Sustainability is having its moment, and rightly so. Millennials and Gen Z are challenging brands to be truly sustainable, governments are setting targets (welcome back USA) and in 2020, Larry Fink of BlackRock put climate change and sustainability front and centre of the corporate agenda, as a precondition to investment.
According to BlackRock (Jan 2021) “From January through November 2020, investors in mutual funds and ETFs invested $288 billion globally in sustainable assets, a 96% increase over the whole of 2019.”
This is a call to action for businesses to consider their brands as assets to lead the sustainability-first agenda. When business gets this right, the returns speak for themselves. In his 2021 address Larry Fink noted that businesses with both purpose Environmental Social and Governance initiatives at their heart, outperformed their peers by 81%.
The challenge is how to link corporate sustainability goals with brand-led sustainability targets.
According to data from Corporate Citizenship there are over 600 ratings and rankings from Dow Jones to Fitch each with its own nuances. Where does a brand even start?
At Citizen Good we have developed a framework that triangulates metrics frequently used by the investment community with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and Greenscope™ our consumer sentiment AI tool. Simply put, we look at what world leaders, company shareholders, and everyday shoppers care most about in a measurable way. This helps businesses to take on the sustainability agenda at a brand-level with consumer-centricity at its heart.
Good for business, good for citizens.