Nadia Anastasia Liapi Ph.D. on LinkedIn: This summer marked a key step in clamping down greenwashing as the… (2024)

It's about time!Last month the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, representing more than 360,000 professionals worldwide, called upon the UN to make Responsible Communication the 18th SDG (1). 👏Communication aspects are mentioned in some of the existing SDGs; mostly the fundamental human right of access to knowledge. But communication is much more than information. It's exchange, it's dialogue, it's debate that helps synthesize new ideas and power up cooperation. It organises societies and facilitates progress. It also moulds culture. It's how people express (and change) beliefs and define identity. Communication is the glue of human life. Hence the call for the 18th SDG focuses on what can weaken the social cohesion bonds: misinformation, disinformation and hate speech.It advocates for:-Promoting media, PR and information literacy-Supporting ethics and professionalism in the sector-Combating misinformation-Enhancing trust in institutions through transparency and accountability-Fostering inclusive communicationHowever, this is also a great opportunity for the comms sector to extend responsible communication into defining its own sustainability role, beyond communication integrity.To address both its environmental impact and its potential to drive change.For instance, the Purpose Disruptors and the econometrists magic numbers estimated that UK advertising produced 208 million tonnes of CO2 in 2022. Mainly by driving up consumption and adding to Scope 3 emissions under SDG12.This begs the question: what types and levels of consumption can sustain both the planet and people's well-being (including a healthy economy) and how can businesses set their promotional activities within those limits? In other words, how can we market responsibly?This is a Goldilocks problem; not too much or too little, we need it just right. To quote Kate Raworth, the Doughnut Economics model creator (3): "Here’s the conundrum: No country has ever ended human deprivation without a growing economy. And no country has ever ended ecological degradation with one.”But as with everything, there are two sides to the coin. To paraphrase Seth Godin (4), sustainability has a communication problem.The solutions exist. But we are still far away from adopting them en masse.Not only do we need to connect people to the problem, we need to change hearts and minds. Embracing new solutions means changing the way we live, work and consume. It means evolving our beliefs and adopting new behaviours and attitudes.And who are the ultimate tastemakers? Who can not only insert themselves into the zeitgeist but also shape it? Right, you guessed it. Marketers.Marketing has been a big part of the problem. However, with recalibration it can be a big part of the solution. Responsible communication should be fighting threats to sustainability but also promoting what makes it possible.(References in comments. Image: my own)

25

8 Comments

It was 2017 when I walked into VG Patisserie, France’s first-ever vegan patisserie and after sampling their drool-worthy goods, I approached the owner.“What you do is just brilliant” I gushed. She let out a little shrug. It was not me the foreigner she needed to convince but the locals.How things have changed since.. Now VG Patisserie is housed in a swanky boutique and supplies high-end hotels. France’s climate law mandates schools to have at least one vegetarian day per week. Apparently, of France's 630 Michelin-starred restaurants, 145 feature a vegetarian or vegan menu (1).And now the Paris 2024 Olympics promises to cut down the Games’ meals footprint by half! (2)That's meaningful because, after energy, the food system is the second-largest source of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for more than 1/3 of them (3).In fact, food emissions alone could eat up (no pun intended) all of our 1.5C budget if not addressed (4). Yet food remains a taboo topic when talking about sustainability. Even though the majority of its emissions come from meat and dairy (5), this is barely mentioned in climate news (6).The Paris Games' target is 1 kg of CO2-eq per meal which is impressive. For comparison, a cappuccino with cow’s milk is about 0.4kg CO2-eq per serving!How are they going to achieve that? Mainly by making 60% of the meals for the general public vegetarian.Let’s see how that stacks up. A vegetarian meal saves about 20-50% of emissions (7) compared to an average omnivorous meal (fyi vegan meals are even more carbon efficient).
Assuming the best-case scenario of offering the most emissions-efficient vegetarian meals (50% less emissions) to the most people i.e. 60% of the time, the best overall food emissions reduction at the Games would be approximately 30%. So where do the rest 20% of carbon savings come from?On closer examination of the Paris Food Vision (2), it seems the lifecycle assessment (a method for assessing environmental impact) will also consider that eco-friendly containers will be used, that most ingredients will be locally sourced and leftover food will be donated or composted.This makes sense for events management, but what about everyday at home where we are less likely to eat out of single-use plastic containers or waste as much food? What matters most is WHAT we eat.According to the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, that means eating even more plants (8). Or to put it differently, having no more than half a kilo of meat per week, with just 1/5 of it being red (pork, beef or lamb).The big question is, what would the impact be if those of us in developed countries were to eat this way? That's so powerful, it would cut agriculture’s emissions by almost 2/3 and free up a land area bigger than the EU to become a carbon sink. Such a big climate “dividend" would most likely fulfil all our CO2 removal obligations! (9)It seems every bite counts.(references in comments, image: my own)

