The power of good content marketing, and reporting your environmental impact

Welcome, intrepid explorers, to another episode of 'Marketers of the Universe'! This time, the marketers turn their attention to content marketing and greenwashing, and there's plenty to unpack.

Social media manager, Debbie Gacutan, kicks things off with a panel discussion around the effectiveness of content marketing. Eleanor Francis, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Adaptavist Group, and Tom Inniss, copywriter at Brew Digital, talk about some of their favourite campaigns and a few of the dos and don'ts of content creation to ensure an effective campaign.

This is followed by a group assessment on the current state of climate impact reporting by companies, and a debate on whether it's better to over-report or under-report your environmental efforts. Hosted by Senior Email Marketer, Mark Bundle, he is joined by Digital Marketing Coordinator, Freya Willcocks, Social Media Manager, Saufi Mohd Nor, and Account Manager, Ciaran O’Neill. Things get existential very quickly!

Timecodes

0:00 Introduction

1:09 Is content marketing any good?

12:29 Navigating green initiatives and accountability

27:56 Outro

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Auto-generated transcript

Mark Bundle

There's almost kind of emerging here a scale of evil. Referencing Bill Bailey for anyone that watches some of his old shows.

Tom Inniss

Hello and welcome to another episode of Marketers of the Universe. I'm Tom Innes, copywriter for Brew Digital, and today we have an excellent episode where we're bringing in another guest. So to kick things off, I'll be handing over to Debbie, who will be hosting a panel consisting of myself and Eleanor Francis talking about content marketing. Following that, mark Bundle will be discussing greenwashing v green hushing and whether or not companies should be doing more to save the environment. But first let's dive into that content marketing discussion right now.

Debbie Gacutan

So welcome everybody. I'm pretty excited to host this panel at the moment because it's something, a topic that's actually quite close to my heart. The title is content marketing Does it work? So scandalous? So for today's panel we have Tom and Elena. I would get them to introduce themselves because they will do a better job. Tom, you go first.

Tom Inniss

Hey, so you'll have already heard my voice, but I'm Tom Innes, the copywriter for Brew Digital.

Elena Francis

And my name is Elena. I am the Senior Content Marketing Manager for the Brand Communication and Comms team at the Adaptress Group.

Debbie Gacutan

Cool, all right, welcome guys. So we have here two experts in content marketing. Maybe we can do a little bit of a basic 101. What is content marketing? Elena, do you want to go first?

Elena Francis

Elena, do you want to go first? Yeah, sure, content marketing is generally creating and distributing useful and memorable content to attract and retain users or to encourage them to take a certain action, and it can come in many forms from social media posts, blog posts, webinars, videos, podcasts, e-books and many more. It's often used to establish an organization as a thought or industry leader and to build their brand awareness.

Debbie Gacutan

In your line of work. Tom, how do you measure the success of the content strategy that you've created for the brands that you've worked for in the past?

Tom Inniss

Measuring effectiveness of a content marketing strategy depends very much on what the objectives of that campaign are. So, if you're looking for conversions, then obviously you want to be able to track how many people have seen your content and then gone on to make an action, as I said. Um, alternatively, it might just be around brand awareness or building your companies or your businesses presence, or establishing yourself as like well, I think, like establishing yourself as a prestige brand or somebody who is able to meet the needs of a particular audience. So it's yeah, it really does depend on that, but, like some very simple things include traffic, followers, likes, conversions, brand sentiment. There's so many different ways that you could measure success and for you, ellen, and the adaptivist group.

Debbie Gacutan

Is there um particular metrics that are more important to you, given that you know it's a specific industry? It's b2b is there? How does your team look at like the ways of your working?

Elena Francis

so one of the key things that we do are blog posts. So what we'd like to look at to track success is the number of views, number of times spent on page, which is a really key one and the bounce rate, of course, as well. And if they've clicked on any call to actions, we'll measure that too and obviously figure out a click-through rate based on the people that actually viewed the page.

Debbie Gacutan

So because, yeah, a lot of what we do is blog based, that's probably our sort of main um, what we're reporting on and are there any particular projects that you guys want to shout about that you've done recently that you felt proud of in terms of like oh, this content really worked so well, or this content actually got shared, and so on?

Elena Francis

Absolutely so. One campaign that we've done, that's recently, that's done externally, is our digital etiquette report Mind the Generational Gap. This is something we do every year or so. That usually gets really good responses and a lot of feedback from people in the industry on social media platforms through our partners. So this is available on the Adaptsgroupcom website and I recommend people check it out to learn about the differences that different generations have working together in the workplace.

