The latest episode of Google Firestarters has just been published, featuring the brilliant Leo Rayman (CEO of EdenLab) on the challenging but inspiring topic of achieving ‘green growth’ and real sustainability transformation. Leo has a good provocation for this episode about how marketing needs to step up – he talks about how most of the green debate is (rightly) owned by climate professionals, but there is little transference of understanding to a marketing community that knows how to shape aspiration, change behaviour, make ideas land, and paint visions of the future.
The point is that we need to close the gap. In many cases marketers are well meaning but they are uncertain about what to do and concerned about doing the wrong thing. Achieving green growth is about using the levers of business to drive positive change, finding ways to raise overall prosperity whilst decoupling that from carbon emissions and negative social impacts.
In nature, growth is part of a healthy ecosystem. So this is about shifting businesses to a ‘clean share of market’, and using money as a tool for change. It’s a nicely pragmatic and realistic approach but the interesting thought about all this is that ultimately sustainability transformation will require a deeper, and more fundamental change than even digital transformation did. This was a fascinating episode to record, and a great provocation about a critical topic of our times. My thanks to Leo for a great conversation.
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