“We need people to communicate in a way that gives all of us an ability to move forward in a positive direction.” The built environment – it’s a massive subject, a massive industry and a massive contributor of emissions, (buildings and construction are responsible for approx. 40% of global energy related and carbon dioxide emission). There is a lot of work to be done and the challenge requires collaboration, knowledge and action at scale. We had the pleasure of talking to Brigette Clements,...

“There’s really no way you can say you don’t know this is a dangerous activity at this point” Making a return to the podcast, we caught up with Duncan Meisel, founder of Clean Creatives, so we could talk about the newly published F-List. For anyone unfamiliar, Clean Creatives, is a movement of advertisers, PR professionals, and their clients cutting ties with fossil fuels.The F-List is a body of research and report which documents agencies who choose to continue working with fossil fuel...

Carrying on from Part 1, this episode jumps straight into the tactical side, where Caroline shares her views on the opportunities around digital, making the point that, “listening for a business is such a wealth of value which can be done in an automated way, and is the way forward to be commercially successful.” Moving on to metrics and measures an area with many questions but not enough answers yet, we talked about how we have to go beyond the corporate metrics of revenue and profit. Whilst...

“There are four questions every business needs good answers to. Why would anyone want to buy from us? Why would anyone want to work for us? Why would anyone want to invest in us? Why would anyone allow us to operate in their community, society?” It’s another two-parter and in this episode (Part 1), we dive into the role of CMOs and leaders when it comes to the sustainability agenda. We were joined by Caroline Taylor OBE, former CMO for IBMs international business and a huge advocate for...

“Being sustainable is a story of assumed negatives, but it’s actually a story of discovered positives.” We were joined in this episode by Simon Garnett who has been on a personal journey with consumption, one which he started when he realised his own habits were unhealthy, a journey he continues and has taken into his professional life as well. Simon shares with us the moment he decided to reappraise his consumption with ‘new’ and how after a year it moved to him reappraising his consumption...

“Through marketing campaigns we can bring sustainability and growing smaller more sustainable brands to the front and drive capital away from big brands.” Where better to get the viewpoints from Gen Z about climate concerns and consumption habits than directly from a Gen Z’er. On this podcast were joined by Estella Struck, Founder and CEO of the first Gen Z Sustainable Product Marketing Agency based in New York. Estella found herself on the right side of TikTok during the lockdowns of 2020...

“Building a culture of trust around green claims is the most important thing marketers, business and brands should be doing, using advertising self- regulation as a tool, making sure everyone is upholding those standards.” As regulations and guidelines in and around sustainability continue to evolve, tighten up and support a better future around managing both what we do AND say, we spoke to Laura Brett whose remit is to lead the US system of advertising self-regulation looking at advertising...

How do you get a return on your investment for your business, AND at the same time deliver a return on investment for the planet, ensuring everyone benefits? In this episode we’re joined by Gavin Sheppard and Rob Cheesewright from Pinwheel, an organisation focused on projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere, restore habitats and protect biodiversity - to discuss that very question. Given there’s a lot of terminology that can become quite confusing, we kick things off with some jargon...

“If you ever think you are too small to influence change on a global scale, just look at what Wales are doing.” We were intrigued and excited to have the opportunity to chat with Sophie Howe, the first and only (for a period of time) ‘Future Generations Commissioner’ in the world! Sophie was appointed Future Generations Commissioner for Wales in 2016. Wales has committed to 7 long-term wellbeing goals for future generations. This is all about a long term vision, preventing future problems,...

The challenge for the marketing team is, “needing to take what are serious and complex issues and convey them in a format that is easily understandable.” Want to know how marketing can drive a “people powered movement for change?” THIS is the episode you don’t want to miss. We jumped at the opportunity to talk to Jackie Marshall at Fairtrade an organisation with market leading levels of audience recall, awareness and engagement. One of the most trusted and recognised ethical labels out there...

“Climate change isn’t a game that anybody wins – we either all win or we all lose and I’d much rather we all win”. Where to start with an overview of this insightful, practical and hugely inspiring conversation. Simon Dawes, environmental professional for over 20 years and working in the field of sustainability for the last 13 years, is generous in sharing with us the practicalities of how a public sector organisation is transitioning to Net Zero - and inspiring, supporting and sharing...

  Less than 10% of the FTSE100 mention sustainable pensions in their sustainable strategies.   We have been supporting and following the work Make My Money Matter do for quite some time now, so we were thrilled to be joined by Holly McElhone to delve a little deeper into the trillions of pounds that are circulating everyday across investments and pensions and to learn more about what business and indeed individuals can do to drive positive change. Switching to sustainable pension...

“Consistency of message is what builds trust and we’re going to need that come 2028 when we realise how badly we failed.” Sam Taylor, grew up on the factory floor (literally). From her lived experience and passion, she has gone on to become founder of The Good Factory an organisation involved in everything from consulting, sourcing and development and lifecycle assessments in the sportswear industry. Sam talks about how whilst studying, she was told after delivering her final project that,...

