What do you do if your sustainability message isn't getting through?

You must first craft a stakeholder engagement strategy or plan (depending on what you are working on) that enables you to identify your primary, secondary, and other tiers of stakeholders. This will enable you to understand if you are targeting the right audience and will outline varied participatory approaches to meaningfully engage them. This will also allow you to ensure that you acknowledge the need to have a diverse audience and can appeal to their varying needs and interests.

It’s essential to remember that you're communicating with people who have their own preferences, beliefs, and sometimes, stubbornness. To convey your message and move needles you must understand your audience's values and concerns, use language that is relatable and easy to understand, highlight benefits, use storytelling to evoke emotions and inspire action, address concerns and objections transparently, and encourage dialogue. Communicating your sustainability message in a way that resonates with your audience in a personal way so you can truly reach them, build trust and inspire them to embrace it. To move people you have to see people and talk to people. It’s like doing a stakeholder engagement exercise.

First, conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather data about your audience's attitudes towards sustainability. Utilize social media analytics and engagement metrics to understand their online behavior and preferences. Then, analyze the collected data to pinpoint the values and beliefs that drive your audience's decisions. Are they motivated by cost savings, health benefits, or the desire to protect the environment for future generations? Understanding these motivations is key to crafting a message that appeals to them

Sustainability can be impactful & engaging. Let's break the echo chamber & create a future where it resonates with everyone! Know your audience: Tailor the message to their needs, not jargon. Focus on benefits—a healthier planet, thicker wallets! Facts are good, stories are captivating: Use real examples, human impact to make it relatable. Mix it up! Ditch reports, use infographics, videos, workshops - keep it engaging. Two-way street: Encourage questions, listen, adapt message for maximum impact. Lead by example & build credibility: Show commitment, partner with trusted voices. Patience is key! Building awareness takes time. Be persistent, keep conversation going.

Sustainability communication is a marketing strategy for businesses that have integrated sustainability into their operational and strategic activities. Knowing your audience and what they care about or need is key to success. By tailoring your message to each type of audience - customers, shareholders, or employees - you help build trust while meeting their needs and growing further demand for your products and services.

Start by emphasizing the direct benefits of sustainable practices. For instance, discuss how adopting renewable energy sources not only reduces carbon emissions but also leads to significant cost savings over time. Highlighting the positive impact on health, economy, and community well-being can make your message more appealing. Then, Incorporate real-life examples and success stories of companies, communities, or individuals who have made significant strides in sustainability. This not only provides a practical perspective but also serves as inspiration for others to follow suit. Success stories demonstrate the feasibility of sustainable actions and their positive outcomes

Always highlight the positive aspects of sustainability implementation within the business case. Take all aspects of sustainability from social, environmental, and economic dimensions with positive results such as by replacing fossil based energy systems with green technology a company can save money and contribute towards climate protection. Similarly, replacing petrol based vehicles with EV's not only protects the climate but it also saves the money. So there is always a positive impact of a sustainability implementing which has to be framed in a positive way to communicate to all relevant stakeholders which will motivate, empower, and inspire them.

What I have learned is that, asking for help works better than we think. A lot of us, including me, were taught that people won't ever do anything without expecting an immediate reward. That's how previous generations used to work, but if you're talking to young people (let's say in their 20's) you'll be surprised how conscious they are. Explain what you are doing, what's the benefit, the purpose, the goal, and clearly and straight forward ask for help; as long as the plan makes sense, they will help. I've seen it.

Except if we need an engagement for a special period, because sometimes we should call to action quickly such as emergency topics.

To ensure your sustainability message resonates deeply and effectively, it's crucial to construct and communicate a narrative that is not only accessible and inspiring but also invites stakeholders to join a shared mission, sparking collective action. This narrative should be crafted with care to connect on a personal level, highlighting the role each individual and organization can play in driving positive change. Moreover, the journey towards sustainability must be characterized by openness and accountability, underscored by transparent reporting of actions taken, setbacks encountered, and milestones achieved.

If your message isn't getting through, you need to: 1. Assess what message you're putting out there. Is it too technical? Are you using jargon? Is it clear, authentic and easily accessible? 2. Have you humanised the messaging by telling stories and bringing any complex ideas to life? So people can understand ambitions and impacts. 3. Question whether the message is fit for the audience. Have you understood what different stakeholders know already about the topic, what they need or want to know and why. Segment your audiences and ensure messaging is targeted and relevant for them. 4. Analyse whether you're using the right channels, format and platforms for your communications. Is it reaching the right people at the right times.