6

5 Comments

I am so happy to have completed the Business Sustainability Management course by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) (with a distinction grade to boot, whoop!).It was hands down the most rewarding, intellectually stimulating and unexpectedly emotive experience this year. How can I best convey it to you? Oh, I know! Movie references! 🍿We started with the big picture: the forces that impact sustainability and how they are interrelated (like when you were a kid looking up at the stars and realising we are all connected - or maybe it was "Avatar" that made the penny drop for you?). Then we considered the business case for sustainability and business models. Intrigued by the WEF Risks Report 2024 I went down a rabbit hole of aggregate data on global progress for my analysis. I am not going to lie, what I saw brought on anxiety-riddled, blood-boiling moments akin to Kate Dibiasky in "Don’t Look Up" wanting to punch those blissfully dismissing the proverbial comet hurling itself towards Earth. "Don’t despair", said the course tutors. “But do or do not. There’s no try". OK Yoda, I’ll soldier on.Next, we delved into regulations, production, design, communication, partnerships. Getting a handle on how they all fit together. It was like having Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape and Sirius Black tooling up Harry for the ultimate challenge. Then the day came to put all we learnt in an action plan! How to be a change agent that secures resources and influences. And that’s when the impossible began to seem possible. That we can turn the ship around. That it makes sense to choose the red pill of action over the blue pill of apathy.But that’s not all! I also found myself in a community of authentic, gutsy, like-minded people who give you hope that the tipping point is here. Because as Taika Waititi says in his credit scene cameo in “Last Goal Wins”: “it just goes to show when the going gets rough, when you feel like you can’t carry on, that there’s no hope or you just can’t do it.. anything can happen! And a whole lot of miracles. You just have a little bit of faith”. Thank you to the head tutors Beth Knight, Prof. Wayne Visser and Louise Nicholls for the transformative course. Thank you Laura Gherasim ( she/ her) for challenging us in the forum. Thank you Sandra Decasper for the constructive feedback that kept me improving. Thank you Matthew Kilgarriff for building an awesome community and Luca Condosta, Ph.D. (he/him) for rocking the Zurich group.Now the dust has settled, I find myself energised to continue doing my part to inspire change with communication. Aristotle had it figured out: it takes ethos, logos and pathos to persuade. But, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio proved, there’s a nuance; it’s pathos that steers the decision-making wheel in our brains.We very much need some pathos to connect and galvanise us all. Genevieve Cote delivered it in 2min:22sec at BGT of all places.🤯Make them feel. That’s the answer.

29

20 Comments

Imagine..You were born in a remote Himalayan village. Your parents are subsistence farmers working from dawn till dusk just to grow enough food to eat. There's no electricity, running water, education, or healthcare. It’s a miracle you are alive. About 30% of children in rural Nepal don't make it (World Bank data).But then your father passes away.. your situation becomes dire. Few crops grow in the cold, stony mountains and with climate change disrupting the water supply, growing food becomes a Herculean task for your mother. She may be illiterate but knows it's best for your survival to send you away. It has to be someplace safe or you risk joining the 20K+ Nepali girls that get trafficked each year (Mountain Child charity).Then as if by divine intervention a relative finds a city school that can take you in. You'll have a roof over your head, a guaranteed meal and education. Education means a future where you won't have to live hand to mouth. The school was founded by Buddhist monks and is free. You live with 500 other children who, like you, bravely attend school away from their families. What keeps you going is faith, grit and gratitude. You reach Grade 10 but can't finish high school. Your school doesn’t have the resources. It's time to go home.Still, it's a miracle. Only 23% of Nepal’s rural people have some secondary education (Dhaulagiri Jrl. Sociol & Anthr. 11:24-59).Then, the unimaginable happens. Your school director tells you that due to your excellent character and grades, you've been selected for a scholarship to finish school in Europe.You end up in a strange place where people look different, behave differently, eat different food.. but deep down have the same dreams. A good life for themselves and their children. We are the same after all. After two years you graduate. Another miracle! Unlike 64% of Nepal’s Grade 12 students who drop out to support their families (Nepali newspaper Republika). Meanwhile, your European classmates prepare for university. The ultimate dream of professional qualifications.. Do you dare to dream? That's Nima's story. I had the honour of meeting this young woman who faces adversity with a smile.Nima is a Sherpa. Like her people, the unsung mountain heroes guiding Western climbing expeditions in Nepal, she has her own Everest to climb. Only this time the roles reverse. We, the Westerners are called to support this Sherpa win her uphill battle of getting university education.Here’s her crowdfunding campaign. Will you become a supporter? Help her beat the odds? Please donate what you can. Spread her message!Do you have friends who believe education can change lives? Share the campaign with them, they’ll get it.Do you have friends who believe healthcare is a fundamental right? Share the campaign with them, they’ll get it.Do you have friends in the mountaineering community? They’ll get it.Let’s help Nima fly her flag on the peak of her own Everest. It’ll be a miracle.

