Sustainable business and the path to taking your relationship with customers beyond the point of purchase

Michel Hogan spends her days consulting with brands on purpose, values and risk. Core to her message is making the right promises and keeping them. She’s a SmartCompany guest columnist and joins us again in 2022 as a guest judge in our Smart50 Awards. Today the talk is sustainable business. How can companies get the branding right, where should they start and how will it all be tested when things get interesting?

What’s your advice for businesses writing sustainability into their communications?

I approach brand from a lot more than a communication standpoint. Because in an organisation, the brand is related to the result, the sum total of everything you do, so it’s not just a comms issue, it’s not just a marketing issue, it’s a ‘how do you do things’ issue? 

My advice around sustainability for organisations is: how do you do things? If you’re just greenwashing, and kind of presenting a face that looks sustainable, whereas under the covers you’re doing nothing, or the minimum for what would get you anyone’s respect as someone operating in a sustainable manner, then don’t bother. Because it’ll backfire and you’ll end up in a world of hurt.

Fundamentally, saying you’re sustainable is a promise. You’re making a promise to people, to customers, and to people who work for you, people who are investing in you, that you’re doing things in a certain way. And that you care about things like the environment. But not just the environment though, because sustainability is a bigger issue than that. The environment’s enough, but it can extend much more broadly. So, what is the promise that you’re making and how are you keeping it? Is really the question that I start with, and that’s particularly relevant in sustainability.

Are the businesses you work with approaching sustainability as satisfying a customer need, or are they looking inward to see how they can improve? Where’s a good place to start?

I think every business starts life and operates almost fully as an inside job. Of course you’re always being conscious of looking to meet the needs of customers, otherwise you’re not in business anymore, but if it doesn’t come from a held belief, from something that you care about, that matters to you, as the people leading the organisation as a whole, then there’s little chance that you’ll keep it up. There’s not much chance that it’ll be something that does weave into all those nooks and crannies and corners of how you operate. And as a result of that, eventually the customers will get wise and they’ll go looking for somebody who does.

When I’m advising organisations, it’s always ‘let’s take it back’, you know? Let’s start with your identity, what matters most? How do you do things, and what’s important to you? And then, what does that look like, how do we put that to work?

And for organisations who pick sustainability, or they care about the environment, or they care about the bottom line or they care about the ESG, or whatever their particular poison is, once they pick that, great, let’s look that through the industry, what does that look like for your products and services, and how does that then connect to something that your customers also care about? Because it’s that connection that actually creates the value over the long term. 

When I’m buying something, a product or a service from a company, one of the things I’m looking at more and more often, is ‘Is that something that I care about too?’

And then, if that’s true, then great, you have actually started to forge the base for something that is sustainable as a relationship rather than it being a more transactional or just a single point of purchase.

The pandemic has been challenging for a lot of people. When times get tough, some of the things people did, that were really important to them, become discretionary really quickly. That’s going to be something that’s interesting to look at. Is sustainability something that becomes one of those nice-to-haves when, you know, ‘I have to stretch the dollar and I can’t pay that little bit extra for things that were sustainably sourced, locally made, or whatever it is.’

What does that say about our own overall commitment as a community to this idea and where it sits in our priorities as being important.

What about activism? Many brands are investing in sustainable products and supply chains. What about the next step, sending a message to governments or institutions? Is there space for it?

I think, again, there is room. Around these types of ideas there is a tendency to apply a little bit of an ‘all or nothing’ judgement to organisations, where it’s like ‘OK, unless you’re doing it all you’re not doing anything.’ Which I think is really dangerous .

For example, some years ago, Walmart in the US decided to change light bulbs in its range. Just about overnight, single handedly, dropping the US’ carbon emissions, just by deciding to change lightbulbs. When you’re an organisation that has that kind of reach and that kind of an impact, even small decisions can move things in the right direction. And I think we need to make room for that in the conversation and not, to be incredibly boring in my analogy, throw the baby out with the bathwater and say ‘if you’re not doing it all you’re not doing anything.’ I think those judgments are dangerous.

There’s room, I think, for that, if we look at it as a spectrum, as a recognition, as well, that if I’m a mum and pop organisation with 20 employees, my discretion, and my ability to make decisions and the things I’m changing and the things I’m addressing may be the same systems that a big bank is wrestling with, but the solutions and the remedies are completely different. I think you’ve got to make room for that in the conversation.

When I’m working with organisations and when I’m advising them, I always start with, ‘OK, if you say that being sustainable is important to you, what is the risk? If you’re saying that this is what we care about, these are our values, this is our purpose, what is the risk to those people, to those things, if you’re not making promises that you can keep, if you’re making the wrong promises? I always start there by asking, what is your capacity to keep this promise that you’re making?

What are you promising and how are you keeping it?

Michel Hogan joins the Smart50 program again in 2022 as a guest judge for the Sustainability Award category.