Conduct an audit - including interviews with internal and external stakeholders as well as research on the industry and sustainability practises - to understand how your business is perceived when it comes to sustainability. These findings will help to refine your sustainability strategy and narrative. Alongside this analysis, adopting a thought leadership approach for your content that resonates with key stakeholders and invites collaborative thinking will lead to success.

Begin by determining the purpose of your story. What do you want your audience to feel, learn, or do after reading your article? Your goal could be to raise awareness, change perceptions, or inspire action towards sustainability. Provide a backdrop for your story that is relevant to your audience. The context could be a current event, a significant challenge in the industry, or a universal concern related to sustainability. This helps readers understand why the story matters and how it relates to them.

To support your sustainability journey share similar successful stories with your stakeholders to inspire and motivate them. Extract similar initiatives from peer experience or industry research and ask your audience to evaluate the situation. In this way one can relate to its own situation and make complex problems easy to understand for their stakeholders.

Choose visuals that directly support or illustrate the points you're making in your article. This could be images that show the effects of sustainability efforts, or graphs and charts that depict improvements in energy efficiency or waste reduction. Visuals should be high-quality and relevant to the content. Incorporate data that backs up your sustainability claims. This could include statistics on carbon footprint reduction, figures showing the financial benefits of sustainable practices, or evidence of the positive environmental impact your actions have had. Ensure that the data comes from credible sources.

Use infographics, charts, presentations, videos, etc. to showcase your sustainability message with your stakeholders. Data visualization can be a great tool to deliver high impact positive messages to your audience. Data and facts help in translating the message into action in an effective manner. The critical part is to ensure that data is reliable, transparent, and accurate which will help all stakeholders to make a right call.

"Make It Accessible" Use language and visuals that simplify complex sustainability concepts. Present data in relatable formats, such as infographics or videos, to ensure your message reaches a wide audience. Remember, most people can’t appreciate efforts from data they don’t understand. For example, we recycled enough plastic to create 90,000 stadium seats.

Step 1: Ask Open-Ended Questions At the end of your articles or posts, include open-ended questions that prompt your audience to think and share their opinions or experiences related to sustainability. This could be as simple as asking for their thoughts on a particular sustainability challenge or their ideas for innovative solutions. Step 2: Create Polls and Surveys Use LinkedIn's poll and survey features to gather opinions on sustainability topics, preferences for content, or feedback on initiatives you've discussed. This not only engages your audience but also provides you with valuable insights.

Collaboration with all stakeholders is the key towards the achievement of sustainable development. It is necessary to engage, invite, and involve all of your key stakeholders and ask them to share their concerns, feedback, suggestions, recommendations, questions, objections, etc. Collect all relevant information and incorporate the valid feedback required for a project success. Through this feedback mechanism and engagement with all stakeholders you will develop a trustworthy relationship with your audience and it will motivate them to share their feedback which may help you in achieving the sustainability results.

Si nuestro mensaje no se entiende o no llega correctamente a su destinatario tendremos que revisarlo. La sostenibilidad es un tema muy serio y muy manido, pero cabe recordar que también es super reciente. Todos hablan de ella, pero la mayoría desconoce por completo la materia. Por ello, es muy recomendable ser: -Didácticos. Explicando las cosas, utilizando ejemplos fáciles y cercanos. -Positivos. Proponiendo soluciones y evitando ser tremendistas. -Transparentes. Sin trampas ni medias verdades. -Rigurosos. Presentando datos que apoyen nuestro relato. -Colaborativos. La sostenibilidad del planeta no es un tema menor y por ello resulta imprescindible aunar fuerzas con todas las partes implicadas.

Know Your Audience: Customise your message to match their values and interests. Simplify Your Message: Use clear, jargon-free language. Share Success Stories: Real-life examples can inspire and motivate. Engage Visually: Use images, infographics, or videos to make your point. Encourage Small Actions: Suggest easy, actionable steps people can take. Utilise Social Proof: Show how others are benefiting from sustainable practices. Be Positive: Focus on hopeful aspects and potential benefits.

Assemble a focus group from your client base to initiate discussions in what sustainability means to them and draw out from these discussions what are their expectations of you. This is a very helpful excercize to hear their “language” in respect to sustainability so you can adjust to make yours relatable.