Combatting boring sustainability stories

In this insightful episode, hosts Laura and Simon discuss sustainability with Joss Ford, founder of Enviral, a communications agency dedicated to combatting boring sustainability stories. Joss shares his journey into sustainability, the challenges of effectively communicating it, and the importance of integrating it into business strategies. 

They explore the dynamics within NGOs and corporations, the balance between progress and perfection, and the impact of engaging creative approaches. The conversation also touches on the importance of addressing absolutist positions and fostering collaboration for meaningful change in the sustainability landscape.

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Transcript

Simon: Hi, I’m Simon Garnett.

Laura: And I’m Laura Halliday.

Simon: And this is the Persuasion Game, the Forge’s podcast all about the art of persuasion.

Laura: Each episode we connect with marketers, business leaders and beyond to learn how they use persuasion to influence their consumers, convince their stakeholders and drive their business forward.

Laura: Simon, hello

Simon: Hi Laura, how you doing?

Laura: I’m very good thank you. And I think I’m having a good day, but you’re having an even better day — because today we are talking about a subject that is really close to your heart both personally and work wise. We’re talking about sustainability.

Simon: I was speaking to someone the other day who was making the point that we’re all in sustainability now. We might not have the word in our title, we might not necessarily want to be — for some people — but it is just the reality. This is part of our job: to find the way to be persuasive, to help consumers be more sustainable in their lives, and to ensure that our products and our services and whatever it is that we’re marketing is being part of the solution to help us combat the most existential threat that humanity faces.

Laura: And we are seeing that a lot in the trends work we’re doing, where people are saying to brands “what are you going to do about it?” And it becomes very much a hygiene factor rather than something people are going to pat you on the back for. Jos is obviously going to talk to us about some ways that we can still bring a sense of excitement, play and wonder to that whole experience

Simon: And I’m really looking forward to that. Because I think so often this narrative can be couched in some pretty dry — or possibly even worse — depressing and difficult-to-engage-with language. And it’s a fine line between being truthful and what Robert Reed calls “hopium” — that sort of false hope that everything will be fine. And how do you get that balance right, to be able to positively persuade and encourage rather than make people just stick their head in the sand and go “well there’s nothing more I can do, I’ll just ignore it.”

Simon: On today’s episode we’re really excited to welcome Jos Ford, the founder of Enviral, a communications agency on a mission to winning the war on boring sustainability stories. They’re dedicated to helping brands gain competitive advantage through creatively, credibly and consistently communicating future sustainable brands.

Laura: Jos really is a trailblazer in the sustainability space and through his agency he helps companies not only operate more sustainably, but also transparently share their environmental impact through powerful campaigns, strategies and content. Known for his bold outspoken views on greenwashing and using media to help tackle our global challenges, he is here to share his insights on how effective communication can drive real change. Welcome Jos.

Jos: Hello. Well look at that — that’s an intro and a half, isn’t it.

Laura: Excited to talk to you today. Can you share a little bit more about your background and what it is you do?

Jos: Well you know that was a very succinct introduction. But yeah, I’m Jos, and I’m a nature lover, I’m a brand guy. I fell in love with skateboarding around the age of eight, which really got me into brands who were really up for thinking against the grain — brands that were really interested in building communities. And yeah, all centred around a sport which was built around progression. That was a really formulative time. I didn’t know it at the time, but it kind of got me into the love of art, the love of influence, and also the love of how brands can genuinely be creative.

Now most skateboarding brands aren’t massively profitable huge multinationals, but it really showed me the fundamentals of what I thought brand building could be. I went to university, studied environment and business, and in the second year of university was daydreaming in a lecture and came up with Enviral. And yeah, long story short, that’s where we are now.

Laura : And how is it that you engage with the people you help, and how do you help them?

Jos: So we do strategy, creative and advertising, and we’ve got a series of partners who kind of fill in the rest. So we are a full-service communications agency — as you mentioned in the intro — on a mission to win the war on boring sustainability stories.

We all know that sustainability is everything — it’s the fundamentals to human existence. I think it’s the fundamentals to the future relevance of business. And the benefits that sustainable brands get if they credibly, creatively and consistently communicate what they do — that’s higher than just profit — yeah, it’s plentiful.

So we work with organisations who are either core sustainable brands — we work with a lot of organisations looking at carbon solutions, specifically in climate change, lots of NGOs, lots of charities — but we also work with organisations who are going through transformation. And every business and every employee on the planet is in sustainability now, whether they know it or like it. And yeah, just trying to make sure that they remain relevant and bring creativity and strategy into everything they’re doing.

