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What is greenwashing and how can you avoid it Digital PR communications
- 1. WHAT IS GREENWASHING AND HOW CAN YOU AVOID IT IN PR COMMUNICATIONS? CHARITY SWALES SENIOR DIGITAL PR EXECUTIVE CONNECTIVE3
- 2. THESE SLIDES 1. What is greenwashing and how can you spot it within marketing? 2. Antecedents and drivers to greenwashing activity 3. How greenwashing can be harmful to your brand 4. How and why you should avoid greenwashing within your digital PR campaigns COVER…
- 3. W H A T I S G R E E N W A S H I N G ? SO, FIRST OF ALL…WHAT IS GREENWASHING? Greenwashing refers to “tactics that directly mislead consumers through a disparity between the symbolic and substantive environmental actions of corporate-level activities and marketing communications.” Basically, this is when a company pushes communications on sustainability without having the actions to back it up – all foam, no beer!
- 4. I PROMISE I AM NOT A HYPOCRITE, HERE IS WHY I FEEL I HAVE AUTHORITY TO COMMENT ON THIS SUBJECT… Sustainability is a large part of my lifestyle. From being a raging vegan, to shopping secondhand, I try to live as sustainably as I can! I have put A LOT of research into the subject over the years even writing a 15,000-word analysis on greenwashing in marketing for my master's dissertation
- 5. SO, WHAT CAN PUSH BRANDS TO GREENWASH? Top-level pressure – Media subject matter can encourage corporations to implement symbolic environmental practices often without substantially delivering them. Consumer pressure – Businesses are influenced to communicate according to the perceptions of audience expectations of them. Relevancy – Environmental awareness days are tempting to jump on for building relevant coverage. H O W T O S P O T G R E E N W A S H I N G
- 6. H O W T O S P O T G R E E N W A S H I N G SOME KEY GREENWASHING TACTICS TO LOOK OUT FOR • A brand’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts fail to mirror the conversation they are starting. • Look for green buzzwords such as 'cleaner' or 'sustainable’ • In product PR companies often use phrases such as ‘70% recycled plastic’ or ‘green materials’. • Are the claims verified by a third-party?
- 7. H O W T O S P O T G R E E N W A S H I N G SPOTTING GREENWASHING
- 8. WHAT ARE THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF GREENWASHING? HIGHER SCRUTINY • Sustainable marketing communications which don’t align with internal activity, can lead to a higher level of scrutiny on their actions in the media. LOWERS BAND TRUST • Greenwashing activity has been shown to negatively correlate with brand attitude (Leonidou and Skarmious, 2019) and can also have a negative effect on consumer trust. • 1 in 3 consumers state that they stopped purchasing from certain brands because they had ethical or sustainability concerns about them (Deloitte, 2022) PURCHASE INTENTION • Companies can have legal action taken against them for misleading consumers with eco- friendly claims. FINANCIAL RISK
- 9. MARKETING PRE - SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA AGE • One way • Brand to consumer • Brand controls the conversation • Choice = buy/not buy • Two-way • Consumer to firm • Consumer can “hunt” • Consumer wants to/can impost their point of view IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS HAVE MOVED FROM LINEAR TO ‘PINBALL’ LIKE
- 10. THIS MEANS WORD SPREADS FAST IF YOUR BRAND IS BEING MISLEADING IN THEIR GREEN COMMUNICATIONS Boohoo Greenwashing - +586% Mercedes Greenwashing -+320% Shein Greenwashing -+243% *Insights taken from keywordtool.io in October 2022
- 11. IN FACT, STUDIES HAVE SHOWN AN INCREASE INTERST IN THE GREENWASHING TOPIC WITHIN THE MEDIA *Insights taken from a study by Commetric in May 2022
- 12. IN FACT, THERE ARE OVER 87 MILLION VIEWS UNDER THE HASHTAG #GREENWASHING ON TIKTOK
- 13. CASE STUDY: BOOHOO X KOURNTNEY KARDASHIAN
- 14. CASE STUDY: BOOHOO X KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN While 41 of the 45 products included in the new range contained a percentage of recycled fibres, the collection itself makes up less than 0.1% of products available on the Boohoo website. Kourtney Kardashian was the wrong celebrity/influencer to pick as their sustainability ambassador for a number of reasons: • Inauthentic voice – Is Kourtney really someone who’s personal brand is representative of sustainability issues? • Reputation of excess– Encourages mass-production and a culture of disposability. • Lack of education– When quizzed on greenwashing Kourtney asked her followers for education on the subject.
- 15. C A S E S T U D Y : B O O H O O X K O U R T N E Y K A R D A S H I A N SO HOW DID THE INTERNET REACT? Negative sentiment towards the Boohoo brand reached almost 33% from online conversation.* *Insights based on data from Linkfluence in October 2022
- 16. AND A MORE POSITIVE EXAMPLE OF GREEN MARKETING…
- 17. CASE STUDY: PATAGONIA Patagonia contributes to climate change concerns and seeks to find more environmentally friendly ways to make their products. The Common Threads Recycling Program encourages customers get more use out of things they’d already bought. For the previous five years, Patagonia has maintained or improved on its “outstanding” rating as a certified B Corporation (151). The company frequently gives millions of dollars to projects that encourage sustainable farming techniques, conservation of endangered species, and forest restoration.
- 18. SO HOW CAN WE RELATE THIS TO DIGITAL PR?
