Winning the hearts and minds of the public is crucial to transition in your business model and ensuring success of new green products. But in a world of 24-hour news and multiplatform media, how can campaigns really cut through?
Partnerships between business and NGOs have evolved from reputation building and fundraising to more meaningful relationships which broaden communications channels and embed practical knowledge sharing.
The public is increasingly concerned about the environmental and sustainability agenda for business, but equally savvy in recognising inauthenticity. Fundamentally, ‘greenwashing’ doesn’t deliver for either side of a corporate-NGO partnership. In response, the environmental corporate partnership agenda has matured with longer-term, strategic partnerships which combine on-the-ground delivery and quantifiable public engagement under a clear campaign banner. Charities and third-party partners are actively sought as critical friends for business, helping to push innovative thinking and foster wider relationships to deliver on a company’s purpose-led campaigns. Done well, these have business benefits beyond environmental and social good - helping brands grow loyalty, enhance reputations and build deeper relationships with customers, suppliers and decision makers.
With its multifaceted Ocean Rescue campaign, Sky worked with WWF as part of a broad programme of awareness raising with customers and the wider public. Operating across all aspects of the business the campaign sought to ignite a wider debate on the environmental impact of single-use plastics, as well as addressing the company’s own footprint. With its new 2030 net zero target Sky has a larger ambition, expanding and elevating many of the successful approaches that drove the Ocean Rescue campaign. Sky has long believed that better business creates a better world. It has pushed itself to achieve the highest standards of sustainability and responsibility, and uses its voice to make a difference, campaigning for positive change on the big issues of our time.
Sky has a strong history of environmental leadership it was the first media company to go carbon neutral, and led a Sky Rainforest Rescue campaign that raised £9 million to keep a billion trees standing in the Brazilian Amazon and an Ocean Rescue Campaign that has reached over 47.8 million people across Europe.
Sky launched its Ocean Rescue campaign in 2017. Built on a clear understanding of the need to bring other people and businesses on a sustainability journey, the programme aimed to reverse the alarming trend of millions of tonnes of plastic seeping into the oceans each year.
At a practical level, the campaign is made up of four distinct workstreams which together have made a significant impact. Thus far, Sky invested £25 million in alternatives to plastic, removed 300 tonnes of plastic from their own business, protected 400km2 of ocean with the WWF and engaged 47.8 million people in its #PassOnPlastic campaign. Sky’s campaigning also led to more than 220 MPs and MEPs committing to change their own behaviour and consumption of single-use plastics.
Sky Ocean Ventures is a £25m fund committed to accelerating ideas to help reduce the amount of plastic going into our seas. Sky is supporting 15 high-potential ideas, funding everything from disposable bottles made of paper and sachets made of seaweed, to rainproof clothes that can last kids from the age of nine months to four years and plastic-free tampon applicators. Through partnering with National Geographic, Imperial College London, Innovate UK and Ambienta, Sky has access to deep specialist knowledge to help find the right ideas to invest in, to nurture those ideas in the best way and to report on the impact of their investments.
Closer to home, Sky feels strongly that it must lead by example. In October 2017 it set a target to remove all single-use plastic from its own operations, products and supply chains by 2020, and is on track to do so. By the end of 2017, all new products were made without single-use plastic and the company is helping business partners and suppliers transform their operations too. As the first company to set such a commitment, it hopes to inspire and encourage other businesses to take action to reduce their use of single-use plastic.
A five-year partnership with WWF has helped Sky shine a light on wider threats to ocean health, too. The partnership constitutes field work – which focuses on a network of marine protected areas which provides special sanctuaries for marine wildlife – and works to persuade governments to take urgent action to protect and restore our ocean health. Through its 100 million broadcast reach, Sky has used entertainment and sports content – whether through partnerships with the Premier League to eliminate single-use plastic at grounds or theming an X-Factor show in Italy around the issue of plastic – to ensure further reach.
Celebrity endorsements, promotions at sports events, expert tips from an array of industry experts, and an exclusive 45-minute TV documentary of its own, have seen Sky use its voice as a force for good, sharing the shocking impacts of plastic pollution around the world with almost 48 million people across Europe. Sky have now set a net zero carbon target for 2030. To get there, they’ll cut the carbon emissions created by their business, by their suppliers across the world and with the use of their tech products in consumers’ homes, by at least 50%. They’ll plant trees, mangroves and seagrass to absorb the rest, with an ultimate ambition of carbon positivity. Putting people at the heart of the campaign remains key. Sky is committed to using its voice across channels and shows to inspire as many people as possible to #GoZero.