Laura: So you’ve got two groups of people — one where you’ve got the NGOs who are more about trying to persuade other people to engage, and you’re galvanising their strategies. And then you’ve got presumably a group where perhaps they’re looking to understand a bit more about it, trying to find ways to engage. Should we start by talking about the NGO end — what are the kind of persuasion challenges that you find with those kind of audiences, and how do you help unlock their ability to persuade others?

Jos: NGOs or charities have got a core mission to be more credible and to do more things. Often the persuasion tactics there are around the fact that they’ve got a limited budget. If they’ve got a budget of X for a year and they want to be really prevalent over five moments in time, it dilutes the budget. The conversation we often have is around — well, let’s prioritise budget around two of those moments, because you’re going to get the best bang for your buck getting in front of your core audience but also outside of the echo chamber to new audiences, rather than blending in over five moments in time.
And that conversation doesn’t necessarily always look like a persuasion tactic — it’s actually around facilitating them with knowledge that we have from other NGOs and other conversations, on how to have conversations internally. For different people — say in marketing — to speak to other departments within the company to say “actually I think we are going to get a better ROI if we just focus our spend here.” So yeah, not really persuading them to be better or bigger, but perhaps

Laura: amplifying their efforts and giving them the right tools to have those conversations.

Jos: Exactly.

Laura: And then I suppose it’s slightly different in a corporation, where that’s not necessarily as baked in.

Jos: Yeah, totally. Every business, no matter where it was founded or what heritage it has, is now in sustainability. And every employee is in sustainability whether they like it or they don’t — or if they might not even know they’re in it just yet.

The reality is the transition that’s happened in the last decade since founding Enviral — the first part of that decade was “let’s just not work with people and just work with the good guys.” Whereas the second part of the journey I think is more around — well, how do we help the biggest organisations, with heritage, with customers, with audiences, with employees, with resources, money and time, to credibly transform?

And yeah, as you say, the persuasion tactics are different. It’s often around the fact that they’ve either got a want or a need to transform. And I think the knowledge of why they want to credibly communicate sustainability is at the heart of the conversation.

And actually what’s really interesting is that decision makers who have got teenage children are often the ones who have an internal family pressure which makes them want to invest more or be a bit bolder

Laura: The lobbyist is coming from inside the house.

Jos: Yeah exactly! So one of the questions we always kind of have at the start is “tell me a bit about what’s outside of work — you got any kids?” Because that often can lead to us doing bigger and bolder campaigns, which is an interesting insight.

But the reality is, no matter if it’s a want or a need to do things properly, you can’t do that if it’s not at the centre of the DNA of the organisation. And you know, we’ll get briefs that have been totally created by the sustainability department or the marketing department or from a CEO. But it needs an outside third-party organisation to actually bring these departments together. Not just sustainability and marketing departments — who, I don’t know why, but they really are struggling to communicate with each other on mass at the moment — but to look at the entire workforce. And that’s where that authenticity often comes from.

Simon: There’s a really interesting analogy that you’ve talked about there — within your client base there are different motivations. There are some who are very engaged and absolutely pushing this, and there are others for whom it’s possibly more of a “don’t necessarily want to, but absolutely need to.” Through to, I’m assuming, some people who are positively recalcitrant and really pushing back against it. And of course that mirrors the reality outside of business — the population at large.

And one of the challenges — one of the criticisms that can get levelled at sustainability initiatives and communications — is that there’s a bit of an echo chamber. That they’re talking to themselves, not engaging more broadly. What successes have you had, what have you learned about how do you engage a wider broader audience to drive real scale change?

Jos: Yes, like — we could talk for a whole podcast series on this topic alone. The reality is that in 2018, 90% of climate communications went to just 20% of people. And it has changed — we’ve had these fundamental moments. A Swedish teenage girl creating a sustainability movement that has effectively turned climate into the largest social movement that humans have ever had. We’ve had moments like COP26 where we suddenly saw brands putting their money where their mouth is a little bit — at least for a few months. But that often is just a moment in time and it dilutes very quickly.

So it’s very easy for you to perhaps do a certain set of initiatives as an individual — like give up meat for a month in January or cycle to work two days a week — and that’s great. But the reality is when you’ve got a media narrative, or just a realism narrative that what you’re doing over here when you’ve got big businesses doing what they’re doing over here is just insurmountable — that friction, especially in the last couple of years, has really stunted action. And it’s probably kind of divided the echo chamber even further than it used to be, which is a real shame.

Tell me the next time we’re going to have a Swedish teenager strike on a Friday afternoon and create a global movement — it’s unexpected, and it led to some really monumental things.