- 19. SO, WHY SHOULD WE CONSIDER THIS IN OUR DIGITAL PR COMMUNICATIONS? AUTHENTICITY If the intention seems inauthentic and journalists or audiences read your story and discover greenwashing, this could lower their trust in your brands future communications. HIGHER SCRUTINY When aiming for KPI’s it might be tempting to jump on relevant days such as Earth Day or World Recycling Day. But remember these publications have a readership (who also have access to the internet). BRAND AWARENESS Digital PR is about more than securing backlinks. We want to foster a positive and consistent brand personality that connects with their audience’s interests and values.
- 20. FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN PLANNING DIGITAL PR CAMPAIGNS First thing’s first, you should always make sure you are fully aware of your brand’s internal sustainability efforts. When planning a campaign around sustainability ask yourself: 1. What are your target audience’s ethics and values? 2. Are your audience or publication’s audience likely to scrutinise any disingenuous green marketing efforts? 3. Does the campaign align with the brand values and corporate activity? 4. Are the claims you are making in the campaign valid?
- 21. KEY TAKEAWAYS • Greenwashing tactics often occur with good intentions, but can have a harmful effect on your brand. • Consider campaigns beyond securing backlinks and look at the wider scope greenwashing could have in the long run. • Make sure you are fully aware of the brand you are representing’s CSR and environmental efforts • When approaching brainstorming make sure you consider whether the brand has the authority to comment on these issues, whether the data or story is valid and whether it appeals to your audience. • At agency level it is OKAY to push back if we think an approach will be damaging to our client’s brand.
- 22. ANY QUESTIONS FIRE AWAY ANY QUESTIONS?
- 23. THANK YOU IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, YOU CAN GET IN TOUCH HERE: @chrtyswls @chrtyswls linkedin.com/in/charity swales/
Editor's Notes
- I am going to cover something I think is a very relevant topic within the Digital PR industry and in wider marketing, and a subject matter that has dominated the media in the recent years and is something I feel we as an industry need to be more sensitive to in the future. Just a PSA: this is not going to be me getting on my soapbox and preaching, and any brands mentioned are just to highlight examples, it is just something I think is worth considering within our industry.
- To begin I’m just going to begin with an introduction to the greenwashing phenomenon, just what exactly it is and how we can spot it within marketing. I’m going to take a holistic approach at first and then go into how we can apply it to Digital PR. So first of we will look at what exactly the phenomenon is for those of you don’t know. Followed by antecedents and drivers. How greenwashing can be harmful to your brand How and why we should avoid it in our Digital PR campaigns
- So to get the elephant out the room (as Alexandra Burke once pioneered), I just want to point out a few reasons why I feel I have the authority to comment. First off I am a raging Vegan and sustainability is a massive massive part of my lifestyle. I try to live as sustainable as I can and (but it’s worth remembering nobody’s perfect) I have put A LOT of research into the subject over the years and even wrote a 15,000 word analysis on the topic (let me tell you I did not look so pretty afterwarda)
- So you might be thinking why on earth would brands talk about what exactly can push brands to greenwash? So first of all it can be top level pressure, you’d be surprised but often brands find it easier to implement symbolic environmentalism such as media communications, without ever changing anything. And this can make sense with business models such as fast fashion and the oil and gas industry. Consumer pressure, so as brands we often want to connect with our audience and their interests and if
- So to visualize this here are a few examples of spotting greenwashing within marketing. So often buzzwords such as ‘conscious’ and ‘sustainable’ that don’t really carry much meaning are put into campaigns which we can see here with H&M’s conscious collection which they actually just means some of their plastics are recycled. From KLM we have be a hero fly c2zero which they were sued for this due to leading their consumers to believe they had emissionless flights. And then into social media we have shell which tried to encourage social engagement by creating this poll despite being one of the most polluting in the world. Coca cola here is an example of symbolic environmentalism due to the association with the colour green, that makes it think it’d
- So why can this be bad? First of all perceived greenwashing can have a negative effect on scrutiny, it puts a magnifying glass to their corporate level efforts and what they are actually doing for the environment so a discrepancy can actually show this more. It can also lower brand trust as studies such have shown that greenwashing activity can actually have a negative correlation with brand attitude and effect consumer trust.
- In the social media era we as consumers have more access to information than ever before – sustainability reports, exposes and figures are literally at our fingerprints with a few clicks of the button. So this actually means as consumers and online communities can share conversations about brands widely (and virallySo to magnify this claim I just want to go back to how marketing is in the social media age. We have moved from linear where the conversation is controlled by the brand
- This means that word can spread faster if you are greenwashing. So to exemplify this here are some examples of the brands which have had the biggest increase in search for greenwashing and have all recently had campaigns which have magnified this. For example Boohoo who recently brought out the sustainable collection with Kourtney Kardashian and Mercedes who use the nature or nothing ads to
- So just to magnify why this is topical we just need to look at how much it has increased in recent years in 2021 there was 75,481 articles written about greenwashing worldwide increasing by over 11 times the number of articles in two years and this has had an effect with 87 million views under the hashtag on TikTok
- Boohoo was named as one of the least sustainable fashion brands in the UK in a report published by the Environmental Audit Committee in 2019. In an attempt turn the negative press on fast-fashion on its head Boohoo released a ‘sustainable line’ with Kourtney Kardashian heading up the campaign as their ‘sustainability ambassador’. The fashion brand uploads around 700 pieces of new clothes on the site per week.
- User generated tweets picked up on the discrepancy between Kourtney Kardashian’s lifestyle and the collection’s sustainability promises. It was posited as virtue signaling. Boohoo this year issued a profit and sales warning, which can likely be attributed to the cost-of-living crisis but may signal a changing attitude to the way people purchase clothing. Higher level of scrutiny as a number of think piece articles from The Guardian to VICE looked in to the collections claims vs Boohoo’s actual sustainability efforts.