“It doesn’t always come in through the marketing door, but marketing is where the greatest change can be driven.”

In this episode 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 pace is needed now more than ever.

“ 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.

“ 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 save your business’.

Paul shares so much wisdom, we talk about how the nature of the problems humanity faces have become increasingly serious and urgent. To tackle them we can’t remain shackled in fixed thinking - “actions that gave rise to prior success, are the very things leading to tomorrow’s failures”.

“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 countries, dedicated to defending the rights of consumers.

“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 through his work and research is a leading academic, consultant and leading expert around ESG integration.

“Can we accept that change requires us to stop things. If the industry can come to terms with that, then we have a great opportunity to let new possibilities come through.”

Diving into latest updates from their advertised emissions research they showcase how in 2019 advertised emissions equated to 186M tonnes and how in 2022, their recent research has seen an 11% increase in advertised emissions in UK… “The more advertising there is, the more sales, the more advertised emissions.”

“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 fellow marketers.

For those of you that don’t know about MarketingKind… it’s a community of business leaders, marketers and change-makers who come together to make marketing mean more.

“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 to find out more about how their data and carbon counter is helping marketers to green their marketing by understanding the carbon impact of their planned activities.

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 everything.