Revolt London

This week, sustainability leaders descend on Colombia for Cop 16, the global UN Conference on biodiversity. While not receiving anything like the level of publicity enjoyed by Cop 29 – the climate change convention – Cop 16 will address an incredibly important issue for people and planet, with businesses set to be called upon to play a more significant role in protecting and restoring biodiversity.

Discussion will focus on biodiversity initiatives, such as the implementation of nature-related financial disclosures (TNFD), supported by the network of companies participating in Science-Based Targets for Nature (SBTN). These will result in robust targets, but similar to climate and emissions roadmaps, many of these won’t be expressed in consumer-facing language.

But many of the most pioneering and effective movements in environmental activism have been about nature: Save the whales, tree-hugging, the Silent Spring. It is time once again for brands to harness the power of nature to move us, and therefore to motivate us to action.
A new vocabulary will need to be developed to enable brands to tell powerful biodiversity stories and to help environmentally-conscious consumers evaluate their brand commitments. This vocabulary can’t be based in ecological jargon. Most consumers don’t know what “regenerative agriculture” means, and a term like “ecosystem services” isn’t going to set their hearts racing. Instead, we propose the ‘5 Ps for Nature Positive Actions’ as a framework for the next wave of sustainability storytelling.

The 5 Ps is a framework for marketers to take biodiversity commitments and turn them into pro-nature marketing narratives that build brand equity and corporate reputation. The five key areas of this framework are place, pressure, potential impact, positive action and path forward. Let’s take each one of these in turn.

1. Place

Where in the world are we? Start with setting. Nature initiatives can be on the other side of the world, or in a brand’s own backyard. Starting in a specific place brings colour, context and ‘grounds’ communications in a specific habitat rather than the abstract realm of ‘nature’.

The brewing industry’s largest environmental impact is water usage, which is why the world’s biggest brewer ABInBev invests in large-scale sustainability programs in critical watersheds like the Colombian Paramo. The company recently launched a new consumer water brand, Zalva Agua, to shine a light on its conservation work in this critical and unique ecosystem. Consumers can feel involved because the brand preserves an additional square meter for every 100% recycled bottle sold.

2. PRESSURE

What threat to biodiversity exists here? Effective storytelling requires high stakes to give the audience a reason to care, what’s already happened, happening right now, what will happen if we don’t act?

Iceland’s ‘Rang-Tan’ ad, developed in partnership with Greenpeace, brought the threat of deforestation into a little girl’s bedroom, before announcing the grocer’s decision to remove palm oil from all its own-label products. The storytelling in this ad was so powerful, it elicited over 660K petition signatures to overcome a ban from Clearcast for featuring “political issues.”

3. Potential impact

If left unchecked, what outcomes will this pressure create for species and society? This and the next ‘p’ set out what happens if we don’t act and what we can do instead.

Heinz’s ‘Picture a world’ activation brought potential impact to life in a deeply creative way: by re-imagining Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic, colourful paintings as if they had been painted 50 years from now, when 100% of the world’s soil may be degraded. The installation guided visitors on a journey to visually experience the harsh reality of a world without soil, giving the brand a platform to share its commitment to 100% sustainable ketchup tomatoes by 2025.

4. Positive impact

What nature-positive actions to relieve the pressure are happening, today? How are they implemented, and by whom?

20% of ads feature animals, and yet the advertisers featuring them often spend little to nothing on much-needed conservation projects for the wildlife whose images they wield. Until, the UNDP in partnership with major advertisers including Mars, Inc. announced “The Lions’ Share”: an initiative that sees partners contribute 0.5% of media spend to the fund for every ad featuring an animal. The funds are invested directly into conservation and animal welfare programs.

4. Path forward

How will today’s actions lead to progress tomorrow? For a corporate action to feel like a deeper transformation, it must not be a one-off. Brands must link current actions to the achievement of commitments down the road.

Given the emergent nature of biodiversity commitments, there are a few examples of best practice here. But in 2022, UK-based personal care brand Faith in Nature became the world’s first company to appoint nature to its board of directors. The position, which will be filled by a rotating ‘nature guardian’ who speaks on behalf of the natural world, was written into the company’s corporate documents in perpetuity in order to inspire other pro-nature companies to follow suit.

Nature and the stories we can tell around it hold immense potential to motivate environmental action en masse. This is because we hold our relationship with nature much more dearly than we do our relationship with the troposphere. Greenhouse gases are somewhere ‘up there.’ But how many of us managed to get through Planet Earth without shedding a tear for the baby elephant? If it has eyes, we sympathize. Nature has the power to move us, and therefore to motivate us to action.

Now is the time for brands to adopt pro-nature narratives. With them comes an untapped opportunity for growth, creating and capturing value which can then be channelled into sustainable transformation.