I know you asked me about successes, but let’s just talk about the general industry for a section. We’ve got everyone within sustainability flying a flag for their own kind of mission, calling each other out — people fighting for the meat-free movement, people fighting for a plastic-free movement, or regenerative farming and biodiversity net gain saying that they’re not doing it right. And that just causes confusion within that 20% that we talked about. That perspective of progress over perfection is something that as an industry we really suffer from, and we need to somehow figure out a way to unchain that.

Simon: I think that’s absolutely fascinating because I recognised that just yesterday. I posted something — an article I had written — and pretty much within a few hours I had someone else basically arguing for a slightly different version, telling me I’d misrepresented or misunderstood something. And it was this strangely weird dynamic where you’re kind of like — these are two sides of the same coin. We both want the same thing, we’re trying to do the same thing. And I see this all the time. Why do you think that is — there’s almost a conflict, a desire to sort of outdo somebody? Why do you think that is?

Jos: Well, I think it’s just society as it is at the moment. If we look at Brexit it’s basically 50/50. It feels like sustainability rightly should be black and white — it’s either you should do something or you shouldn’t. Or it’s this perspective of like “you’re either perfect, or just don’t be involved at all.” If we look at vegetarianism or veganism — or people who take flights — it’s like “you either don’t fly at all, or you just don’t care about sustainability.” Or “you’re either totally vegan, or you’re cheating if you’ve just had cheese once.” If that happens, it’s like the worst thing in the world. There’s no flexibility in the fact that this is about progress, not perfection.

And the problem that we’ve got — I really think in the workplace — is that gets amplified even further. Because individuals all have their own personal missions, and if certain things aren’t ticked at a specific level for those individuals or to the expectations of the business or the client, then it’s not perfect and therefore somebody’s not winning and therefore it’s deflated even before the thing actually goes out. And that’s something that really really needs to be looked at in this industry.

Laura: So I think one thing that’s really interesting — we’ve seen in a lot of the data that gets presented to us — is one of the challenges that consumers don’t always want to engage with sustainability as a hook, as a reason to buy. You know, often we hear data saying 75% of the population think it’s a great thing to add, but it’s not enough of a reason to buy the product. And I think there are some brands that really struggle with that, and are trying to look for ways to actually wake people up, engage them and make them care a bit more. Is that something you can think of some interesting examples of in terms of how people have been motivated?

Jos: Yeah, 100%. And look — as much as I’ve just had a bit of a doom and gloom message over there, we’ve just got to remember that this space — and the ten years that I’ve been running this business and been interested in sustainability communications — it’s just changed so rapidly in such an amazing way.
I mean, we’ve worked with loads of different organisations from high street banks to Greenpeace. And the general elements of success I think boil down to a few ingredients. One of them is around vulnerability. That vulnerability message of “we’re on a journey, we’re not quite perfect” — that’s a bit 2020 now. And it’s great that that narrative is there, that you’re not patting yourself on the back for the small achievements without actually addressing the elephant in the room. But I do really believe that in the 2010s, where you had that big motivational ambition — that target, “this is what the future is going to be, this is where our company is going to be by 2050” — that has actually been really really important to the sustainability movement. Because it’s brought momentum and energy and optimism and imagination into the space.

But now there’s a reality of — holy hell, how do we do this by 2030 or 2050? Because it’s really expensive, it’s really not that streamlined. All of the people who are the solutions to actually meeting those targets — there’s not investment into them at the moment, and they’re all building the plane whilst flying it. So there’s this big lofty ambition over here and a set of realism that’s come into the fold now.
And I think the vulnerability now is to say — okay, this is the reality of the scenario, we tried but we didn’t try hard enough, but the ambition is still there. So how are we going to do it? And the reality is we’re going to do it by these steps, in these timeframes, but we’re going to need more than just ourselves to do this. And speaking in that very open, vulnerable narrative — in a human lens — to me is where certain organisations, especially B2B organisations, are doing it really really well.

And then on the other side of the coin, when we’re looking at more mission-driven organisations, the ingredient to engaging wider audiences is around actually including them. So we ran a campaign three years ago — which we also ran this year — with Greenpeace called The Big Plastic Count. It’s a citizen science campaign which effectively means you get citizens to take part in a study to count household plastic consumption for one week in May, and this year one week in March, and to curate real life statistics and data that could be taken to the government, taken to supermarkets, to show that this is a live audit of consumption.

We had one in every 250 households in the UK take part for one week in May. We made it really creative, we had a bit of gamification to it, it was really inclusive. The content we were creating really wanted to make sure it appealed to households up and down the country. We made it super family-focused, we brought it into schools and universities. And it created a load of people wanting to say “I want to do my bit, I want to tell the government to do something about it.” And it educated individuals on things like much-needed plastic depository systems — where you put value on plastic — which loads of countries around the world have, by the way.