Tom Inniss

And if you hear a chat about that digital etiquette report, we spoke about it on the last podcast, so go and have a look through our back catalogue. Um, and for me, I think the resource hub of brew digital is like comprehensively a content marketing strategy piece of work, and it's been really exciting to see how we've gone from nearly zero SEO impact to quite a growing SEO presence as a result of the content that we're putting out on the website. So, yeah, I'm really excited to see how that continues to grow in the future.

Debbie Gacutan

Amazing. Thanks for that, tom, and, as Tom said, a resource hub is actually up there. We've got templates and blogs and articles that you guys might find helpful, so make sure to check that out. We're talking about our brands, but which other brands out there do you guys feel are doing quite well in their own content marketing?

Elena Francis

So one brand I think is quite interesting is MailChimp. They're usually used as a B2B email provider service and when people think about B2B they think, oh, you've got to be quite serious, you've got to be quite business focused, quite professional. And generally MailChimp are really good at having a sort of fresh, younger kind of tone of voice across all their copy and their imagery and so on across their websites and social media accounts. Um, but one thing they do on their website which I thought was quite experimental in a way, is they create a series of short um films, documentaries. The videos are only about two or three minutes long but they'll be kind of relevant to something that promotes email.

Elena Francis

So, for instance, they've got like a humorous animation series about, um, uh, small businesses and it's just like funny comedy things and it's sort of like the trials and tribulations of small businesses. So they're sort of targeting small businesses obviously as their audience, but again, not in like a strong salesy thing, just in relatable, unique content that you know, I don't think hub sport, for instance, one of their competitors is doing, and they've got lots of these different things. They've got a documentary about a villager in um somewhere in the near east to trying to turn his village into a tourist site and it's just an unusual thing to create a documentary about. They did another documentary about cats in istanbul, so they've done all these little small, quirky things that again just are unusual and they could go viral, I suppose. But because they're experimental and they did something really different, it sticks in your mind and just makes you think of them more and tell other people about it because it's so unusual.

Debbie Gacutan

That's very cool. I'm definitely going to go and check out MailChimp now. As a fan of video content myself, I think I'm constantly curious how brands are experimenting with video at the moment. Tom, do you have any favorites of your own?

Tom Inniss

So I think Monzo are really good at content marketing. They have really nailed tone of voice and ensuring that something that's usually considered quite opaque in terms of money management and banking is really transparent and accessible to as many people as possible. Um, I think their social media accounts are always quite although increasingly I think a lot of social media accounts are getting quite unhinged in terms of, like, how they're responding. Everyone is, yeah, everyone's just getting increasingly unhinged. I think it's just the pressures of society maybe, um, but also just like the way they branded themselves, their card, um, with that coral color, is exceptionally effective at drawing the eye and it becomes a conversation starter. And then, slightly separately and this is much more about imagery I think ro Rolex are very good at content marketing. They position themselves in the market very well and they just put out very simplistic images of the watch and it essentially speaks for itself and I find that very effective. Everybody immediately knows what they're about, what they're doing, and they don't spend a lot of time explaining themselves.

Debbie Gacutan

That's amazing. Yeah, I do see a lot of brands do a lot of like noise in marketing, but they change who they are almost seasonally as well. So it is also those timeless brands like Cartier and Tiffany, a lot of those luxury brands that they're not too much, but you already kind of know who they are as what. Tom has mentioned. So I think we're running down towards the end of our episode here. I want to hear from both of you guys, like fast answers what can you learn?

Elena Francis

from these rhymes. So I think in the case of MailChimp, it's worth trying to be experimental and look at creating content that your competitors aren't, even if it doesn't directly feel related. And if something doesn't work then it's a learning. You won't do it again, but if something does work then you've experimented and created something that you can bounce other ideas off and just refashion. So you know we all make mistakes. No company is perfect and it ideas off and just refashion. So you know we all make mistakes. No company is perfect and it's not the end of the world if you do something that doesn't work. So definitely be more experimental, try different formats, try emerging channels, just anything to kind of keep yourself differentiated from your competitors.

Tom Inniss

Lean on the expertise of your employees. You have exceptional resources at your disposal in the knowledge of your employees, so encourage them to actually make more use of it, share that knowledge and that experience and play around with the formats and how you deliver it so it could be short form video, it could be blogs or opinion pieces and just have fun with it as well. I think when you are doing something by rote, or you're not enjoying it or you're doing it because you feel obligated, that comes across, whereas if you actually enjoy your subject matter or are enjoying the process of creating content, you can feel that and your audience will connect with it much more as well on the flip side, what are, what would be the common mistakes that you feel brands should definitely stay away?

