkin...

“We can’t be naive about the the cost of climate action, but the value of climate action is the key thing Carbon Literacy brings clarity to.” Before you dive in to take a listen to the podcast to learn more about The Carbon Literacy Project and why being carbon literate offers a much needed cultural shift - embedded into our everyday lives and thinking, giving all of us a meaningful carbon instinc...

“Our demand for new IT is not driven by a real need. The result is excessive pollution and e-waste…” In this episode, we speak to Steve Haskew, Head of Sustainability and Client Engagement at Circular Computing. Circular Computing has been operating for over 30 years, providing circular IT solutions to organisations with significant hardware and ewaste concerns. Steve walks us through circularity...

“When it comes to recycling, it’s tricky for us as consumers to do the right thing - even if we have the right intentions.” In this episode, we speak to Dan Marek, co-founder of Scrapp, a climate tech start-up - helping people and businesses to reduce waste by recycling correctly. . Scrapp is more than an innovative app, supporting consumers and businesses with how to recycle efficiently, as you’l...

“If food waste was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the USA.” Too Good To Go, the social impact company who are fighting food waste, or as they put it so wonderfully on their website, “rescue magic bags of surplus, unsold food”. In this episode, we were joined by Jamie Crummie, co-founder and director who talked about why the work they do is crit...

“The focus on sustainability should be the main driver - the driver shouldn’t be that you can make a claim about it.” In this episode, we dive deeper into the Green Claims Code - speaking with Cecelia Parker Aranha, Director of Consumer Protection at the CMA (Competitions and Markets Authority). The Green Claims Code came into force in the UK in January 2022, so still pretty fertile territory. Cec...

“Stop talking about the environment, stop talking about emissions, people don’t really care about carbon emissions, it’s too intangible. Instead, marketing needs to focus on the benefits to people, aligned with people’s existing decision making frameworks and what they care about. Time to sell net zero and climate action as a gain, rather than a loss.” In this episode, we hear more wise words from...