And all of this data was taken to both parties. But nothing has really happened. The people who can actually do something don’t listen. How demotivational is that? It feels like where there have been some really successful communications campaigns and behaviour change campaigns, often you know it gets 80 to 90% of the way there, but the real crux of it doesn’t happen because there are certain parties who are in control and in decision-making that perhaps aren’t doing their bit when everybody else is doing theirs.

Simon: Jos, one of the things we would love to hear from you is your perspective around the idea of sustainability marketing. It’s a concept that obviously is talked about an awful lot, and at the Forge we’re increasingly actually a believer that that notion is slightly outdated and instead we should be talking about marketing in a sustainability world. I’d just be interested in your perspective on that.

Jos: Yeah, again really really big question. I totally agree with you. Sustainability shouldn’t be the primary USP for an organisation — it should be embedded deeply in the organisation’s values. Brands like Ben & Jerry’s or Tony’s Chocolonely — you can tell I’m a big sweet tooth there — or a Finisterre-esque brand, all the way to a brand like Velux Windows on a B2B perspective — they live and breathe sustainability and they’re all very vulnerable that they haven’t completed it, because it’s not something that you can complete. And they communicate within their marketing mix a higher purpose as part of their marketing mix, but not as their entirety.

What I would say — which is really interesting — is that I believe sustainability needs to be communicated more within a typical business language. And if we are looking at the responsibility for business specifically, which is very native around things like growth and competitive advantage — why not look at sustainability from a competitive sustainability lens? And show that companies who do properly focus on ESG get greater market share, get better talent, get better investment opportunities, and effectively the long-term brand building is much more effective.

Simon: It’s a really interesting analogy, isn’t it — your big point here is around integration. What I’m hearing from you is: stop seeing sustainability here and business over there as binary choices, do one or do the other. And what I’m hearing from you is that the persuasion is — let’s integrate it, let’s see these as two sides of a fundamental relationship between them. And those organisations that do that, that buy into that, that see it — they’re the ones that really get that competitive advantage. Because it’s not a bolt-on, it’s not an afterthought, it’s not something extra that you do — it is absolutely integral to everyday behaviour as a business.

Jos: Yeah. And let’s bring some creativity and some fun and some joy back into it as well. It’s a really really heavy thing — looking at effectively solving the biggest global challenges on our planet. But people are fed up with the doom and gloom message. We need to show the kind of prosperity that comes with the solutions that exist. We need to be able to show that actually it can create much more vibrant, fun, enjoyable societies if taken seriously. And I think communications is absolutely fundamental to that — and transporting a viewer or a specific audience to this future world and showing what’s possible is a phenomenal thing. Communications has just got such an amazing role to play in that.
But I would say that sustainability on the whole is typically pretty boring. I worry that organisations are either scared to talk about it so they don’t talk about it at all, or it’s perhaps moved from this big lofty “imagine a future 2050” motivational message to a bit more of a realism message — which is a bit more on the nose of like “what are we actually doing” — and that’s not that sexy, that’s not that interesting.
So what we’ve got to do is kind of meet in the middle. We’ve got to lean on creatives. Every time I speak to creatives — whether graphic designers, creative directors, videographers, artists — I’m always blown away at their ability to communicate certain narratives in ways that really connect us. And good marketing companies are in the business of making people feel things. And if we can do that with a bit more of a light-hearted — even silly, I would even say — narrative, it breaks those boundaries of “oh, sustainability is only for them and I’m not perfect so I’m not even going to get involved.”

Laura: I think that taps into something really interesting. If you look at marketing maybe 20 years ago around sustainability, there was quite a lot of humour. I’m remembering like Bloo Water had a whole thing about the penguins being super cross with us. And I think now that would be seen as really inappropriate and crass — it’s just not of the time anymore. I suppose the convergent view is there’s quite a lot of shame and shaming going on, and as you said, calling people out.

Simon: So I’m really interested in that through the lens of persuasion, because there is a strongly held view within the Clean Creatives movement — which is that there are certain businesses that we do not work with and nobody should work with them. And one of the points we’ve been talking about throughout this narrative is about the importance of trying to get away from absolutist positions, because absolutist positions aren’t necessarily the most persuasive. They encourage people to shut down, to feel shame. I’m interested in how you feel about those discussions and how do we address that challenge in the most constructive way — which is going to get people to really engage and consider, and not just shut down and retrench to an established view.

