Why you need to improve ESG Storytelling and Sustainability Comms
In 2024, the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK (CIM) conducted a survey which revealed that 64% of the respondents thought that their own company wasn’t communicating its ESG and sustainability messages effectively enough. Almost the same number of people, 66% are concerned that ineffective communication could risk corporate reputation through greenhushing – not saying anything, or greenwashing – over-stating what they are doing.
If we believe that a company either succeeds or fails based on its reputation, then it seems that businesses are inadvertently jeopardising their reputation by not placing the necessary importance, budget, or resources to ESG storytelling and sustainability communications.
Stakeholders want to trust you
According to PwC, EY, McKinsey and others, ESG investment has witnessed exponential growth in recent years and Bloomberg reports that by 2030 over $40 trillion of investment will be focused on businesses who demonstrate good ESG, which will represent 25% of all investment assets globally.
In theory then that means that 1 in 4 companies should have robust ESG policies and frameworks – along with a communication and engagement strategy that will attract investors.
Growing at rates of over 25% year on year as investors turn to businesses that have the environment, society and governance at the heart of operations and decision making, how are businesses in the same sector going to differentiate in these crucial areas? Only by telling effective stories about what they are doing and the impact they are having.
And it’s not just investors. Consumers too are looking for sustainable products that have been designed and manufactured ethically.
Kantar, the organization behind the Sustainability Sector Index, have reported that 57% of consumers find it difficult to differentiate between products even when they know some are more ethically and environmentally better than others. It’s a source of frustration for consumer and an opportunity for those who are doing the right things to tell better stories.
The Kantar report states: “Consumers want to better understand their choices, and your brand needs to tell its story in a way that helps them do that. If you don’t, the default perception of your brand will likely be poor.”
Actually, what’s worse is that your business loses out to a competitor who isn’t as responsibly minded as you are simply because your customers can’t tell the difference.
A study by McKinsey and NielsenIQ found that where products were able to make honest and verifiable ESG-related claims they experienced 28% cumulative growth over five years. Those that didn’t or couldn’t make the same claims only grew by 20%.
It is well understood that the younger generation – now considered to be under 30, are the most conscious-savvy when it comes to sustainability, ethical sourcing and environmental impact. This generation is growing fast and will soon become the most populous generation on the planet. These are your customers, investors, future policy makers and potential employees.
There is every reason to be listening to this group of people and responding to them.
If you’re not telling stories, you’re not differentiating
A PwC report states ‘ESG-focused institutional investment seen soaring 84% to US$33.9 trillion in 2026, making up 21.5% of assets under management’
‘Investors’ growing appetite for ESG investment is driving a broad range of new products and services.’ Stated a headline in the FT. The Institute for Energy Economics stated in a recent report ‘In terms of performance, sustainable funds outperformed and generated better returns than traditional funds in 2023, with a median return of 12.6% versus 8.6% for traditional funds. This outperformance was seen across both equity and fixed-income asset classes. This is not an anomaly as sustainable funds have outperformed traditional funds’ returns every year from 2019‘
Clearly, ESG has become a differentiator that attracts investment – what follows is accountability. Nobody who has invested in a company because of their ESG commitments wants to find out that the company is not delivering. There a bond of trust between the investor and the company that shouldn’t be broken, and the more transparent you can be, the stronger the bond of trust.
Greenhushing or saying too little
When companies don’t say anything or say very little there is a concern that something is being covered up, in fact silence can be mistaken for inaction. Therefore, transparency is key. Talking about what you are doing, why you are doing it and the difference you want to make helps stakeholders to understand the values of the organisation, the ambition and the direction of travel. We don’t yet live in a sustainable world, so no-one is expecting perfection, just positive steps in the right direction.
With a clear narrative and great ESG storytelling, you not only build trust and loyalty, you also have an opportunity to inspire others and attract talent.
Too many companies bury their ESG efforts in their annual reports. These are often filled with text, graphs, sales trajectories and balance sheets. They are created for a particular audience, usually investors. Expecting other audiences such as the public, potential employees, B2B and B2C customers search out these reports means that ‘pull communication’ model works. In reality it doesn’t and the younger generation such as Generation Z don’t even like reading, let alone searching through 50 pages of dense text to find what they are looking for.
