FOUR32

Really enjoyed co-presenting a webinar with Maria Antoaneta Bogdanova of Euromonitor International on aligning sustainability brand claims with positive change. 🌍 Using latest data from Euromonitor’s Sustainability Passport platform, we explored how tracking sustainability claims performance in 25 markets helps companies build more effective sustainability comms strategies that resonate with audiences. Here are some of the key takeaways: ✅ Sustainability Claims: Last full year, 2023, 20% of global sales across 11 FMCG industries came from products with sustainable claims; products with sustainability claims are growing 1.5% faster than those without.  ✅ But Comms is Lacking: Just 10% of global businesses feel they communicate sustainability effectively.  ✅ The Sustainability Comms Cycle: Effective sustainability actions, paired with clear comms, create a positive feedback loop, driving both behaviour change and further sustainability efforts. However, the impact of claims varies, and not all resonate equally with consumers. Ongoing tracking of consumer sentiment, combined with alignment between communications and action, is essential to sustain the cycle’s effectiveness. This ensures that claims remain relevant, credible, and impactful, reinforcing trust and motivating engagement. ✅ The Claims Trio: Effective sustainability claims connect real action, tangible consumer benefits and product value. Real action ensures authenticity, avoiding greenwashing. Tangible benefits link sustainability to consumer advantage. Product value shows how sustainability aligns with or enhances core benefits. Communicating value helps justify price premiums by highlighting long-term benefits or performance. This trio addresses company efforts and consumer needs, driving decisions and broadening appeal of sustainable choices. ✅ Beyond Reputation: While 71% of companies cite reputation as their primary driver for sustainability investments, this narrow focus can limit impact. Shifting to a transformative mindset, one that prioritises systemic change, could unlock greater innovation, foster resilience, and drive more meaningful progress. Sustainability should be seen not just as a reputational asset, but primarily as a pathway to safeguarding the planet, protecting nature, and benefiting society, while also driving long-term value creation and industry leadership. FOUR32 works with partners like Euromonitor International to help companies create data-driven sustainability narratives. We bridge gaps between action, data, and communication, transforming efforts into compelling stories that build trust and drive meaningful change. 👉 Read more and watch the webinar online here:  https://lnkd.in/gBRSHKMT? #sustainability #sustainablebrands #communicationstrategy #ConsumerTrends #ZeroWaste #sustainabilitycomms #Innovation Benet Northcote James Cooper Mark Omfalos Bethany Wright Stella Ilel-Vatcheva

“It's time to shift the approach: sustainability isn't about outperforming peers, it's about collective progress.” Stakeholders expect companies to participate actively and communicate openly, regardless of where they are on their sustainability journey. By replacing competitive silence with collaborative transparency, we can transform greenhush into a green rush. Balancing compliance and transition effort with confident communication will accelerate our shared path to a more sustainable future. Here, Sam Bowen discusses the issue of greenhush: In the face of unprecedented environmental challenges, breaking the silence isn’t just good business practice – it’s a moral imperative…

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has committed to reducing its climate impact in line with the Paris Agreement, which includes a 50% reduction of direct and indirect carbon emissions by 2030. But what can businesses do to lead the charge in addressing some of our time’s most pressing environmental challenges? Find the answers here, with top insights from Francesca Woodward, marketing director at net zero tech and consultancy firm Flotilla; Josh White, CEO and co-founder of Cano Water®; and Jonathan Jones, founder and CEO of Green Ibex Ltd; Sam Bowen, partner at FOUR32 sustainability consultancy. #esg #sustainability #olympics #olympicgames

We've been re-watching the great TED Conferences talk by Canadian forest scientist, Suzanne Simard on how trees talk to each other, share information and nutrients via an underground network of mushrooms and mycelium in order to thrive as a community. Turns out, trees are great at internal comms... But what about companies? Are we fostering the same level of communication and collaboration when it comes to #sustainability? Less than half (45%) of employees have never talked with their managers or supervisors about sustainable practices at work, indicating a potential lack of open dialogue about #climate change and the company's response to it. This insight from Deloitte aligns with a recent (2024) study by the Institute of Internal Communication, which highlights a significant gap in how sustainability strategies are communicated within companies. Whilst a majority of internal comms managers stated their organisation has a sustainability plan, less than half (44%) said it was widely available and understood by colleagues. Just 31% felt their leaders were significantly invested in communicating sustainability topics, and a mere 16% believed their leaders role-modelled behaviours that reinforce the organisational sustainability strategy. Internal comms plays a crucial role in supporting sustainability transitions, change management, talent attraction and retention by fostering collaboration, and aligning employees with the company's purpose and goals. Moreover, it can help cultivate a culture of ‘Citizen Thinking’, as described by Jon Alexander in his book "Citizens”. This approach encourages individuals to see themselves as active participants in shaping the world around them, rather than passive consumers or subjects. As Paul Hawken and the Project Drawdown team have emphasised, every job has the potential to contribute to sustainability and the reversal of global warming. By nurturing a sense of shared responsibility and empowering employees to contribute to the organisation's sustainability efforts, companies can tap into the collective wisdom and drive of their workforce to achieve their environmental and social goals, supporting the stretched sustainability teams at the same time. At FOUR32, our Internal Sustainability Comms Audit can help organisations understand where sustainability sits within the minds of employees and senior leadership and how aligned they are. By defining an engaging internal narrative, we can help excite and engage people throughout the organisation, driving meaningful change and fostering a culture of #citizenthinking... #sustainability #internalcommunications #employeeengagement #purposedriven #citizenthinking #four32