Jos: Yeah, and it’s an area of concern for me where 590 agencies still want to work with fossil fuel brands when they haven’t got their own sustainability departments in a place which are already credible.
I am a big big believer of the biggest organisations transforming. I know full well the investments that the likes of Primark are making within the transparency of their supply chain — it’s actually really fascinating what organisations are doing. You know, if you put five of the biggest players in our space together in the sustainability consultancy and communication space, all kind of going into one mass holding company, and you go to somebody like Coca-Cola — Coca-Cola’s sustainability department is bigger than all of those five organisations put together.

There are good people in bad companies. But what there isn’t is a credible link between client and agency on a fossil fuel level agenda of transformation that is credible enough. I think gone are the days where employees — especially — can see through the decision makers who say that it’s fine still to work with these types of brands when they don’t have the expertise to actually transform them.

Simon: Thank you — brilliant and very interesting and valuable perspective. To play devil’s advocate — if you did put together the five biggest sustainability organisations as you say, and you do have that expertise in that theoretical world — should that agency then work with fossil fuel companies? Because is it about the skills within the agency, or is it about the intent within the client?

Jos: It’s a really interesting narrative, right? Because again, it’s where things used to be very much black and white. Now we have a level of realism — we’ve gone past 1.5 degrees pre-industrial levels, we’re on course for at least three if not four degrees. Our human civilisation will be wiped out, it’s as simple as that.

And the reality is — where is the line for the best people on this planet, the best scientists, the best transformation coaches or consultancies? Where’s the line of saying “actually we need a super group now.” And it just feels like it needs a level of genuine commitment from fossil fuel boards and investors — who are effectively looking for high yielding returns — to say “okay, we’re up for a risk now to completely transform our organisation. Because we’re not dependent on the shareholders’ decision to say we want to change. We’ll put it into a legal contract that we are going to change. But we need the best people to guide us on that transformation.”

That hasn’t been done. That needs to happen. I think if that did happen, you would totally see the best people in this space stand up and look at how the money, expertise and talent of the likes of the Shells and the BPs and the Saudi Aramcos of the world could be utilised for the renewable revolution. And that’s a very exciting thing. But actually in the system that we’re in at the moment — which is very much a capitalistically driven system — it feels like there would have to be some level of intervention at a higher level to basically either legally make that a requirement, or some superhero CEO who can really beneficially persuade lots of different stakeholders to change.

Simon: Incredible. Thank you so much Jos, it’s been really really interesting.

Laura: Amazing. Thank you Jos for your time, really enjoyed the discussion.

Jos: Thank you guys. Really nice way to spend a Friday.

Simon: So Laura, another great conversation. What stood out to you?

Laura: I think what was just really well articulated is something that I’ve heard Margaret Atwood talk about as well — this idea that sometimes we tend to talk about climate change, and there is almost a sense of “well, that’s weather isn’t it.” I think if you think about it as an “everything change” — which is what Margaret Atwood calls it — and you think about how that’s going to impact society, how that’s going to see the rise of populist movements, how that’s going to affect migration — you get a really strong sense of skin in the game, and that you’re going to be affected by this and it’s something that you really need to think about.

Simon: I think for me, the thing that really resonated was the risk in these things of getting to a very absolutist position that encourages us to pull things apart rather than make connections. It encourages us to say “what are you doing about that thing?” rather than recognising the interconnectedness of these things.

For me there was some evocation of one of the things that I always think is just a human reality when it comes to global and local marketing teams — which is if you’re in a local team, you’re just hardwired to focus on the 10 to 15 to 20% that’s different about your market. If you’re in a global role, your vested interests are in the 80 to 85 to 90% that’s the same. And I think we can see some parallels with this — if we really want to engage and persuade and bring people together, we’ve got to search for the commonalities and not be purist and absolute about the micro differences that are frankly window dressing in comparison to the big issue. And trying to find that common ground, trying to make the connections where we are seeing things in the same way — that is so integral for persuasion.

Simon: And I guess also to your point — trying to find the right level of progress versus perfection. You know, something I’m genuinely really worried about is the green hushing concern. Green washing gets so much noise, but I think green hushing ultimately could actually be the slightly bigger concern. Because unless we’re sharing those positive stories of progress, people lose hope and belief.

Laura: Indeed.

Laura: Thanks for listening. If you’d love to hear more from marketers, entrepreneurs and business leaders about how to use the art of persuasion to drive your business forward, make sure you’re following the podcast in your favourite podcast app. And just one last ask from us — this is a new podcast and we’d love it if you could be persuaded to help us spread the word by telling somebody else about it, leaving us a review, or even better sharing an episode on socials. Search for The Forge on LinkedIn.