When sustainability can’t be sustained, what’s next for B2B brands?
Whether it’s the dissonance between what brands say and what they do, or the question of whether the world has gone too far for ‘reducing our impact’ to even have an impact, we’re in danger of sustainability losing all meaning. When less is no longer enough, what comes next?
Somewhere along the way from ambition to action, the sustainability strategies and activities of B2B brands have lost their edge. Perhaps it’s the continued prevalence of greenwashing, or the tendency of some C-suites to shoehorn sustainability into other business functions, burying its effect. Perhaps it’s the wider issues around misinformation and disinformation stymying the debate around social inequality and climate crisis. Or perhaps it’s all of them.
So, where do we stand?
Either way, a gap has appeared in the sustainability landscape, and current approaches are failing to bridge it. Environmentally in the B2B sphere, net-zero carbon targets are subject to ongoing revision; the switch to zero-emissions vehicles stalls intermittently, and the move towards heat pump-based heating models is slow to warm up – all while raw materials continue to be extracted at an accelerated rate to meet the technology demands of society.
Meanwhile, the inequality gap widens, and geopolitical upheaval and supply chain uncertainty form barriers to the implementation of corporate ESG strategies. Together, it’s clear that established attitudes towards sustainability at the brand level are no longer sufficient. We need to move from seeing sustainability as a distinct discipline – another item on the P&L sheet – to something integrated across a business’s entire operations, and something that’s integral to its brand. But, most of all, we need to move from extraction to input – and from minimisation to regeneration.
And what’s next?
First, we need to look at the bigger picture. As carefully as businesses try to construct their brands, they’re always a product of the wider ecosystem: global trends and social contexts, competitive and market dynamics, customer needs and the realities of the lived employee experience.
The first step is understanding the interconnectedness of these different factors – just as Industry 4.0 connected manufacturing and even everyday life through smart technology, the next phase is seeing the deeper connections, interrelations and impacts of each part of the whole on each other. Not just on the connections between different devices, sensors or working parts – but between everything. Once we understand that, we can move from passive minimisation of our impact to active regeneration.
Between ambition and action – and between minimisation and regeneration – there’s a gap. It’s time to close this gap. But it’s not as simple as setting out yet more ambitions and pledging ever-shifting KPIs to meet them. B2B brands need to realise that they’re not islands; they’re part of a holistic ecosystem where every moving part affects another. And, to see how these brands need to evolve, we need to examine every part of what makes them what they are.
This is a fundamental remapping of what makes a brand, and what makes it fit for a new age where sustainability goals alone are nowhere near enough. But, for brands to be part of this age – and part of a regenerative ecosystem – we’ll need something of a framework. Which is where we come in…
So, where do we go from here?
There is a roadmap – and it’s coming soon. To find your way forward in a post-sustainability future, register for it today.