Elena Francis

from. I think this goes with a lot of marketing things, A lot of companies. They don't sort of have a really specific marketing strategy in mind, particularly when it comes to their audience's needs. So a lot of people think about content. They think about selling something, but the nature of content marketing, it's not a sales piece. It's something that's more about brand awareness, trusting the brand. So don't be too salesy and think about what your audience will find useful and need.

Tom Inniss

That doesn't immediately sell something that you sell and for me I would say I think it's okay to have a bit of personality in your work or in the content you're putting out, but don't go too risky and then put the brand at risk as well. So you don't want to go full-edge lord, essentially, and start offending people because then you have to, um, start putting out fires, and that backlash is just not worth the hassle and not agreeing more.

Debbie Gacutan

There you have it. Content marketing doesn't work. It definitely does when you do it properly. So here's tom and el. Thank you both guys for joining us at today's session. And again, if you guys want to read more about articles and how to, you know, level up your gaming content, freshen up a bit what you guys have, please go and head out to our resource hub.

Tom Inniss

Thank you to Debbie for hosting that panel and it was lovely to welcome Eleanor to the podcast. Let's dive straight into our second topic, which looks at greenwashing and greenhushing Over to Mark.

Mark Bundle

Cool. So our second topic today we are talking about greenwashing versus greenhushing Either meeting it better or just not telling the truth in the first place. Going through this, we've got Freya Wilcox, who is our digital marketing coordinator here at Real Digital, kieran O'Neill, our account manager, joins us again as well, and Sophie Mouton from our social media team in Kuala Lumpur. So first things first.

Ciaran O'Neill 

I'm going to ask the obvious question greenwashing versus green hushing what is the actual difference? Does anyone want to expand more on what they they are? I've absolutely pulled this from google, by the way, but it is basically described in the practice where companies are withholding or underreporting environmental information around sustainability or the initiatives that they've got and, to go into a bit of further detail around the rationale normally because they don't want people scrutinizing what they're doing. It might give them a competitive advantage. There's regulators that they have to deal with or they're trying to avoid greenwashing accusations and things like that.

Mark Bundle

A lot of what I was reading about is the that last part you mentioned. It's uh, people want to be green but they're scared if they try and kind of go here's our, here's our green thing as a company. But if they don't meet it or it's not good enough or it looks performative and actually they are doing it but you can't see it, that they're worried about being cancelled, silenced, demonstrated, etc. I mean, activism is brilliant. We want, we want change, we need to come about and people need to talk about that is preventing companies that are trying to do good for fear of this activism but they can't do that. Is that something that's gone too far? Are we saying that actually the green cause has gone and, having an unintended consequence, is hurting itself here?

Saufi Mohd Nor

I think, like I mean, based on what I've read, what I've known, I think it's not so much about it's too far, but it's almost like because there's no like standardized, like framework, like what's the standard for this? Because what I've read is for a company financial performance, you kind of know what to look at their revenue, their profit, total asset, total debt. It's kind of clear what to look for in these companies in terms of financial but in terms of what they are doing to the environment. That's how we can kind of have all the discrepancies. Certain people are going to report certain things, certain people are doing to the environment. That's how we can kind of have all the discrepancies. You know, certain people are going to report certain things, certain people are going to do this. I'm going to do that.

Saufi Mohd Nor

And even, like I just learned that's like a new term, not just greenwashing and green hushing, there's also like green wishing, where a company just unintentionally didn't meet their goals, like they're not like purposely doing it, they just set unrealistic expectation for themselves and then just not meeting it. So it's called green wishing, like in a way, kind of delusional about their sustainability goals, which is, I think it's not about it's going too far. But it's more about how do we actually have like a certain standard, I guess, to kind of make sure everybody like report the same thing and not somebody report on urban footprint and suddenly somebody focusing more on the recycling and then just like nothing is interconnected. Everybody's trying to look good but there's nothing to like really compare amongst everybody, especially within the same industry. So I would say it's not about going too far, it's just more of how we make it slightly more organized and like have a certain framework around it.

Mark Bundle

That was the next thing I was going to ask is if there is this thing of hushing or wishing as well. Now, didn't know about that, thank you. Should companies be forced to publish this data? Should there actually be a regulatory framework of saying, if you have a profit and loss sheet on a financial account, should there be a carbon offsetting kind of standard template the company should be filling out, freya, what are your thoughts?

Freya Willcocks 

Yeah, I don't think there's any harm in it Like, realistically, people publishing their statistics and their carbon footprint. You can only go up from where you start. I don't see why not. What harm can it cause, especially with bigger corporations and fashion brands? I think let the world see what damage they're doing to the planet and if they're doing anything to offset it.