A sustainable creative agency on a journey to make positive change, we caught up with Rob Minto, managing director of The Onlii. Rob talks about his own journey into sustainability, how he was inspired by the B Corp movement and why he set up the Onlii. Aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Rob discusses how these really helped to embed the environment and the bigger picture into the business strategy, he explains, “as part of the collective we went through a process of selecting...

  “How can organisations treat people as citizens, not just as consumers? How can organisations invite people into their agency and creativity to shape the world and not just sell them stuff?”   When Jon Alexander, author of the brilliant book ‘Citizens’ joined us on Can Marketing Save the Planet, we got straight into those questions! The subject story, the consumer story (where we are right now), and the citizen story, (the place we need to get to). Jon explained how we are currently...

  “It doesn’t always come in through the marketing door, but marketing is where the greatest change can be driven.”   In this episode of, Can Marketing Save the Planet we spoke to Andy Last, Executive Partner, Purpose and Sustainability from MullenLowe, an end-to-end communications and creative services agency. Part of the MullenLow Group, who believe, ‘purpose is nothing without progress’, and we couldn’t agree more. We are in the definitive decade and progress at scale and...

“ The world doesn’t need what we do at the moment, we can’t continue the way we are. We need to adapt and look at long term need and deliver valuable solutions.” Aligned with the latest IPCC report, the message is clear on so many levels that we can’t keep doing what we do and making minor tweaks - transformational and urgent action is what’s required, and that’s going to require a collaborative approach. Timely indeed for Part 2 of our conversation with Paul Skinner, Author, Founder of...

“ We need to route purpose in solving important solutions, developing meaningful solutions and reaching inclusive worthwhile outcomes that mobilise everyone we need in pursuit of that purpose.” Our interview with Paul Skinner, Author, Founder of MarketingKind and Agency of the Future, is just soooo good, we’re doing it twice! In Part 1, Paul introduces the work he’s doing - and we dive into his latest book, ‘The Purpose Upgrade - Change your business to save the world, Change the world to...

“Marketers need to get into the nitty gritty and learn about lifecyle assessments and how they are used, their limitations and their advantages, it might seem boring - but it’s really, really important.” In this episode, we’re joined by Oliver-Bealby-Wright, Lead, Consumers in the Energy System who formerly led Consumers International’s GreenCommerce project in 2022 on improving consumer sustainability information. Consumers International is a membership body with over 200 members across 100...

“The best companies look at their ESG disclosures as a type of social contract to tell the world, why they are here, what they are trying to achieve as a business, why the world is arguably a better place because they are here. ESG disclosure is an opportunity for an organisation to show how it is creating value - financial value and non-financial value.” It was an absolute privilege to have some time talking all things ESG with Professor Ioannis Ioannou from London Business School. Ioannis...

  “Incremental change isn’t going to work. It's time to move now from shallow small change to systemic change at speed.” What a way to kick off conversations with marketing pros for 2023 with not one, but three courageous pacesetters leading the way and shaking things up and shining a light on the necessary change required in the advertising industry. Lisa Merrick Lawless, Rob McFaul and Jonathan Wise, Co-Founders of Purpose Disruptors, an organisation and movement challenging...

“Sustainability is making marketing exciting again…” Gemma and I are used to asking the questions on our Can Marketing Save the Planet podcast - but in this episode, we were interviewed for a live ‘MarketingKind Digital Fireside’ session hosted by Caroline Taylor, sustainable marketing trailblazer and former CMO at IBM - together with the wonderful founders of Marketing Kind and a great bunch of marketers. For those of you that don’t know about MarketingKind… it’s a community of business...

  “If you double your marketing budget, you don’t necessarily get double the sales because of diminishing returns, but when it comes to carbon emissions, doubling your budget, may not just double but quadruple your CO2 emissions. As marketers we need to understand the impact of our plans and activities and consider a new set of priorities and KPIs.”   And we couldn’t agree more… As you’ll hear in this podcast interview with Jo Young, Managing Director at Unifida, Gemma and I were keen...

  Do you ask yourself as a marketer, “with all the decisions I took today, did I accelerate the transition to net zero, or slow it down? If the conclusion at the end of the day is that you slowed it down - well you really don’t want to be there. Accelerating the transition is where marketers need to be.” Wim advises that all marketers should ‘put the planet in the room’ - literally. Tune in to the third question we ask all guests in our round up - as to how this action changes...

“Marketers have the largest job of the lives ahead of them. They have got to drive systemic behaviour change and move us collectively from this linear extractive wasteful, entirely unsustainable model of consumption, that our whole economy and economics is currently based on, and move people over to the sustainable circular economy.” Summarising the conversation we had with Tessa is a bit of a challenge, simply because in such a short space of time, we covered sooooo much. Food waste is one...