The time for frightening people, confusing them with jargon, and hedging our messages into incoherence is long over, argues John Pabon in this article. Now, it’s time for something radically different: clarity, trust, and transparency. Because at the end of the day, our audiences don’t expect perfection. They just want a bit of honesty.
In the wide world of sustainability, communications have always been our Achilles’ heel. From the sad-vertising of philanthropic campaigns to the theatre of annual reports, we’ve struggled for decades to get our message across. While the rest of our work advances year on year, communications almost feels like it’s stuck in a bygone era. Outdated tropes, poor semiotics, and mismatched ambition all continue to be the order of the day.
Given everything asked of us, I suppose none of this is surprising. We’re tasked with a fine balancing act. Inspire without coddling. Inform without frightening. Encourage transparency, but only within certain limits. It’s no wonder we abdicate to what’s most comfortable, even if it no longer serves the greater good.
Take sad-vertising, for example. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it’s exactly what it sounds like: sad advertising. Think of those SPCA ads with Sarah McLachlan’s Angel playing over footage of bedraggled shelter animals. Or World Vision’s campaigns from the 1980s, complete with sepia tones and a sombre acoustic guitar. These campaigns pull on the heartstrings so hard, I believe they end up having the opposite effect.
Instead of galvanising people into action, they make us apathetic. Research backs this up. Biometric testing by UK ad agency Brave, as well as studies by the University of Queensland, found that charity ads evoking fear and disgust consistently underperformed those with more hopeful, constructive messaging, often by nearly double.
Sad-vertising is just one part of what I call the Paralysis of Doom. Other notable examples include polar bears on melting ice caps, a red-dusted Earth brought to its knees by nuclear destruction, and the child in a far-off land you can sponsor for only the price of…well, you get the idea. These doomist messages, no matter how well intended, are having the opposite effect.
A 2021 study by Bath University found 56 per cent of young people believe humanity is doomed. Staggering out the other end of a global pandemic, I can only imagine what those numbers are today.
No discussion of poor sustainability communications would be complete, of course, without bringing in the private sector. Marketers lean on scientific jargon, statistics, and acronyms with abandon.
Greenwashing efforts misdirect consumers from what’s actually going on.
The newest trend, greenhushing, is positioned as an exercise in far-reaching honesty but is more often a response to regulatory overreach. Multiply all this exponentially for those in highly polluting industries.
A newly released report by The Anti-Greenwash Charter, a not-for-profit initiative supporting organisations committed to responsible sustainability communications, offers a particularly sobering window into just how far we’ve got to go.
The Australian Built Environment Communications Report: Navigating Sustainability Claims in an Era of Scrutiny is a first-of-its-kind look into the state of communications within one of the world’s most polluting sectors.
Remember the built environment, architecture, construction, and de-construction, is responsible for a substantial share of global emissions. Yet, they’ve been particularly quick to adopt language like green design, low-carbon, and net-zero.
The question put to a room of industry experts across legal, marketing, and public affairs is whether that language is translating to action. What we found should come as no surprise. If anything, what’s happening in Australia’s built environment sector is emblematic of the struggles professionals are facing across the board.
First, the pressure to demonstrate sustainability leadership conflicts with the requirement for fully substantiated, defensible claims. Organisations can either over-promise, risking regulatory and greenwashing scrutiny, or keep quiet entirely.
Second, exaggeration pervades the development pipeline. One government representative estimated 90 per cent of development applications outside top-tier developers involved greenwashing to some degree. Some is nefarious. Most, however, are well-intentioned architects creating compelling narratives to win projects, only for budgetary realities to strip things to the bone.
Third, the gap between intent and result challenges credibility. A render showing lush rooftop gardens, passive ventilation, and high-energy ratings may not be the same building construction teams complete.
Fourth, the industry lacks reliable infrastructure around certifications, standardised language, and consequences for false claims. With over 600 different reporting frameworks worldwide, and increasing pressure towards transparency from Canberra, the ACCC, and ASIC, practitioners are often left without the requisite tools to be successful.
And fifth, greenhushing has become the biggest risk factor for effective communications. Rather than improving operations, fear of regulatory action and public vitriol is driving organisations towards silence. Participants reported reducing external sustainability communications markedly over the past 18 months, noting the reputational upside of sustainability leadership no longer justifies the potential downsides.
To be clear, silence is absolutely not a neutral choice. If those genuinely eliciting change stay quiet, while those with the legal budgets to exaggerate continue to do so, the market loses its ability to distinguish leaders from laggards.
we need to be far more thoughtful in how we approach communications. One antidote to both greenwashing and greenhushing is simply radical transparency. We have access to the entirety of humanity’s knowledge at our fingertips. Keeping one’s cards close to the chest is an open invitation for internet sleuths to go down a rabbit hole. Conversely, putting all your cards on the table prevents the “gotcha” moment executives are terrified of.
To move towards radical transparency requires a few things from communication professionals. Instead of simply raising awareness, we need to give people concrete actions of what to do with that attention. It means being specific in our claims. Radical transparency also requires showing the good along with the not-so good. Demonstrating progress, no matter how slow, goes a long way in building trust with one’s stakeholders.
The Built Environment Report also describes another barrier to radical transparency: the “marketing-sustainability-legal triangle”. Each function is pulling in different directions with different needs, yet none want to share the risk or decision-making authority. The result is messaging so hedged and qualified it means nothing at all. That’s not effective communications; that’s subterfuge. Cross-functional alignment really is the only way forward.
There is a compelling case, gleaned from the report’s findings, that those who embrace credible sustainability communications now will garner competitive advantage in the not-too-distant future. With intensifying focus on corporate performance against a growing roster of ESG concerns, from regulators, customers, and the general public, keeping business as usual will only further erode trust. This, then, threatens the sector’s social licence and ability to deliver the sustainable built environment Australia so desperately needs.
Of course, these truisms don’t stop at our shorelines or with the built environment. They hold for every corner of the sustainability world. The time for frightening people, confusing them with jargon, and hedging our messages into incoherence is long over. Now, it’s time for something radically different: clarity, trust, and transparency. Because at the end of the day, our audiences don’t expect perfection. They just want a bit of honesty.