What are the key messages of sustainability PR and how can you tailor them for different audiences?

I would say that making sustainability simple in understanding through a clear language is the key to promote it. We often hide good intentions behind big words. In fact, take this: what is sustainability? more than half people on this continent do not know to explain the term. If you tell them responsibility instead, they will immediately see it. So the first is to change the terms, speak so that people understand and feel connected to your words. the rest is just working details.

Before crafting sustainability PR messages, establish a clear purpose aligned with your vision, mission, and values. This purpose should articulate why your organization exists, its core principles, and its positive impact. It must seamlessly integrate sustainability goals, policies, and initiatives while addressing global challenges and opportunities. Ensure authenticity, consistency, and relevance to stakeholders, fostering a genuine connection with your audience.

Antes de iniciar toda a elabora??o das suas mensagens de rela??es públicas relacionadas à sustentabilidade, é fundamental ter um propósito claro e persuasivo alinhado com a sua vis?o, miss?o e valores. Este propósito deve responder à quest?o do porquê da sua existência, o que você representa e de que maneira exerce um impacto positivo. Além disso, deve refletir as suas metas, políticas e iniciativas de sustentabilidade, estabelecendo uma conex?o com os desafios e oportunidades globais. As características essenciais do propósito que se busca estabelecer incluem autenticidade, consistência e relevancia para as partes interessadas envolvidas.

Sou do time "menos é mais". Mas, desde que a mensagem consiga ser transmitida, e principalmente, entendida pelo receptor. Entretanto, destaco que a sustentabilidade n?o deve ficar restrita apenas ao ambiente corporativo: para que ela seja efetiva, a sociedade precisa absorver os conteúdos, e para isso, a mensagem precisa ter linguagem clara e acessível a todos os públicos. Somente assim será possível aplicar os conceitos na vida cotidiana, incluindo a preferência por produtos e servi?os que prezem pelo ESG na vis?o do consumidor.

Stick to the facts, and be honest. PR in the Sustainability industry has become incredibly controversial due to falsification of data points to make reports look more appealing. Although it may not garner many problems in the beginning, but a single irregularity or proof of convoluted data point in a report can cause a PR disaster as an organization grows. Authenticity is key, and something that isn't as evident in several sustainability reports today is complete honesty. Every report 'aims to achieve net zero operations' by some seemingly distant year in this century, but the steps being implemented to achieve that goal remain vague and unclear. Honesty in reports, and PR campaigns highlighting it could be the way to go.

Crafting effective sustainability messaging for PR is akin to peeling an onion – managing layers of interconnected narratives that cater to diverse audiences. One must understand the multifaceted nature of sustainability and tailor messages for each stakeholder. The outer layer is appealing to a broad audience with clear, concise messages that make intent and impact accessible. Emphasize tangible outcomes and benefits. Make sure to point to where one can learn more. As you peel deeper, provide more nuance. Dive into details of strategies and metric, use data and transparent reporting. Effective sustainability messaging requires genuine commitment. Emphasize sustainability is a journey and note challenges and showcase continuous improvement.

Sustainability can be very complex & not everyone needs to 100% understand every detail. The same as not everyone understands every protocol of the World Wide Web but still everyone is using it. Get my point? Everyone will need to "use" sustainability just like the internet but not everyone needs to understand every bit of it. So know your audience and how deep you have to go!

Tailoring sustainability PR involves conveying key messages of environmental responsibility, social impact, and long-term value. Understanding each audience is crucial: emphasize positive contributions for the public, financial stability for investors, a positive work environment for employees, sustainable product attributes for customers, and regulatory compliance for government and regulators. Knowing your audience ensures effective communication of your sustainability efforts.

Tailoring sustainability messages requires recognizing diverse audience interests, needs, preferences, and expectations. Understand your target audience by employing tools like surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media analytics, and customer feedback. Develop personas, scenarios, and empathy maps to create detailed audience profiles. This approach helps craft messages that resonate effectively, addressing specific concerns and preferences while choosing communication channels that align with your audience's preferences.

