As you have certainly noticed, the Value of Sustainability is gradually spreading even in small and medium-sized enterprises, hand in hand with a higher awareness by the society.
Sustainability certainly has an impact on daily operations, and plays a key role in the communication strategy, as it improves and consolidates the company’s image and helps to increase the value for the Customer of its products.
If your company has included Sustainability in its Value System,
supporting the relevant activities with dedicated communication actions
is an excellent opportunity to improve its image
To build an adequate communication strategy for the Value of Sustainability, three questions need to be answered:
What to communicate?
Certainly, it is necessary to affirm and reaffirm the company’s attention to Sustainability as a “Value”: this should be included in the company’s Vision and Mission (and adequately highlighted when they are made public).
Moreover, it’s essential to talk about the specific actions carried out to keep and implement Sustainability. Here we need to distinguish two cases:
- If your company is in progress to reach its Sustainability target (for example obtain product/process certification, install environmentally sustainable equipment, etc.), it is important to periodically communicate the state of progress, indicating the next steps possibly.
- If the is already target-complying, it is ought to communicate the results obtained, also in quantitative terms if possible (i.e., lower energy consumption, percentage of use of renewable sources, initiatives for Social Sustainability, etc.). A suitable document to effectively collect and exploit this information is the Sustainability Report.
How to communicate?
First of all, it is important to define whether the target of the actions are consumers (B2C) or other companies (B2B): even if the subject of the communication does not change, for the first ones it is necessary to focus on the most emotional part and on the Brand-Sustainability association, in order to create and maintain a positive memory; for B2B communication the focus can also shift on how the objectives have been achieved, also specifying the technical details (within the limits of confidentiality, of course).
In any case, don’t forget that all communication actions on Sustainability are “Institutional” ones, hence they should keep a formal tone, finding the right balance even for the most emotional messages.
A very functional tool may be the creation of a dedicated brand, logo, or payoff, which accompanies all communication actions (even when not focused on Sustainability) to make this value immediately recognizable in branding activities.
When to communicate?
It is essential that communication actions relating about Sustainability are methodical:
- In the “Work in progress” phase, you should find a periodicity consistent with the planned actions, which is as constant as possible.
- Once “complying”, it is necessary to plan one or two communications per year (if the Sustainability Report is adopted, at least on its updates) to periodically report the results obtained and communicate any new implementations and/or considerable events.
Sustainability is a Value which increases
the Reputation and the Value for the Customer.
Communicating it with effectively
increases your company’s potential for success on the market!
Do you like to learn more, and get a personalized consultancy?