Freya Willcocks 

And I think a set of standards or regulations would be a good thing.

Freya Willcocks

But I also think you'd have to take into consideration things like smaller companies.

Freya Willcocks

Maybe it's not necessary, maybe they don't have the resources, the time, the money to do it, so it would be quite hard to standardize, maybe having a threshold, and once you pass that sort of threshold, you need to publish your sustainability efforts or your effect on the environment and the world around you, because for smaller businesses it can definitely be a much bigger challenge than bigger businesses. Saying that, there are some pretty big examples of bigger business, bigger businesses, bigger businesses that have purposely greenwashed and misled their customers, businesses like h&m. H&m got sued recently for greenwashing and also h&z ranks 13th for the top banks financing fossil fuels in the UK and still finances carbon heavy industries like thermal coal mining, yet has had pretty big complaints about greenwashing awareness um. 45 people complained about their recent advert to the advertising standards authority, um, saying that their adverts are misleading. Companies definitely do need to be held to a standard and I don't see how it could harm them, really as long as the criticism that they get is constructive criticism.

Mark Bundle

There's almost kind of emerging here a scale of evil, referencing Bill Bailey. For anyone that watches some of his old shows, the greenwashing is clearly despicable. It's where you're doing something bad and trying to cover it over, but you've got to performatively hear something good and eco-friendly. Greenhushing is very much hiding whatever you're doing good or bad and kind of almost a neutral state in very big air quotes. Greenwishing is then having a good thought, wanting to do better and then maybe not being able to achieve that because you've been unrealistic. Is that something we should be encouraging? Should we be encouraging more green wishing? We should be encouraging more and bigger targets because it is to reference a previous episode it's a crisis of climate and we need to actually fix that. Should we be pushing for more of the green wishing and the big targets to try and hit things?

Ciaran O'Neill

I think when it comes to any green initiatives around businesses, the the key thing is authenticity, transparency and communication. If you have those three things, then the whether it's achieving targets or not achieving targets because you're communicating in an authentic way to your stakeholders, your customer base, the media, whoever. There should be a bit more leeway, because I think sustainability targets it's nuanced, isn't it? You know, stuff can go wrong. Businesses can have a bad year and if they fail to hit their sustainability targets because they've had a bad financial year or something like that, they shouldn't be put on blast for that if it's affected how they operate. So I think it's all about the intent having good intentions, but there's a strategy and a plan there, because that's been provided to your stakeholders and to your audience base. So, although there might be some criticism, you can still see that the company has made steps to improve itself.

Mark Bundle

We said in, the communication is the key to this. As I said before, the greenwashing is kind of a performative communication. The hushing is no communication. The wishing is over communication. Almost what we're wanting is something sincere that's actually going to say you know what? Here's what we genuinely believe we can do, here's what, as a company, we want to do and achieve. Is that what we're saying? Is the takeaway we want from this?

Ciaran O'Neill

Yeah, I mean this goes back to my dissertation All those moons ago around car companies, because this is a big thing, not just around sustainability, but just around making sure that they're not lying and so on. And the car community is very active and is engaged with car manufacturers and is engaged with car manufacturers, and the big thing that I spoke about, or I wrote about in my dissertation, was around an asymmetric two-way conversation. So you have some management over the narrative or over the communication, because it's asymmetric. You've got a little bit more control, but the key was to have that authenticity and is to be transparent, so you allow to not have too much runaway on the conversation. But what you are doing is you are actively engaging in an authentic way with your audience or your customer and so on, and making sure that they're aware of your accountability and responsibility. They're aware of your accountability and responsibility, they're aware of your continuous improvement that you're making, and so on. There's a dialogue, basically. So yes, absolutely true, there needs to be. Communication is the key thing.

Mark Bundle

A lot of the terms used in terms of accountability, visibility. They all sound like good marketing as well. They're all things we need in there. We've already spoken about good financial reporting, good marketing as well. There are all things we need in there. We've already spoken about good financial reporting. Maybe a regulatory framework for these green and eco initiatives. Are we saying, then the market capitalism can take a hit? We can have green capitalism where, if you're reporting and openly speaking about your climate change initiatives, the market will then have its say and if you're not performing well according to those targets, your product might take a dip. If you're doing really well and you're actually making a real difference to the world, consumers will move towards you. Can the free market save the planet at this point? Is that what we're asking?