The classic mistake in acting with sustainability is to deduce. Many organizations and professionals still live in relationship bubbles and do not even know the different realities of the stakeholders with whom they interact. A common example happens in Brazil. Companies that operate in certain regions, predominantly located in biomes such as the Amazon, Cerrado or Atlantic Forest, are often unaware of the direct and indirect impacts caused by their operations. In some cases, they do not even maintain dialogue with local stakeholders, such as community leaders or endemic communities. Building effective PR messages requires knowledge and prior relationships with all direct and indirect stakeholders.

I don't think "sustainability PR" is the correct way to frame this. PR suggests that you are engaging in an activity to make your company look as "good" as possible versus communicating an authentic story. What we're talking about here is sustainability storytelling, which is about communicating the WHOLE story of a company's sustainability journey, including the ups and downs. Your messaging should be about communicating the substance of what the company is doing or not doing and why. In today's fast-paced world, the truth will always come out eventually so companies are better served owning up to their shortcomings and framing it as part of longer sustainability journey (which is true of most companies).

I have 5 formats of messaging to craft any sustainability narrative we need to make. They are - 1. Listicles List of suggestions/ways/steps you did to achieve a sustainability outcome 2. Busting a myth This message format helps to bring insight and challenge commonly held beliefs about a topic. 3. What was then, what is now This showcases how things were and how things are after implementing sustainability initiatives. Talks about the good and also the challenges along the way. 4. Connecting two unanimous topics Crafting a narrative with two unrelated topics, one is on sustainability and the other is often a trending topic, like an upcoming country budget 5. Expert opinion Use your work insight build a compelling story

La transparence est de mise lorsqu'il est question de durabilité, parce que le création de relation et de collaboration est plus important que d'avoir une bonne image. On veut plut?t des actions. Et pour poser des actions qui ont un réel impact, il n'est pas possible d'agir seul, que ce soit avec les gouvernances, des fournisseurs, vos clients, vos employés, etc.

Crafting communication on sustainability for an asset management business involves expressing commitment, transparency, and adherence to ESG principles. Highlight performance metrics, share case studies, engage stakeholders, and emphasize compliance with standards. Provide educational content, outline future plans, participate in community initiatives, and use various communication channels for a comprehensive approach. Regularly update messaging to reflect ongoing sustainability efforts.

Crafting a sustainability PR message involves clarity, conciseness, and compelling content. Emphasize the benefits and societal value of your sustainability efforts, ensuring honesty, transparency, and credibility. Support claims with evidence and examples. Employ storytelling techniques—such as anecdotes, metaphors, emotions, and visuals—to enhance engagement and memorability. Strive for a message that resonates with your audience, effectively conveying the positive impact of your sustainability initiatives.

Sustainability is one of those areas where there are many active local groups and community organisations who can hugely influence the public perception of your work. It's worth identifying the most active influencers / groups to your target audience and see whether there are opportunities to partner with them to spread the word on their channels too.

As I said in the previous steps, as the Sustainability topic is systemic and involved everybody, in order to reach everyone, you need to use all the channels possible to reach the appropriate persona

Selecting the right channel to deliver your sustainability PR message is crucial. Tailor your message to channels like websites, blogs, newsletters, press releases, social media, podcasts, videos, webinars, events, and reports. Align the chosen channel with your audience's preferences, habits, and behaviors, as well as the message's format, tone, and style. Evaluate factors like reach, cost, accessibility, and effectiveness to ensure optimal communication and resonance with your target audience.

Na sequencia deve-se escolher o canal ou meio mais adequado para comunicar sua mensagem de Rela??es Públicas (RP) relacionada à sustentabilidade. Diversos canais podem ser utilizados, como websites, blogs, boletins informativos, comunicados à imprensa, mídias sociais, podcasts, vídeos, webinars, eventos e relatórios. A escolha do canal deve ser baseada nas preferências, hábitos e comportamentos do seu público, além de considerar o formato, tom e estilo da mensagem. As variáveis como alcance, custo, acessibilidade e eficácia do canal também devem ser levadas em considera??o.

