Karan Chadda

Global digital marketing and communications leader

The environment is tricky ground for companies

Business leaders and Kermit don’t have a lot in common, but they’ll likely utter the same refrain, “It’s not easy being green.”

That’s because acting on climate change is full of uncertainty. But acting to combat climate change is something businesses must do. The underlying reason for the lack of confidence is that while public opinion is settled on the issue, it is not settled on the solutions.

Last year, an Ipsos Mori poll found that 85% of British adults are concerned about climate change. So, there’s is no denying that the vast majority of people accept that climate change is happening. However, perceptions of how the issue manifests itself and how to tackle it do not have similarly emphatic agreement.

Bags of strife

Five years ago, in an early move against single use plastic, the 5p charge for plastic bags was introduced. It saw dramatic reductions in the use of plastic bags, sales of which plummeted by 90% over the next three or four years. But late in 2019 campaigners began calling for a complete ban or higher prices for bags for life because of a worrying increase in sales figures. It was estimated that an average of 54 bags per household were sold. So, just five years in, supermarkets are again under pressure from campaigners to do more.

As campaigners have identified, the problem is convenience. Absentmindedly forgetting to carry a bag with you carries little pain if spending 5p or 10p fixes the problem. So here, people, who we know are concerned about climate change, fall back on bad habits for convenience. People don’t do the environmentally right thing because it is inconvenient. Businesses do not have that luxury.

Do the right thing? What is the right thing?

The difficulty for businesses is that the right thing to do is not clear. There are obvious things like installing motion sensing lights in offices, removing disposable plastic cups and cutlery, etc. At the other end of the scale, grand commitments are also relatively easy. Executives who commit to being carbon neutral or even carbon negative in 10 years’ time, can do so comfortable in the knowledge that they probably won’t be around.

It’s the material and medium term actions that are problematic. For example, if you’re a food producer that relies on a particular raw ingredient, how do you act on climate? Do you substitute out that core ingredient? If you do, you’ll potentially wipe out the communities that grow that product. Not good.

Alternatively, could you work with that community to grow its produce in a more sustainable way? That’s better, but how are your food miles looking? And is your crop production sustainable because you use new plant varieties that are more drought and pest resistant? Sounds like you might be locking that community into purchasing expensive seeds in perpetuity. And what about protecting biodiversity? I could go on. The point is that there is no simple, ticks-all-the-boxes solution.

It’s the same across most sectors. Solutions to unsustainable business practices are imperfect and create their own issues.

It’s not necessarily good for business

Going green is not necessarily good for business. Sure there are surveys that say customers will pay more for goods from companies that are environmentally friendly. And if you believe those surveys, I’ve got some bad news for you: people often say one thing and do another. Shocking, I know.

Usually at this point case studies citing Patagonia and Unilever are thrust forward. Patagonia, great brand, great work, genuinely focused on sustainability. But… high prices, premium products, niche clientele, difficult to scale. Unilever, corporate stakeholder darling, great story to tell. But… short on growth, divesting business units and only just avoided a takeover a year or so ago.

Marks & Spencer is the counter case study. It went full tilt at sustainability in a real way with its Plan A programme. Shwopping, recycled uniforms, supply chain reviews. It went the whole hog. Since it launched that plan in 2007 its share price is down by about 70%. Going green doesn’t negate the need for good products, strategy and management.

None of this analysis excuses businesses from their responsibilities. It aims only to highlight the complexity of the situation. The challenge is easily defined but the solutions are not clear cut. Businesses must act nonetheless. It’s not easy being green.

Managing Twitter

Twitter has a mixed reputation at the moment. It’s a loud, shouty place. The opinions expressed are increasingly extreme and even the mildest utterance contains something that offends someone. Its lingua franca is hyperbole. And it’s exhausting. No surprise that it’s led to some people to withdraw from the network.

I know some people have stepped away entirely and others have eased off. For me, the antidote has been to go deeper. I’ve rediscovered Twitter. Good Twitter. Useful Twitter. Here’s what works for me.

Getting back to community

Communities of interest are the backbone of the internet and Twitter’s chock full of them.

Poetry Twitter is full of amazing creative minds expressing ideas and emotions in ways you’d never thought possible. They’re warm, they’re friendly and it’s amazing to watch so many of them move from sharing poems, to having submissions published and some even having collections commissioned.

History Twitter is full of experts having fascinating conversations and sharing their deep expertise. It’s like having an accurate, self-curating version of Wikipedia. I’ve purchased books following their recommendations, I’ve learnt a ton just sitting back and following their conversations.

Lastly, how could I not mention PR Twitter. It doesn’t always agree, but it’s a pretty civilised bunch. I’ve made friends, had laughs and learnt so much.