Saufi Mohd Nor

Wow, that's such a deep question, mark, but I think if I were to answer this question, that's one company it's like in fashion apparel. It's called Patagonia. For those who never heard it it's P-A-T-A-G-O-N-I-A. They kind of make like outerwear and all. So it's pretty sustainable company, way, way far ahead than like H&M, zara and almost of the like entire fashion industry. But even for them, I would say in terms of business-wise they are still doing pretty well and all. But even for them that's still a long way. And even the CEO, he was quite open how he supports all the sustainable activities and missions and all. But he did acknowledge that at the end of the day it's not enough because we humans have been ruining everything for I don't know how many years. So it's not going to take like 10 years to kind of solve everything. So it's more of like a collective thing. And then another thing that I like to kind of point out to answer this question is, while we think about like the businesses and doing the right things, having the planet and stuff, one part that often get overlooked at including for a really good company like petagonia is the sustainable of like the humans working for them. Because when we talk about sustainability. It's not just the animals in the forest and all, it's also the human, because petagonia kind of got called out like they're doing all the good things with environment and stuff, but people call them out because it's the good thing they also put on their website so they're not hushing themselves out of it. It's like only like 34 percent of their like factory workers are actually paid living wage and the remaining are not. You know so. So I think it's out moment, like even for like the best one uh, it's, it's on their website. You guys can go. So I'm not like creating the numbers myself. This basically mentioned it as of 2022. Only like 34 I actually get paid living wages and this is for a really transparent, open company about all their environmental, sustainable efforts. So we can't imagine what the others numbers might look at. It obviously going to be like lower than 30. So I would say I will kind of agree with, like the ceo of etagonia statement that number one is going to take a while and that's that's power in volume, because it's only like one company like petagonia is really transparent, really all out about it, and then the entire industry kind of like still in the greenwashing era, so nothing will actually change this. So, yes, I would say it's more about balancing that like, at the end of the day, humans should be considered in the efforts.

Saufi Mohd Nor

And then second is the volume. It can't just be like couple of companies doing it. We got any like more. And it goes back to my initial point. There needs to be some sort of laws, guidelines and all so more people and more companies in this case feel pressured to actually kind of do it. Or else we're going to have somebody like Patagonia doing the most and then the rest not really doing a lot, and even and that's the reason that's why I went for Patagonia, which actually still kind of sucks when we know like their employees are not even like you know, but because everybody are just so bad they look the best because everybody's just so bad, so that that's got to change for it to kind of work.

Mark Bundle

Yeah I've always been a fan of patagonia, the fact that you can send clothes back and have them repaired. It's kind of the opposite of the fast fashion which is a such a huge drain on the environment. So I didn't know about the down-to-pay workers. That's not so good. Um, hopefully, the fact they've acknowledged it means that they actually need something about it. So they're one example of a kind of pro green, pro sustainability company. Uh, any other examples? Anyone's droids to mind for you?

Freya Willcocks

yeah, so if you have I don't know if they have an android app, but if you have an iphone, there's an app you can get called good on you.

Freya Willcocks

At the moment it's only for fashion brands and obviously this is a b2b podcast, but you can put in the name of a brand you like, search up and then they have a rating scale and you can see where the brand that you like or the brand that you want to shop from rates on their ethical scale, sustainability scale, employee wages, and it will give you an overall rating from not good enough to excellent, and then it's patagonia rate is good on their website at the moment and it seems to be these sort of outdoorsy um hiking brands that are doing the most at the moment, because arterics are doing really well as well and also solomon.

Freya Willcocks 

They have the same terms and conditions, I guess, but if your shoes break, you can send them back and they'll fix them for you within a year. My shoes broke, so I'm sending them back and I've seen people get multiple pairs of shoes because they've had cosmetic wear and tear and the company is just a really good ethos around that sort of stuff. So yeah, um, I agree with Kieran that it's all about sort of intent, and I think that the difference between green wishing and green hushing is that wishing is hoping for better and maybe sharing too much information, but green hushing is purposely sitting on information, choosing not to publish it and deceiving the public a little bit, I think. Brilliant. Thank you.

Mark Bundle

So we will wrap that up, then, and thank you very much everyone for your time today. So, yeah, the communication, and maybe some clarity, seems to be the way forward, what we need to see to see a move away from greenwashing and greenushing, even greenwishing, to a properly communicable sustainability plan for all.

Tom Inniss

So that's all we've had time for today. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you found some useful snippets in our session and are able to go and put them into your own marketing strategy. We love that you've made it this far through your listen and we love making this content for you, so if you could recommend the show to one friend that you think would enjoy it, we'd be exceptionally grateful. Alternatively, if you've hated this podcast, then send it to someone you don't like. Thank podcast, then send it to someone you don't like. Thank you to all of the Brew Digital team for their research and input in today's session. Make sure to check out our past episodes and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on, and we will see you on the next one. I have not been Haydn, but these have been the marketers of the universe. Thank you.