Brands and agencies should ditch the guilt and sadness in narratives about climate, but also stop feeling compelled to push binary claims that could see them fined for greenwashing in the first place.

Those were the overriding messages to come out of a session at this week’s SxSW Sydney featuring 42North Consulting founder Kiranpreet Kaur Dhillon and B Lab Australia CEO Andrew Davies. The pair were joined by ‘investigate humourist’ and author of A Rational Fear, Dan Ilic, for a session moderated by Groundswell Giving co-founder and CEO, Arielle Gamble, on whether adland could in fact save the planet rather than be part of the problem.

The conversation wasn’t about the carbon footprint of advertising – something that’s attracting the spotlight as Australia moves towards regulated reporting of emissions within requirements for companies to report their carbon footprint from 2024 in line with financial reporting.

Nor was it on the more pointed question around how the advertising industry continues to support the growth of clients in the fossil fuels sector. That was raised by Comms Declare founder, Belinda Noble in an earlier WPP session, where she asked chief Rose Herceg how WPP is helping to support the growth of 15 fossil fuel clients, including Santos and Woodside, when it’s arguably at odds with the future of the climate.

Herceg said WPP is trying to help them with the transition to renewables where possible. “We have a plan to try to get them out of where they’re at, to something that they’re doing. I can’t speak with great specificity on every one of those clients because not all of them are Australian-based clients – obviously WPP is a global business and most of them are globally aligned. But what I can say is we are working with them to transition,” she suggested.

WPP’s chief strategy officer Katie Rigg-Smith welcomed the question. “That’s what we’re trying to talk about. It’s having debates and being able to talk. I think that’s a really important thing that comes out of South by Southwest.”

Davies and Dhillon used their session to focus on growing consumer calls for brands to think beyond profits to purpose, as well as the compulsion to communicate such messages and make claims, often to the detriment of brands. The pair also debated how reshaping both the narrative and creative approach is crucial to keeping consumers engaged.

“Advertising got us into this mess but maybe – just maybe – it can get us out of it,” said Groundswell Giving's Gamble as she kicked off with a suite of statistics about global warming and the “five seconds to midnight” position we’re in when it comes to doing something about climate change.

Greenwashing Catch-22 

The Catch-22 B Lab’s Davies identified is brands increasingly feeling it necessary to make claims when it comes to climate change and environmental impact, when often they’d be better not saying anything at all.

He cited a growing issue for brands given the greenwashing crackdowns we’re now starting to see enacted by Government. Just take the recent successful $12 million fine of Vanguard Investments by ASIC after the Federal Court found the financial services firm contravened the law by making misleading claims about certain environmental, social and governance (ESG) applied to investments in a Vanguard index fund.

“Most cases of greenwashing are almost inadvertent, it’s companies feeling they need to make some sort of claim because everyone wants them to be better,” Davies told attendees. “Advertising is so much in the business of making claims. The world demands you make clean, powerful, strong claims.  

“The real power is in a company that is comfortable in talking about problems it hasn’t solved yet. It’s the fastest way to authenticity and credibility as well, which is where loyalty comes from.”

Doing that is really challenging, he admitted.

“But it is about embracing conversations that are in the grey, leaning into complexity, and recognising very few companies have solved the problems universally and in a way that says we put that company above all others. Having confidence to talk about problems you haven’t solved is probably the most effective way to engage people,” he said.

“We love a bit of moral absolutism and dividing people into good doers and businesspeople who aren’t capable of being good doers. The stories that show the complexity of problems and that to me the next wave of storytelling. These things are deeply connected and we have to get comfortable with complex stories.”

Drop the guilt, up the empathy

For Dhillon, there are clear creative and campaign shifts that need to be made. The first is the negativity bias displayed in climate change storytelling.

“We need to drop the guilt and the sadness in storytelling around climate change,” she said. “In the last few years since Covid happened, Australians and many people around the world have been emotionally and mentally exhausted by all the causes requiring attention.

“The capacity people have to be empathetic, share, give and support causes is struggling. We have health diseases, wars, climate disasters, so many things – and audiences are consuming more and more content around these and in a very scary way. Unfortunately, they’re exhausted and they are going to turn a blind eye when told they should care again. Now there’s a good case to start telling your story in way people are engaged, and not take the classic approach that used to work.”

What’s equally clear is the brand and product truth will always come out, “so there’s no point in bullshitting”, Dhillon said.

“What is our product actually doing, what’s brand story we have created, and does that actually speak to the campaign and message in this moment? The impact will only come back through if it’s real,” she continued.  

Dhillon’s third must is to follow through on the advertising promise. “After that ad finishes, think about the rest of the journey: What are we going to get them to do after that point? What’s the immediate step, versus follow-up, how are we building the journey for them?” she asked.

“Are CRM platforms and campaigns doing that in an effective way? Are our partnerships doing that in effective way? Have we understood audiences well enough to know their next possible actions? And are they fruitful to the bigger goals we’re trying to get everybody on-board for?”

A campaign Dhillon saw effectively communicating this more constructive message was the recent partnership between eBay and Love Island, which saw all contestants on the reality TV show donning repurposed clothing.

“It increased searching of pre-loved clothing by 1,600 per cent [53 per cent of viewers aware of the partnership also bought secondhand clothing, IVT subsequent research showed]. This is the classic way of going 'I’m not going to shove a message down your throat, and not make you feel bad about fast fashion'… all of a sudden it became cool. It was getting people to change behaviour, and look up alternatives to lifestyle changes, and naturally weaving that into pop culture and something they consume regularly,” she said.  

Another less expected example is XXXX’s ad linking the death of crops to a lack of hops and the death of beer. The campaign motto is: ‘Do it for the beer – give a XXXX’.

“How does beer play role in mind of consumers in being the saviour of the planet for climate change? It’s probably not the first thing to come to mind,” Dhillon said. “We immediately go either to problem makers – coal or that category – or we go to the really positive brands that impact, and who is planting trees.

“But there’s this middle ground of everyone who genuinely has an impact on world, who can have voice and have a story to tell. XXXX did it in way where people won’t skip the ad – the audience genuinely wants to watch it, have a laugh.

“It’s a good strategy brands are playing well with of trying to find role within that content experience people are experiencing.”

By contrast, Dhillon suggested a recent Patagonia campaign using reverse psychology to encourage people not to buy one of its jackets proved counterintuitive to the overarching narrative of purpose over profit because people did in fact go out and buy more jackets.

“As ad people we do this a lot – we love a good line and will put it up as it’s clever line. But in your agencies, marketing teams, hopefully you have a bigger team making you think beyond that. This [Patagonia] could have been followed through better,” she said.

Ampol positing as Carbon Neutral petrol meanwhile almost feels satirical for Dhillon.

“What is your role, and is it going back to product truth? If not, your bullshit will get called out. It’s either fix your product or fix your brand story,” she said.  

And a novel thought: Perhaps you shouldn’t say much at all. “If you can’t say something good, it’s probably not worth saying anything at all. It’s not intuitive or productive from a comms perspective,” Dhillon added. “I don’t think something like this is impactful – it’s probably harmful to brand plus the people putting efforts towards the actual change.”

Davies agreed advertising has really important role to play in driving the message forward that helps initiate the cultural shift.

“We could pass a law tomorrow to say this is the responsibility of business, but it wouldn’t make an ounce of difference. Because we need a strong cultural understanding and adoption before coming into effect,” he said. “We need cultural change, storytelling and businesses showing what’s possible.”