Generation Z are visual and story-driven. They consume content across multiple platforms often concurrently, scrolling and tapping between apps in search of something that catches their eye. These are ESG company customers. Gen Z shoppers are 62% more likely to purchase from a business that they know has sustainability credentials. 73% are even willing to pay more for a product or service that is ‘sustainable’ (First Insight). A report from Deloitte states that Generation Z employees expect companies to act on global challenges and will turn down job offer or even quit if they feel the companies values and behaviors contradict their own. So, if you want to attack Gen Z workers into your business ESG is essential and ESG storytelling is how they will know if you’re a good fit for them.
A sustainable business is one that has a pipeline of talent, are you attracting enough young talent into your business or sector?
Three Easy Ways to Improve ESG Storytelling
Here are three simple, actionable ways to improve your ESG Storytelling
#1 Use Original Photography
There is something called the picture superiority effect. It is based on scientific research and studies that have revealed how we read a screen or a page of a document and the research tells us that our eyes are drawn to images and we scan words, often randomly to get a sense of what is being said. When there are photographs or images present, the message is remembered for longer and understood more quickly.
What do we learn from this? If we want our communication to stick we need to use more images and our images should tell stories.
A study by MIT in the US revealed that we can read a photograph in 13 milliseconds. Which means we can read a series of photographs in a photo-story in a few seconds, all that might needed is some complementary text but the photographs will do all hard work.
If one of your social commitments is installing water pumps to communities in Africa so that they can wash clothes, clean and cook, then 3-5 photographs will have more impact in telling that story than 200 words of text.
However, stock photos that are purchased online for a few pounds aren’t the same. For a start they aren’t authentic and if you can buy the image so can everyone else.
Your ESG stories are unique to you and with original photography that is yours, you can authentically reflect your people, your locations, the people you support, the places you are working in and the progress you are making.
#2 Apply story telling frameworks to your communication
There is a lot of science that explains why we are more receptive to stories but what is a story?
To me a story is descriptive, it has a setting, it has characters, something happens, and good stories connect with audiences emotionally.
Stories also have structure, usually it’s in three parts:
- The set-up
- The action
- The outcome
This is a typical movie structure but we use it for business stories as well. I use something call the the CAR model:
- Context
- Action
- Result
Context – Begin with the values and motivations behind your ESG efforts. Why do you care? Why does your business act?
Action – What exactly are you doing? How is it being delivered or executed?
Result – Then show the tangible outcomes, how your work improves lives, reduces emissions, or benefits local communities.
What we see too often are messages that just focus on the ‘Action’ without the context or impact. For the audience it’s confusing.
The CAR model is a narrative arc that is designed to create emotional connection and meaning for the audience. Once they’ve read your story they should understand what you are doing, why you are doing it and the impact you are having.
# 3 Increase frequency
The challenge with any communication these days is getting cut-through among all the other comms noise that is fighting for attention. This means that communication needs to be consistent and frequent.
Gone are the days when we can assume that an email has be read or a document opened, or a video watched. The email may be one of hundreds that is deleted without proper attention because the recipient is focused on a deadline or distracted by another task. So, to get their attention you have to deliver messages across different channels, on different days and at different times.
It is certainly not enough to produce one or two reports a year which your audiences have to search for on your website. Making your stakeholders do the work is never a good idea and if you want ESG and sustainability to be a differentiator then you have to be proactive and bold about explaining what you doing and why.
ESG storytelling and sustainability comms should be strategies that help you connect with stakeholders who are your existing and future customers, potential employees and investors. To make a connection you need stories and to help them understand your business in a world that is full of competing messages, which means you need to be using more imagery and preferably authentic photography.
Andrew Cameron – Photographer and Sustainability Champion
I am a documentary photographer who work with retailers, the construction sector, manufacturing, and agriculture to engage audiences about change, sustainability, ways of working and project progression.
I work with my clients to create compelling visual stories that support employee communication, investor relations and external stakeholder engagement.
I’ve been working on sustainability stories and ESG Storytelling since 2006. I have qualifications in Environmental Science and Sustainability Management from Cambridge University’s Institute of Sustainability Leadership.
