Last year, I ran a workshop for a client. Participants included c-suite executives, sales leads, and marketing functions. The topic was how the company could more effectively and consistently tell its sustainability story, and specifically how it could do so in a way that directly connects with its customers’ needs and interests.
It was a fascinating workshop, not least because this was a company whose core product has strong sustainability credentials. Yet it turned out that their sales team — despite knowing that the topic was important to their customers — was reluctant to speak on the subject, mostly for fear of getting things wrong.
Here’s a (paraphrased) summary of what I was told:
“I don’t really talk about sustainability at all, if I can help it. I talk to our clients about pricing, performance, reliability — and then I connect them to our ESG team if they want to talk carbon emissions, or whatever. That’s really not my area of expertise.”
I’ve thought about that workshop a lot. Publications ranging from the New York Times to Teen Vogue have been reporting on “greenhushing” in recent years — the trend of companies staying silent or underplaying their sustainability credentials. (Brag alert: according to Adweek, I am responsible for co-coining the term.)
Typically, this discussion has framed the practice as a top-down decision that was intentionally made and informed by a defined corporate strategy and a nuanced understanding of the implications. But based on my conversations with clients, that is often not the case.
The human element of greenhushing
As evidenced by the participants in my workshop, the decision to ‘greenhush’ can be more organic and distributed, rather than a centralized directive. In fact, it can often be driven by uncertainty or a lack of clarity. A recent BBC article hints at this type of more unintentional greenhushing:
“Last year, researchers at the University of Portsmouth and the University of Bath in the UK examined hundreds of hotels and hospitality businesses and found that greenhushing was rife — with few of the firms talking much at all on their public social media channels about their environmental initiatives.”
What’s interesting about the research the BBC article pointed to is that it looks beyond corporate-level communications strategy, to how that strategy (or lack of it) is filtering through to the managerial level.
“Managers might think that sustainability is an important part of the business,” says Marta Nieto-Garcia, a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Portsmouth and one of the researchers on the project. “But the way they communicate their policies isn’t clear. [...] They might be worried that they can’t quantify, say, exactly how much energy used by their hotel is being produced by solar panels. If they don’t have the data, they’ll be reluctant to talk.”
Lack of clarity means missed opportunities
While the example here stems specifically from the hotel industry, we hear about similar challenges across the companies we work with. Whether it’s a Sustainability Director worrying about how retail associates are selling, or not selling, the sustainability virtues of their products, or a VP of ESG trying to get clarity of what claims are being made in RFP responses and research grant applications, the common theme is that it is really, really hard to maintain control of your narrative once the rubber hits the road.
What’s especially challenging about this conundrum is that the risk can encompass both greenwashing and greenhushing, sometimes in the very same organization. Sales teams, for example, might be feeling under pressure to meet customer expectations, and run the risk of greenwashing by making claims that can’t be substantiated by evidence. Meanwhile, other team members may be reading about the latest greenwashing lawsuits in the news and clam up entirely, or simply refer any conversations to a (usually) capacity-constrained ESG team. In the process, they are missing out on opportunities to differentiate.
Companies must find a way to empower their teams to communicate effectively. That means avoiding hyperbole and inaccuracy, but also figuring out what can be said — and how it can be said in a way that is clear, relevant, and actionable to the audiences you are trying to reach.
Effective communication means empowering your teams
Companies need to start thinking organization-wide about how the decisions being made at the top get translated into practice.The exact way to do that is going to vary from one company to the next, but there are some common themes we see among our clients and contacts that I believe can help point the way.
1. Teach the “why” behind the “what”
It’s one thing to teach sales or marketing about the recycled content in your products, or the emissions reduction strategy you’ve just launched. Yet unless they understand the context of why it matters, who it matters to, and how and when to talk about it, there is a danger they’ll either do nothing with the information you provide or they’ll do their own thing and communicate wildly out of context. That’s why we work with clients to offer training on both the specific sustainability story of that company and also the context within which that story will be told. This includes both legal considerations around greenwashing as well as customer expectations on sustainability.
2. Set clear parameters and establish open channels
Once teams have an understanding of the context, it’s also important to provide some fairly specific guardrails. That means helping teams understand which topics they are empowered and expected to communicate on, in what kind of depth, and also when and who to go to when they hit questions, or reach the limits of their own expertise.
3. Embrace “greenblushing”
The times when brands could simply make hyperbolic green claims and get away with it are long gone. Not only are sustainability communications significantly more regulated (and litigated), but the sheer ubiquity of green claims has meant that claims of being “the greenest ever” face increased consumer scrutiny and skepticism. From Patagonia to Oatly, however, some brave communicators are taking a different path — choosing to disclose and sometimes even amplify their failures or challenges.
In fact, GRI — one of the leading sustainability reporting frameworks — requires that companies disclose their challenges and failures, as well as their successes. Exactly how consistently that is put into practice is a matter of debate, but it illustrates the importance of speaking truth. In an attempt to extend my run at establishing sustainability-focused neologisms, I call this phenomenon “greenblushing,” and I believe a good faith effort at radical transparency can generate genuine goodwill and audience engagement, while also helping others to understand the complexities and challenges of true sustainability.
4. Provide regular refreshers (and off-the-shelf prompts)
Trainings can be a useful tool for ensuring teams have the foundational knowledge to effectively tell your story. Education campaigns, however, are not a one-and-done process. That’s why we’re increasingly recommending that communications trainings are paired with a sustained internal communications plan that includes short, refresher trainings and activations. We also encourage clients to push sustainability content to sales and marketing teams in formats that are ready to use and adapt for both one-to-one and one-to-many communications. In addition to dedicated training and resources on sustainability, companies should integrate the topic throughout their existing processes, channels, practices and even performance reviews.
Ultimately, corporations are nothing but a collection of individuals. Achieving anything within these organizations requires a detailed and nuanced understanding of how a company-wide strategy is translated and put into practice. This is not exactly news. It’s true of product development. It is true of sales. And it’s true of how we communicate on sustainability, too. Sometimes, however, we forget to act on this knowledge.
Need help translating the good work you do into effective stories that will actually get told? Get in touch. That’s exactly the kind of problem that we love to work on.