Any campaign, broadly, needs to be successful in three areas. Awareness. Persuasion. Action. Extinction Rebellion faces a challenge in coming months. It has been hugely successful in raising awareness, both of itself as an organisation and of its topline objectives. But does its strategy lead to persuasion and action? Extinction Rebellion must be careful if it’s to really succeed in its aims. Looking at the big picture, Extinction Rebellion’s purpose is clear. We are facing a climate emergency that has been woefully prepared for by government, both in the UK and globally.
We are reaching a tipping point and – in the view of the organisation – concerned citizens have no option but to rebel in order to force this issue onto the parliamentary agenda. From a communication perspective, Extinction Rebellion is not really rebelling. It makes more sense to see their non-violent protests as a series of publicity stunts. It is masterful awareness-raising and these ‘stunts’ have been hugely successful. Climate and Brexit have become the UK’s dominant issues. Does that lead to success – if success means real action from government? It can’t be ruled out altogether, though tangible results have been hard to see, at least in Parliament. Certainly, the sheer will of forcing this issue and the need for action into the public, repeatedly, moves the Overton window of what is acceptable as “mainstream”. Following 11 days of protests in May, more than half (54%) of Britons agreed that climate change threatens our extinction25. Just 22% said they agreed with Extinction Rebellion. Extinction Rebellion has proved that it doesn’t need everyone to agree with it to make an impact – but it does need to know what behaviour it is trying to shift and who it needs to listen. The organisation currently has a strategy of civil disobedience, inspired by the work of Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth26. The challenge it now faces is one of redefining that strategy, and clarity. Is Extinction Rebellion effectively a lobbying group, trying to persuade governments to act? Or is it trying to overthrow capitalism, as alleged in a report for Policy Exchange co-authored by Richard Walton, the former head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command27? This is central and important to define. While there is an argument that the organisation could continue to drag the Overton window in its direction by being extreme, the very point of Extinction Rebellion is that its action is not extreme – it is necessity-driven by the climate emergency we face. Therefore, Extinction Rebellion needs to do two things: persuade “mainstream” general public to join its cause and persuade policymakers to act with urgency. Missing from a lot of Extinction Rebellion’s coverage is the so called “Three Demands Bill”28 it intends to persuade Parliament to debate. The immediate task is to persuade political decision makers, quickly, that the concerns of Extinction Rebellion are primary concerns of the public. To an extent this requires the organisation to be one with which the public can sympathise. But an organisation based largely around protest can find its novelty wearing off amongst the people directly impacted. With Extinction Rebellion, we can see this happening already. Targeting early morning commuter trains was ill advised at best and stupid at worst. The images of frustrated workers dragging protestors from the Tube generated empathy across the world, and not for the protestors. But more importantly, it created a narrative for anyone unimpressed by Extinction Rebellion– that the protestors are out of touch with everyday people29. This is a dangerous narrative for a group with mainstream ambitions. The specific narrative points to a lack of diversity. This bleeds directly into another problem: if the movement does not manage to attract the mainstream into its broad tent, the tent will fill with those people sympathetic to its more extremist agenda - those who cheer the overthrowing of capitalism - and they will inevitably create their own echo chamber. In this situation it is likely that its pronouncements will become – or be perceived by the outside world as increasingly removed from the ‘mainstream’.
This is a cycle. The more this happens, the less supportable they seem, the less sympathy they generate, the more their opponents can promote the narrative that they are extreme, the more they attract extremist members. In this environment, ill-advised commentary will blow up across media with more impact to further underline the extremist narrative30. As this situation develops, Extinction Rebellion faces its third problem – the amount of time devoted to internal management and politics will increase. This will increase in two ways. First, after so many protests, the sheer amount of time that needs to be devoted to helping members with consequent legal issues will increase. For an organisation of limited budget and time this will inevitably impact the amount of time that can be spent on external persuasion31. Second, any organisation which at its heart faces a dilemma over what type of organisation it is, will over time begin to see factionalism develop that will splinter the group – not only making it less effective as an agent of persuasion, but also alienating it further from the mainstream of the country.
None of this should subtract from the incredible impact that Extinction Rebellion has had on UK conversation over the course of its short life. Now it must find a way to create high-profile protests that generate mainstream sympathy, rather than alienate people. It needs to show faces to the UK that reflect the UK. It needs to bring in those people who will not necessarily join a protest but will amplify a message by speaking directly to policymakers about specific demands. When even The Guardian is suggesting that “numbers aren’t enough,”32 it is clear that Extinction Rebellion is at a crossroads. It will either remain a relevant protest group and evolve into an effective political force or descend into in-fighting and splinter groups.
