Can Marketing Save the Planet?

It’s a big question we ask every one of our guests.

Our podcast is committed to keeping the conversation going around sustainability and the important strategic role that marketing and commuinication plays.

Our guests include senior Marketers, senior leaders, CMOs, academics, authors, sustainability consultants, social impact founders, experts and more.

We help Marketers save the Planet. Our purpose is to drive education and share best practice, to inspire and empower Marketers (and beyond), to start asking questions and importantly… to start taking action.

Tune in to over 80+ and growing all the time episodes… You’ll find the podcast on Spotify , Global Player , Apple, and on all the usual platforms. (Pretty much wherever you get yours!). Tune in.

Download our About the Podcast Overview Doc - or get in touch, if you’ve got an idea for an episode…

Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 45: Food Waste and The Sharing Economy - Driving Systemic Behaviour Change with Tessa Clarke, Co Founder and CEO - Olio

“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.”

Food waste is one of the largest problems facing humanity today – the statistics are startling. Globally a third of all food we produce - that’s over a trillion US$ of food is being thrown away every year.  If food waste was a country it would be the 3rd largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 44: How Marketers Can Tell a True Story about Climate Change with Seth Godin

“How are we (marketers) going to tell a true story about climate and our impact on the climate, so that we can change the systems in our lives, so that we tread more resiliently on the earth, and are more proud of what we are doing, and as a byproduct, build better communities with more equity and fairness?"

A question we explore in-depth with the marketing legend, Seth Godin.

It was an absolute pleasure talking to Seth, who really needs no introduction - entrepreneur, writer and one of the world's most famous bloggers and thinkers and more recently, coordinator and champion of 'The Carbon Almanac', a project he describes, "as the most important of his career".

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 43: No Awards on a Dead Planet - Marketing Activism - Gustav Martner, Head of Creative, Greenpeace Nordics

“Advertising can be important as it can make new ideas win and kick out old ideas – but campaigns aren’t trying to kick anything out – they’re just saying, you can have us as well. Where are the train campaigns that are aggressively going after the airliners, where are the co-owned car services that are aggressively going after the SUVs?”

Gustav tells us how he was fast becoming disillusioned with some of the campaigns he was working on - (broken hearted in some cases) - with assignments becoming less playful and far more commercial. “The internet was moving from being a distributed democratic playground into a cloud controlled user experience owned by a few players - giving them control over creativity and messaging - and that felt a bit scary and weird - and not the environment I really loved.”

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 42: Sustainable Investments - Changing the narrative with Zach Stein, The Carbon Collective

“The fossil fuel industry is an industry in decline - being outcompeted by better technologies. The narrative we’re fighting against is that solving climate change is a sacrifice. We cannot afford not to have the best marketers around the world world focused on exactly this.”

Zach shares so many insights, backed up with real-world examples. What’s clear is that aligned with changing behaviour, we need to change the ingrained narratives around climate change - namely being, it’s not a sacrifice, but indeed an incredible opportunity - providing exciting opportunity for innovation and doing things differently. “The world isn’t going to up give air conditioning - we need to find ways to still have the lifestyles we have, but in a way that is not threatening to our climate.”

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 41: Brainprint - The biggest impact of the industry of influence, Solitaire Townsend - Futerra

“As an industry we can go from seriously being part of the problem to leading the solution. We’re the final piece of the machine slotting into the climate movement, speeding up solutions. But we cannot be doing that whilst we’re also serving the destruction. We can’t do both. And that tension is growing every day.”

When we heard Solitaire’s Ted Talk, ‘Are ad agencies, PR firms and lobbyists destroying the climate?’ (which has almost 1.8million views), we were keen to pick her brains and share her wisdom.

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 40: Eco-Anxiety - The Courage to Stare Down the Truth, See the Good and Make it Grow - with Rob Harrison-Plastow

“Everything is completely interconnected - we’re not separate from nature, we are nature.”

It’s fair to say that Gemma and I were on a bit of a downer on the day we interviewed Rob Harrison-Plastow - Co-Founder of Time Agency, writer, and author of work in progress and soon to be published, ‘How to Be Happy at the End of the World.’ As you’ll hear, by the end of our conversation with Rob, whilst we discussed some of the pretty harsh realities of climate change, the challenges of the social constructs we’ve been born into, the pain, anxiety, lack of control, sense of being hoodwinked and of course… the fear we face personally and collectively in increasingly difficult times - we came away from the conversation, empowered, uplifted, invigorated, and most definitely hopeful. And our hope is that you will too.

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 39: The story and impact of an unusual chocolate bar - Ben Greensmith, UK, Lord Chocolonely III

“If people are aware… they can make a conscious choice.” 

When enjoying a delicious chocolate treat, like most, it’s unlikely you’ve pondered where the cocoa comes from, whether farmers have been paid fairly, or whether production is fuelled by child labour and modern slavery. The reality is that 1.6M children are working illegally on chocolate farms in Africa - and a minimum of 30,000 are kept as modern slaves. Sobering statistics that broadly haven’t changed that much over decades, and even centuries.

The good news is, Tony’s Chocolonely exists to change this.

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 38: Navigating the Sustainable Marketing Compass - a dedicated Strategic Framework - Paul Randle & Alexis Eyre

“If you didn’t have a marketing budget but you still had the same KPIs what would you do?”

We learn how the question… ‘Daddy is your job good for the environment?’ - led Paul to join the 8 week Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership course, where he met fellow marketer, Alexis Eyre. Determined to be part of the solution, rather than the problem, they recognised that marketing has a lot to add when it comes to behaviour change and using its skills, creativity and influence as a force for good. They also recognised that many of the traditional marketing tools and frameworks focus purely on commercial performance, and no consideration for environmental and societal performance - and so set out to bridge that vital gap with the development of their Sustainable Marketing Compass, a strategic framework that supports marketers step-by-step to reframe, rethink and reorientate marketing - driving creativity and innovation back into the heart of marketing.

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Michelle Carvill Michelle Carvill

Episode 37: Using the wisdom of the crowd to build a sustainability confidence score - with Adam Williams, Founder - Wherefrom

Using the wisdom of the crowd to build a sustainability confidence score - with Adam Williams, Founder - Wherefrom

“If we chase perfection… we’ll lose.”

Amongst the 455 (and some) eco labels and sparkling greenwash, how’s a person to figure out which products and brands they can truly have confidence in when wanting to make more sustainable and ethical choices in their shopping trolleys? What can we trust? What can we understand?

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