4 reasons your sustainability story sucks (and why there’s hope for it yet)

Talking about sustainability isn’t easy — but it’s critical for your strategy’s success.

Communicating sustainability is more critical than ever as investors, customers, consumers, employees, and other stakeholders demand information about corporate environmental and social impacts. 

With each passing day, your stakeholders are getting savvier, competitors are upping their strategy and storytelling game, and regulators are getting closer to mandating disclosure on climate and other ESG considerations. The stakes for getting it right are higher than ever — yet many businesses are failing to tell engaging and effective sustainability stories. Perhaps yours is one of them.

That’s because sustainability storytelling isn’t stagnant — it’s a living, breathing creature that’s always evolving. What was a “good” story ten years ago, is passé today. Heck, with the high speed with which the ESG beast is growing, what was interesting mere months ago is table stakes today.

But even the world’s worst sustainability communication strategy can improve. The first step is to recognize what’s off, so that you can get to work on making it better. 

Here are four reasons your sustainability story might be lacking, and how to do better:

1. You’ve got no sustainability story to tell

One of the biggest reasons companies struggle to communicate sustainability effectively is because they aren't doing anything worth talking about. 

In recent years, as more investors have pressured corporate boards and the C-Suite to cough up ESG information — or else — this has led to a mad dash to push out sustainability reports. About 89 percent of investors considered ESG issues in some form as part of their investment approach in 2022, up from 84 percent in 2021, according to a Capital Group study. Meanwhile, between 2010 and 2021, the number of S&P 500 companies publishing ESG reports increased from 35 to 86 percent. 

But just because companies are disclosing more doesn’t mean they are creating a meaningful positive impact on the world. If your storytelling gets ahead of your strategy, you risk greenwashing — and all of the blowback that comes with it. 

Before you can develop an interesting and authentic sustainability story, you first need to create the substance through a meaningful strategy. 

2. Your sustainability story is ‘so yesterday’ 

You’ve heard of greenwashing and greenhushing — and after thinking long and hard about what to call this phenomenon, I’ve settled on the following new term: greenbumbling. This is when a company makes a sustainability claim that is truthful but boring. 

In a rapidly changing ESG ecosystem, what it means to be a “leader” is constantly in flux. Fifteen years ago, if your company was issuing sustainability reports, it might have been seen as leading the pack. Today, it’s business-as-usual. Likewise, even just a few years ago announcing Net Zero commitments would have been seen as impressive — today, it wouldn’t turn many heads.

Yet too many companies continue to tout quotidian sustainability actions as novel. Often, this occurs due to a lack of understanding of the broader sustainability ecosystem in which a company operates — or underestimating the sophistication of particular audiences. What intrigues one audience may bore another. 

To avoid greenbumbling, organizations must ensure that their sustainability and communications teams are working together to identify and deliver authentic, relevant stories that actually stick with audiences. Many sustainability professionals lack strong communications expertise, while corporate communications practitioners don’t usually have sustainability know-how. Finding a way to bridge this expertise gap, either through internal hires or bringing on external consultants, can ensure your company is telling the right stories, in the right way, at the right time. 

3. You’re trying to talk to everyone, everywhere, all at once 

Many companies fall flat when trying to engage multiple, variegated audiences simultaneously with their sustainability communication.

Some stuff sustainability reports with every story or piece of information that might interest a wide variety of potential stakeholders. This results in bloated, boring documents that make pretty much everybody miserable — including the people writing them.

Rather than taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach to sustainability storytelling, it’s smart to think about your core audiences and what matters most to them. Investors tend to care more about your ESG data than case studies about human impacts of sustainability strategy, while customers and employees love the latter.

Everyone’s heard the saying “know your audience” — apply this to your sustainability communication strategy, sit back, and enjoy the show. 

4. You’re afraid to talk about failure

No company can ever be a sustainable brand — only more or less sustainable. Success and failure are two sides of the same coin, and focusing only on your wins is leaving out half the narrative. 

But many companies remain rooted in the old school paradigm of corporate communications, marked by emphasizing business success while covering blemishes. Communications teams exist to spin stories so that their organization looks as favorable as possible. 

This doesn’t work in today’s skeptical, interconnected world where many stakeholders assume greenwashing until proven otherwise. And stories of perfection are inherently boring. Having the courage to talk about your company’s sustainability struggles generates empathy, facilitates understanding and ultimately earns respect from your stakeholders. 

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The world’s greatest sustainability strategy is only as impactful as a company’s ability to communicate it well enough to spur stakeholders into action. Companies must translate their sustainability strategy into authentic, effective stories that inform and inspire investors, customers, employees, regulators, and other stakeholders in the service of social, environmental, and financial goals.

Nobody ever said it would be easy — but with a little help and hard work I know you’ve got this. 

This article is a reprint of the ENGAGE weekly newsletter on April 4, 2023. To receive more content like this, I invite you to sign up for the newsletter here.