Ignore the bellowing

Twitter isn’t the real world. For that matter, neither are current affairs TV shows or newspaper columns. It’s mostly just a small subset of the country manufacturing clicks and comments to inch out a little more publicity or one more commission. It might feel like everyone’s arguing but they’re really not. Most people aren’t even engaged. It’s a handful of loud mouths. You need to keep that perspective. So every time there’s a flare up, I ignore it. If it pops into my feed, I let it pass through. Don’t get sucked in.

Being civil and kind

Everyone has a different view of what’s acceptable, but I think most would agree that name calling is childish at best and wholly unacceptable. As a rule, whether it’s a politician I vehemently disagree with or a company I’m frustrated with, if I must engage I do so politely. You’re not going to make online discourse better if you’re part of the problem.

Recognising my expertise is limited

I’m curious by nature. I like to learn new things. Understand ideas. And generally pick liberally from a range of topics. I try to approach every topic with a novice’s mindset.

For example, I’d bet that I’ve read more Indian poetry than the vast majority of people in the UK, but when I talk to experts on Twitter, who obviously know so much more than me, I recognise that I’m a novice compared to them and am happy to be so. I’m learning.

Even in areas in which I’m an expert, like digital marketing, there are people who have deeper experience in certain areas and different approaches. I learn so much by reading what they think and asking how they came to that view. It’s an endless source of CPD.

Most of this boils down to getting back to learning and sharing, which is why I joined Twitter in the first place. I’m glad to say I’ve managed to get back to that.

What will make the difference in 2020?

The start of a year. The start of a decade. Everyone’s pumped and ready to make their mark. But before you charge head first into a frenzy of activity, take a moment and think about what will truly make a difference in 2020.

Better management

If you improve at one thing this year, let it be management. You can always be better and nothing has more of an impact than good management. Whether it’s line management of one person or a team. No matter if you work in a start up with five people or a big company of thousands. Management is the difference maker.

Upwards management. Peer management. Line management. Expectation management. It’s all about working with people and contributing to an organisation’s culture. So influence the setting of objectives, help to build the consensus to achieve them, and foster a commitment within the team to deliver them.

Good managers create teams that are greater than the sum of their parts.

We’ve all had terrible managers and we’ve all had wonderful ones, so we should all know the impact that good management has on lives, on careers and on work. And that truly is the power of good management: getting a team to deliver collectively what it could not do individually. Good managers create teams that are greater than the sum of their parts. Invest your time in being better, and then focus on being better still.

Remembering that the what is as important as the why

In the past decade a lot of time and effort was spent on why. Why do we do things? What’s our purpose? What drives us? All important questions. But we shouldn’t let that get in the way of thinking about the whats. As in: what are people actually doing? What are they buying? What are we trying to achieve?

This is all practical stuff. And being practical is the difference maker. So define your purpose, but also deliver it. Want to help protect the environment? Set out a plan to do it and then do it.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) need to be hit by 2030, the UN is calling this the decade of delivery. It’s all about sorting out what we’re doing not why we’re doing it. You should’ve sorted out the why by now.

Now let’s bring this down from the high levels of climate change and global advancement. The what is equally important whether you’re shifting product, generating leads or influencing legislation. Being practical will set you apart. So focus on it. Spend more time developing plans than strategy.

Delivering

That leads us nicely on to the most important thing to do this year: deliver stuff. Want to do stand out work? Do it. Commission it. Sell it. Get it out there. Be as ambitious as you like, but make sure you actually deliver stuff. Outcomes trump outputs, but you tend to get no outcomes without outputs. That’s an awful sentence, but I know you understand it. It’s good enough. It delivers. Make sure you deliver too.

Bonus tip

All this stuff will still be true next year and the year after. It was true last year too.

Variations on a theme (2): Economist ads

For copywriters, The Economist’s “white out of red” ads are the supreme example of the power of good commercial writing. They are witty, sharp and knowing.

I think most copywriters will, at some point or other, have attempted to write their own version. I know I have. More than once, in fact. I’ve had another bash now. The results are below.

Think rhymes with drink

The first two variations fall around the simple fact that think rhymes with drink. So I’ve taken some fairly common end-of-the-week refrains and tweaked them to focus on the newspaper’s print publication day.

Knowledge at work

Nothing will ever be as clever as the management trainee ad. These two follow in its footsteps of trying to capture the value to your career of being well-informed.

A play on words

This is probably the most original of the variants I’ve created. It’s simple word play.

Grime

Grime is incredibly popular among creatives. It’s being used to flog everything from rum to furniture. Perhaps it could sell newspapers too? Apologies to Stormzy for this one.

A quick final note to emphasise two points. Firstly, I’m not a designer so I know the typesetting will upset many people but tough cookies. And secondly, I didn’t have the right font so I used Cambria, which I know isn’t the best substitute but, again, tough cookies.

Recent articles