We need to increasingly have a local perspective. Activate regional communication actions, instead of just focusing on large-scale communications. The true effectiveness of the PR message in sustainability is linked to strengthening relationships and recognition of stakeholders directly linked to the operations of companies and professionals. It is very common to have PR campaigns focused on gaining scale, but with local weaknesses. The company often understands that it needs to be in mass communications channels, instead of investing in regional relationships.

It is extremely important to build working groups to evaluate results, built with a diversity of participants. Gender, race, ethnicity, regionality, among other characteristics that help assess whether the analysis of the results contains the perspective of different aspects. I strongly recommend that in addition to the company's corporate professionals, local professionals from the organization, customers, local leaders, NGOs, among other stakeholders, are invited to ensure that the narrative is not self-centered or with a biased analysis due to the lack of diversity of those involved. Usually companies only involve corporate professionals and communication agencies, which is a big mistake.

Whether the message or the initiative for the sustainability is working or not, whether you are achiving the purpose you defined or not, it is necessary to have a good monitoring system. Also, to monitore the progress of your purpose, you should set you timeline wise milestones and develop tools to check them at the beginning.

Monitoring and evaluating the results of your sustainability PR message is essential for continuous improvement. Employ various metrics like awareness, recall, understanding, perception, attitude, behaviour, and action. Utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods—surveys, interviews, focus groups, polls, reviews, and analytics—to collect and analyse feedback and data. Use these findings to refine and enhance your message and strategy, ensuring ongoing effectiveness and alignment with your sustainability goals. Regular assessment allows for adaptive communication strategies and a more impactful engagement with your audience.

O movimento final envolve monitorar e avaliar os resultados e o impacto da sua mensagem de Rela??es Públicas (RP) relacionada à sustentabilidade. Diversas métricas e indicadores podem ser empregados para mensurar os resultados, como consciência, lembran?a, compreens?o, percep??o, atitude, comportamento e a??o. Métodos qualitativos e quantitativos, como pesquisas, entrevistas, grupos de foco, enquetes, avalia??es e análises, podem ser utilizados para coletar e analisar feedback e dados. As descobertas devem ser aplicadas para aprimorar e refinar tanto a mensagem quanto a estratégia empregada.

Your message cannot be static and delivered once, you need to be able to measure the audience, how it is received, perceived by people in order to adapt it or to insist on the elements which are not clear enough

This entails effective sustainability storytelling thus tailoring messages for specific audiences to promote their engagement and support; some examples, based on the audience type are: 1.For consumers - emphasize positive impacts of sustainable products. 2. For investors - showcase long-term sustainable strategies and financial benefits. 3. For employees - focus on sustainable and inclusive workplace, with growth opportunities. 4. For local Communities - feature initiatives impacting the community positively. 5. For regulators - accentuate compliance, exceeding standards, and societal contributions.

It is also important to give a balanced view of what is working well and what is not working, and what measures or remedies are being put in place to remedy or rectify what is not working.

It is necessary to encourage the multiplication of knowledge through actions such as environmental education, showing that good practices lead to good habits and build social values, attitudes and skills that are important for the environment and sustainability. For the transformation to be significant, it needs to involve people and communities with a collective view. It is in plurality that we find the appropriate paths for fairer sustainable development, which respects differences and becomes inclusive.

- **General Public:** - Environmental responsibility - Social impact - Economic viability - Sustainable products/practices - **Investors:** - Long-term financial stability - Ethical business conduct - Alignment with market trends - **Employees:** - Positive work environment - Employee-driven initiatives - Career development in sustainability - **Government/Regulators:** - Compliance with regulations - Contributions to local economies - Support for societal goals - **Suppliers/Partners:** - Sustainability in the supply chain - Collaborations for eco-friendly practices - Emphasis on shared values and mutual benefits

Fostering collaborative teams for results evaluation stands as a critical imperative, and the constitution of these teams should reflect a rich spectrum of diversity. Essential factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, and regional backgrounds are pivotal in cultivating a comprehensive assessment that incorporates a multitude of perspectives. I fervently support the incorporation of not only corporate professionals from within the organization but also the active involvement of local professionals, customers, community leaders, NGOs, and various other stakeholders. This inclusive approach ensures that the analysis transcends a self-centric narrative and sidesteps biased assessments that may arise from a lack of diversity among contributors.