- Over half (55%) of global GDP is dependent on nature (PwC ’23). - Nature degradation could slash UK GDP by 12% (Green Finance Institute ’24) A great report by UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) & University of Exeter has caught our eye - (thanks Rob Harrison-Plastow) on Ecosystem Tipping Points: pressures from human activities like land use change, pollution, climate change, etc. are increasing the risk of crossing "ecosystem tipping points" (ETPs) - abrupt, irreversible shifts to degraded ecosystem states. Losing these ecosystems would severely impact economies through reduced food/energy security, damages to assets like property and infrastructure, health risks impairing productivity, and more. The report states how current economic models have likely “severely underestimated ecological tipping point risks by oversimplifying ecological complexity...” If we’re aware that nature underpins much of our economic activity by providing natural resources, climate regulation, flood protection, and more, then why is it that only 3% of UK businesses monitor their risks relating to nature? This even more surprising when you consider that the UK Government has strongly signposted that it will incorporate the findings of the Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosures into law, in due course. With this in mind, business leaders should consider the following: 1️⃣ Leaders should stress test their business models against scenarios of ecosystem services being lost abruptly and irreversibly. This may require fundamentally rethinking supply chains, markets and business continuity plans. 2️⃣ Support precautionary policy action: Given the uncertainties, the report calls for precautionary policy interventions to cut financial ties to ecological tipping points now (such as deforestation), rather than reacting after tipping occurs. Businesses should anticipate and support such policies. 3️⃣ Prioritise nature on risk agendas: While climate gets more boardroom focus currently, the systemic risks from ecological tipping points mean businesses must elevate nature loss as an equally strategic issue for long-term corporate value preservation. MORE 👇 https://lnkd.in/ev2kUCab ecosystem_tipping_points_policy_report_iipp.pdf

New research released today by B Lab UK reveals that over three quarters of people in the UK (76%) believe that the law needs to change to give businesses a legal responsibility to prioritise people and the planet alongside making a profit. UK law currently requires firms to operate under a legal regime of shareholder primacy, meaning company directors too often put profit ahead of society and the environment. 45% people also said they would only invest in, and purchase goods from, companies who act in a responsible way, indicating that businesses who prioritise people and the planet have a competitive advantage!⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ #betterbusinessday

In a recent article in Forbes, Koray Köse, supply chain expert, author and former Gartner analyst, suggests traditional risk management tends to follow a "min-max" principle: comply with the minimum legal requirements or react to incidents and disruptions only to maximise focus on other business areas. Koray believes we need to create a new approach using a "max-max" principle, where maximum effort in risk management drives maximum sustainability and business outcomes. Koray emphasises how “if you wait until laws require you to implement sustainable practices, you are already behind the curve, and you can bet that some of your competitors will outperform you in the market. Look at sustainability risk management as an opportunity to do the right thing for your customers, your business and the planet with a value creation strategy focused on a higher purpose.” At FOUR32.agency, what’s key for us, is how emerging tech plays a significant role in sustainability strategy and risk management. Our work synthesises existing and new data into actionable insights which can help to inform board level decisions on sustainability issues, impacting the corporate strategy and narrative. As Koray calls this, “sophisticated simplicity”. https://lnkd.in/ejXVg8ww  Benet Northcote Rob Harrison-Plastow

Research by Deloitte last year showed us how employee activism is a significant driver of corporate action on sustainability, with 80% of C-suite leaders reporting that their employees have already impacted their sustainability plans, or soon will. Now, in an article by edie, WWF, the RSPB and the National Trust have launched a new resource that will help employees to collectively call on their employers to take more action to protect and restore nature. The platform, ‘Nature’s Workforce’, seeks to "empower staff to ask their businesses to disclose their environmental impacts and set out credible plans for change. Staff also have access to resources on sustainable pensions, and how leading businesses are factoring nature-based impacts into key decisions and contracts." Link to platform below: https://lnkd.in/eGWKqpzu

Our latest blog post - Clearing the forest of compliance https://lnkd.in/dMQwWvRF #newblogpost #sustainabilitycomms #sustainability #communications #csrd #gri #transitionplans

Strong perspective by FOUR32.agency partner, Benet Northcote on the recent Science Based Targets initiative row and what it means for green business, first published by BusinessGreen.com this week. Link to full post on our blog: https://lnkd.in/ejT8JdhX