Finding focus - turning sustainability investment into brand value

The landscape for brands is changing rapidly, with companies facing mounting pressures from multiple stakeholders, all expecting more information and action than ever before.

Whether it’s economic downturn causing consumers to rethink the brands they buy, increased pressure from employees and prospective talent to work for a business whose values align with their own, or new mandatory sustainability reporting standards demanding more transparency than ever before, brands need to know what they stand for and why it matters.

Stand FOR something and stand OUT

Rather than dreading sustainability initiatives as profit sappers, there is an opportunity to enhance an organisation's bottom line through such initiatives. The job at hand? Finding focus.

Building a brand with true impact means creating a single-minded view of your brand’s role in the world. It’s all about simplification, wherever possible.

At Design Bridge and Partners we help brands unlock this opportunity by bridging the gap between business sustainability strategy and brand strategy to find The Point where the two intersect, delivering mutual value for both brand and sustainability agendas.

The intersection of brand strategy and sustainability

At Design Bridge and Partners, we have developed a proprietary tool The Point, to facilitate brands doing just this. The Point takes its foundation from the rigour and data-led process of double materiality to identify which sustainability issues are most critical to value creation. These insights allow the identification of sustainability topics that are most material to a specific business in a specific industry.

A brand-focused strategy is then over-layed, taking into account the brand’s purpose, positioning, and the needs of different stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and investors

The result? A focused, brand-centric expression of how the company intends to create value for its stakeholders through sustainability. This single-minded focus can then be translated into unique, credible, and compelling sustainability stories that deliver value back to the brand.

Focus on doing better, not just more

The goal of The Point isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing better—using data-driven insights to set a clear and ambitious sustainability agenda for the brand. We like the work smarter, not harder philosophy.

By focusing marketing investment on where real impact is being made, sustainability can directly enhance brand value, strengthening customer loyalty, boosting employee engagement, and supporting talent acquisition. Kantar recently supported this theory in a study that revealed brands with a high sustainability contribution to value have on average seen 20% greater growth over four years, than those with a low sustainability contribution to value.

Using The Point as a framework, we help brands do three things:

1. FIND the point of maximum value creation at the intersection of sustainability and brand strategy.
2. TELL the story in a focused, engaging, and authentic way that resonates with all stakeholders.
3. LIVE the focus across the organisation, ensuring that the sustainability agenda permeates every level of the business, from product development to marketing to customer service.

By focusing on these elements, brands can avoid the pitfalls of greenwashing (superficial environmental claims) or greenhushing (being overly cautious about sustainability messaging) and instead create a genuine and transparent brand sustainability strategy that enhances both their reputation and business performance.

The fresh start for sustainability marketing

As we look to the future, it’s clear that helping brands understand how sustainability drives unique value for stakeholders is the next frontier of marketing. Brands must root their sustainability efforts in business reality, ensuring that every action is backed by credible data and aligned with their true purpose.

Sustainability investment is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ — it is a crucial driver of brand value. Done right, it negates the risks of inauthentic messaging and enables brands to connect with people on a deeper level. The fundamentals of branding — making people feel and inspiring them to act — now apply more than ever to sustainability.

At Design Bridge and Partners, we know that the brands that move people will move the world - leading the way in creating a more sustainable, impactful future for all. The Point is our tool to help brands not only find this value but express it with clarity and conviction.

Authored by Ruby Gurdon, Sustainability Director, Design Bridge and Partners, partners of The Marketing Society 

Published 29 October 2024