19

3 Comments

It was truly an honour working with Lena Wäppling and achieving record results for the Lena Wäppling's Foundation by designing their brand message strategy and executing it in the 2022 Lena’s Run For Life fundraising campaign last September.Of equal importance is that now Lena has a blueprint she can use going forward to keep her communications on brand. Lena is literally a trailblazer, setting up and running the first survivor-led ovarian cancer charity in Europe that also directly funds research in the field. That’s an achievent of monumental significance! 👏👏👏 And that’s why it was tremendously meaningful to support her. I can’t wait to see what she does next to bring the ovarian cancer community and the research community closer together to accelerate a future where no woman dies of this condition.Because as history has shown, science may be the rocket fuel but patient advocacy is often the ignition needed for life-saving innovation to finally take off 🚀It’s time we changed the narrative in ovarian cancer.

20

6 Comments

At a time when #femtech is booming, it’s astonishing how little is invested in women’s health. Breast cancer aside, other female health conditions received only 1% of pharmaceutical research funding in 2020 according to a McKinsey report. Is it a case of limited resources leading to hard investment decisions?That question came to mind when I met Lena Wäppling and heard about her ovarian cancer foundation. I didn’t know much about the issue other than it’s rare. I found it striking that Lena, an ovarian cancer survivor, is not just raising funds but awards them globally following review by the OB&G society in her country Sweden. Why does a civilian go to the trouble of setting up a scientific peer review? To understand her challenge, I started looking into the condition and came to some horrific realisations:-Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynaecological cancer. Less than 50% of women are alive 5 years after diagnosis-There's no early diagnostic and treatment options are limited-Lack of innovation in the field means mortality rates remained mostly unchanged over the last 30 years while other conditions e.g. breast cancer, improvedWhat about health economics? What's the societal impact?When I found the data, I did a double take (JAMA Oncol8(3):420): while ovarian cancer is rare (its lifetime risk is about a tenth of that of breast cancer), the devastation it brings in terms of death and disability is as much as 25% of that of breast cancer! That’s not a condition to ignore! So what happened? I decided to look into breast cancer since its progress trajectory is so different.Its history was a revelation. Life-saving innovation wouldn’t exist today if it wasn’t for breast cancer activists like Mary Lasker, Terese Lasser, Rose Kushner and countless others who lobbied for legislation, funding and patient research advocacy over the span of 50 years. Truly a case of 'sisters doin’ it for themselves'.So why didn't the same happen in ovarian cancer? The answer is sobering: with such poor prognosis, time for activism isn't always in the cards.I looked at Lena across the table. She's not just a walking medical miracle; she’s a gamechanger.She aspires to bring the ovarian cancer community and science community closer together. She knows that such partnerships are the only way to accelerate a future where no one dies of this disease.So she formed the first -and so far the only- ovarian cancer research charity in Europe led by a survivor.Once again, 'sisters doin’ it for themselves'.Every September, she organises Lena’s Run For Life, a charity run. This year it's from August 29 to September 4.Just run or walk for an hour and let her know the distance covered. The goal is to rack up enough miles to go around the earth, a symbol of embracing all women.In a few days, I’ll be dedicating an hour to #LenasRunForLife. Because in 2022 sisters are STILL doin’ it for themselves. Will you join me?👇https://lnkd.in/duCv4VB6

17

3 Comments

Your tagline is prime real estate for your marketing. 

It's often the first message your audience will receive from your brand. Whether it’s on your business card, your website, your email signature, your social media bio, your brochure, your booth’s banner at an industry event.. 

It’s a unique opportunity to leverage first impressions to raise brand awareness. 

Which is why it always puzzles me when I see businesses wasting this opportunity.

Either with “clever” language trying to emulate giants like Nike’s “Just Do It”, yet missing the mark with vague aspirational statements developed for style and not substance.Or with a grandiose, umbrella message designed by committee to cover all possibilities, only to lose specificity and muddle the substance along the way.

