Revolt London

COP29 starts this week, and it should be the pivotal opportunity to secure funding for a ‘course correction’ on global climate action. However, the signs are not hopeful, and marketers will be scratching their heads wondering how their brands should show up against a backdrop of concerns.

This year’s COP is held in Azerbaijan, a nation whose President calls oil and gas a ‘gift from God’. A nation that has also faced accusations of using their hosting duties to ‘peacewash’ their global image as they engage in military aggression against neighbouring Armenia. What’s more, this COP is dubbed the ‘finance COP’ but leaders at major banks such as Bank of America, BlackRock and Deutsche Bank will be skipping it. The US elections held five days before – are cited as one of the reasons, due to the uncertainty on the path forward for the world as a result of a new Trump presidency.

And so COP29 will be another event in an era of ‘wait-and-see’, where global uncertainties have stagnated climate action. An era that has gripped businesses too. Sustainability initiative investment remained flat between 2022 and 2023, representing less than 1% of businesses’ total revenue in 2023 (Capgemini, 2024) despite the clear business case and growing climate crisis.

This doesn’t mean businesses are not hard at work. Currently, sustainability teams are updating their strategies and goals for the next five years, trying to evolve their narratives so they resonate in the current context. However, we can no longer wait for the perfect conditions for action. Otherwise, the UN’s Decade of Action will turn into a lost decade. We believe there are three things marketers can do to help their sustainability teams and businesses navigate these next five years.

NEW GOALS, NEW ACTION

In a spirit of optimism, many businesses set bold stretch targets across a broad range of issues. This certainly drove some positive action, however as progress proves harder than hoped, goal setting is swinging back to what can practically be achieved across a focussed set of issues. This transition presents a challenge for marketers having to communicate new goals. Any communication must be formed through the lens of what has caused your business to create new goals in the first place:

If you’ve set the right goal, but you’re not going to hit it in time: By transparently explaining the obstacles you faced and the complexities in solving the problem at hand, you can lay the foundations for new goals to be announced.

If you’ve set the right goal, but you might never hit it: Businesses can recommit new investment to solve the problems in the way of your goal, or use it to declare the progress you’ve made as the best possible outcome your business can achieve today. From this, it can allow for a shift in energy and investment to a new, better area of focus.

If you’ve set the wrong goal in the first place: Here the instinct to stay quiet is greatest. A better approach is to be transparent about why the goal was wrong in the first place, and announce a new, better action that will take its place.

FEWER, BIGGER BETS, communicated well

As businesses create their new sustainability goals, they should remember that they serve as a reason to believe in their business’s purpose. They can do this by focusing on fewer, bigger bets tied to the business’s purpose, where they have the biggest influence to create impact. A focus which allows them to be bold about the change they can make, and just as bold in how it’s communicated – a failure of many current sustainability comms.

As Peter Field’s ‘The Cost of Dull’ research shows, dull campaigns are 6.1 times less effective at growing market share than interesting ones. Switch your thinking to sustainability campaigns and the problem worsens. Underinvestment and a failure to treat them with the same creativity as the rest leads to dull comms and a marketing team that then convinces itself that ‘sustainability doesn’t sell’.

Budweiser had already communicated its own 100% Renewable Energy mission and accomplishment. They looked beyond their own business to the pubs and bars that sold their beer, setting a new goal to support their transition to renewable energy by creating their very own energy company, Budweiser Energy Collective. A marketing investment that paid back to business and planet, with over 5,000 bars signed up to serve more of their beer while bars’ renewable transitions prevented 810,000 tons of CO₂.

Mission integration for the challenges ahead

Sustainable action does not only lie in the hands of business’s sustainability teams. Professor Mariana Mazzucato’s ‘mission-oriented’ approach shows us how sustainability can be pursued by multiple actors across a business. In other words, sustainability team strategies align with wider business and marketing strategies by turning climate challenges into concrete goals that catalyse engagement, innovation and investment, with everyone pulling in one direction.

This is visible with Corona, where addressing unsustainable supply chain practices offered Corona the chance to step up and tell powerful impact stories while addressing a business risk. In China, the world’s biggest beer-drinking market which had a shortage of high-quality limes and 20% of farmers in poverty, Corona decided against importing high-quality limes into the country. Instead, they partnered with local governments and industry leaders to provide farmers with the knowledge and tools needed to grow Corona quality limes and expand their yield.

A mission-integrated approach also works externally, acting as the foundation for bold partnerships, collaborations and coalitions. DP World discovered that the temperature that frozen food is stored and transported globally can be raised from -18°C to -15°C. This could’ve been a competitive advantage, but instead DP World created The Move to Minus 15 to unite cold chain stakeholders to change the standard temperature of global frozen food, accelerating industry decarbonisation.

From the era of ‘wait-and-see’, to the era of action

Unfortunately, COP29 will likely be one for marketers and businesses to forget. But they can ensure the era of ‘wait-and-see’ ends with it, ready to place themselves at the heart of the next, an era of action.

An era of action built on new goals that involve the entire business, not just sustainability teams. A focus on fewer, bigger bets where businesses have the licence to be bold in the impact they are aiming for. We must ensure our communications are just as bold to grab the attention of consumers and win their hearts and minds, in turn building the case for more investment in sustainable action.

What will be the perfect moment for this exciting communication of new goals and commitments? COP30, held in Brazil, where all countries will unveil their new individual roadmaps, goals and commitments for climate action.