Why have real sustainable strategies taken so long for brands?
After success expanding into several markets across the globe, Publicis has brought Salterbaxter to our shores in an attempt to take on the big dogs of the consultancy world in one of the most pressing areas: sustainability.
“Salterbaxter is, for lack of a better term, a creative consultancy,” said global managing director Kathleen Enright on this week’s Mumbrellacast. “We bring together deep technical thinking on sustainability with creativity.”
Enright
“We often talk about credibility and creativity and that’s really, really important because we haven’t got that much time left to affect change, and so the strategies and the ambitions that are set in place, they really have to inspire action, they have to deliver returns, and they have to get people excited. So there is a real need for a new way to approach sustainability that is really engaging but also really, really credible.”
Salterbaxter has been around for 25 years in the UK, yet its only now launching locally, but Skye Lambley, who is heading up its launch here said “the time is right now”.
“It does seem like a really good time for us to bring this offering to this market. It sounds like organisations are really ready to act and make some very ambitious business transformation plans, which sustainability should be at the heart of. So in terms of timing, I think it couldn’t be a better time.”
Lambley
Lambley added that to date in Australia, there has “probably been a lack of drive to be able to make real change”.
“Australia generally haven’t been driving a sustainable agenda, whether it’s from a government policy perspective or whether it’s individual brands, and I think what we are starting to see is the importance for a whole host of reasons for us to make sure that we are driving this progress locally.”
“I think some of the barriers have been probably largely appetite because there hasn’t been any drive or external factors, but I think that a lot of organisations are seeing everything from talent to consumer demand, to now a new government really stepping up in terms of what’s expected, which will see more regulations and guidelines that are driving that.”
Enright said the rise of a new generation of CEO leadership has proven to be “really, really important”, for a topic that is led from both the top-down and the bottom-up.
She added the combination of that, on top of the factors listed by Lambley has resulted in a “perfect storm”, and climate change “feels very, very real now”.
“There is so much desire to be moving the sustainability agenda forward, so there’s a common base and a common desire to act, and then so many of the challenges are the same that we see globally, it’s: how do we get round the narrative that it takes so much investment and it’s a longer return, and so to that, we have conversations around the fact that we need to be assessing risk differently, and we need to be looking at the cost of inaction rather than an investment cost.”
“We see a lot of businesses saying that they’ve done the basics on sustainability and they’re not getting any return from it, or they’re not seeing any difference from a brand perspective or from an innovation or growth perspective.”
“That’s where Salterbaxter comes in. We are trying to do sustainability quite differently and really say: your sustainability strategy has to be inspiring, and it has to be differentiated so that it brings the business along and is going to drive innovation and drive growth.”
Listen to the full conversation with Lambley and Enright on this week’s Mumbrellacast from the 24:35 mark.
Got a tip?
Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
Linkedin
Have your say