A recent example I worked on was initially something like “improving people’s health”. Perhaps appropriate for a multinational with a diverse product portfolio but not for the young organisation that came up with it; which does just one thing and does it well but way upstream of directly “improving people’s health”. That makes their initial tagline not only an eye-roll-inducing ‘vanilla’ but also a liability for their credibility.So in absence of a hefty budget for market research, tagline development and validation, what I suggest to clients, especially startups to do is to follow the “tin” principle when putting their tagline together.It does what it says on the “tin”(or the ‘can’ if you are from the US). That’s the ultimate statement of trust for your brand you’d hope to get from your audience. It’s what makes or breaks reputations. It’s what converts customers into brand ambassadors spreading the word and driving growth. Given that the tagline is often the first message on the “tin”, the first opportunity to shape perceptions, the question to ask ourselves to assess its effectiveness is “does it say what the brand does?” 

The easiest way to go about it is to literally state what the company offers for which audience. If you have already done the hard work of brand positioning and strategy, then replace the offer with the key benefit or even better the differentiation delivered for that audience. For example, for Volvo their tagline early on could have been “the safest cars for modern families”. Indeed one of their taglines once was “Drive Safely”.
So grab this opportunity to take away the guesswork for your audience and succinctly communicate what your company is about. With simplicity and clarity. Because when it comes to building trust, clarity of promise trumps cleverness any day of the week.#brandstrategy #tagline #positioning #valueproposition #brandmessaging

4

2 Comments

Can I just say that Iceland is killing it in their national tourism campaigns? 🖐🎤They have a knack for striking at exactly the right time as a mouthpiece of the global zeitgeist, never missing a beat (did you see their post-COVID campaign ‘Let It Out’? G👏E👏N👏I👏U👏S!!!)And now they treat us to a great parody, the Icelandverse, roasting Zuckerberg’s Metaverse with an Olympic-level trolling mastery that would make the Monty Python proud.Not only is their timing perfect (their marketing department must be remarkably free from red tape if they can get this out in just 10 days after Metaverse’s announcement), they did not hold back on poking at the bear- the unease in the collective consciousness about the Matrix Zuckerberg is building for us. Instead, Iceland offers “connection without being super weird”, “an open world experience where everything is real”, “a country that is completely immersive.. with water that’s wet!” 😂 Most of all, their campaigns are totally on brand! In my experience at least, the nation is indeed that deliciously oddball with an irresistible deadpan humour (tip: if you are ever in Reykjavik, go on the haunted walk with Oli, a local historian. You’ll laugh so hard, it’ll hurt).But for me it’s more than riding a trend and touching a nerve. It’s a triumph of uncensored creativity and authentic communication. It’s about putting the personal back in to business. Cutting through the audience’s jadedness and building trust by daring to show you have a heartbeat. Standing out and finding success because of (and despite of) showing your true colours. (I haven’t managed to read through the ~2000 comments the video received, but the number of people saying they now want to visit Iceland is striking. Geez.. who knew? Showing humanity actually works 😏).Which begs the question: if a whole country is brave enough to let their hair down and show some personality in their national campaigns, sparking up spectacular levels of engagement as a result (half a million views in one day) that made them buzzworthy (a trending hashtag and at least 75 news articles worldwide in just 3 days), why are most businesses still hiding behind a bland corporate facade and drowning in stiff and stilted messaging? 🤷🏻♀️It’s about time we talked human. Because as Zack Mossbergsson aptly asks “ you are human, right?” #marketing #brandstrategy #brandmessaging

18

8 Comments

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock"That’s the headline used by the advertising legend Ogilvy to spearhead Rolls-Royce’s ad campaign in the late 50s. The longest-running and most successful campaign for the brand at the time. In the first year alone, it bumped up sales by 50%!Ogilvy came up with 26 different headlines for the ad, after 3 weeks of research, and got a team of writers to select the winning one. Why all this racket over 18 words? Because as he said: “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”Awestruck by his creative genius?You should be; but not because of the headline. He didn’t actually write it! As he openly mentioned, he had pulled it out of an article in ‘The Motor’ magazine.His genius was in recognising that -..what the brand’s audience was longing for was an exceptionally escapist and self-indulgent driving experience that matched their elite status; aka the aspirational need..a feeling that Rolls-Royce could deliver better than others at the time; aka the key differentiator ..and that feeling needed to be infused in words that would get the audience’s heads nodding all the way to the car dealer. Aka a message that resonates As Ogilvy famously said: “If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language”.He believed that so strongly, that he used the audience’s unedited language in the campaign’s most valuable asset: the headline. The best marketing is your clients’ words. How often do you listen to them? #marketing #advertising #brandmessaging #brandpositioning #sociallistening

14

6 Comments