'Green hushing' on the rise as brands quiet sustainability messaging

Brands started feverishly marketing their sustainability efforts about five years ago upon realizing a new generation of consumers was choosing to buy from carbon-conscious companies. But in doing so, some brands got backlash for greenwashing, while others realized it was tougher than originally thought to hit their goals.

Those impediments are now forcing some companies to pull back in their environmental marketing, even if they are making some progress on sustainability. The trend — dubbed “green hushing” by climate project developer and solutions provider South Pole — has already led to cutbacks on social media marketing, where much of the sustainability conversation occurs. 

South Pole in a recent report found that one in four of the 1,220 global companies it surveyed with targets to reach net zero emissions by a certain year do not plan to publicize their sustainability efforts as they go. They are quietly making moves though, as 72 percent of the surveyed companies have set net zero target dates (although that compares to just 7 percent of South Pole’s larger database of 68,000 major global public companies), and 74 percent of those businesses have increased their budgets to become sustainable. Still, the report also found that 29 percent of surveyed companies said achieving their net zero goals was harder than originally expected.

Brands that fail to market their progress are making a mistake, suggests George Favaloro, head of South Pole climate solutions, North America.

“The best practice is to do the work on understanding your carbon footprint, set a target, hopefully an ambitious target, and then get to work on reducing your carbon emissions,” he said. “A very important part of that is to talk about what you’re doing. It’s important that we all inspire each other and we show each corporation is stepping up and being responsible and has figured out how to take action. That’s the kind of message that’s really powerful.”

Companies could also be missing out on sales if they aren’t communicating that they are working toward sustainability to the growing cohort of climate-conscious consumers choosing to buy from green companies.

Greenwashing fears are real

But marketing and sustainability expert Thomas Kolster said he has increasingly been hearing that chief marketing officers of big brands are fearful of advertising their green efforts and expects there to be a dropoff in green marketing in 2023 from those companies after many jumped on the trend about five years ago.

“I think green hushing is a strategy that has come out of the cynicism that's arrived right now where people are calling out companies for foolish claims or greenwashing,” Kolster said.

Much of the green marketing pullback is occurring on social media: Customer experience marketing platform Emplifi observed a 52 percent drop in U.S. brand posts on Instagram that used sustainability hashtags between 2019 — when there was a surge in such posts on the platform — and 2021, according to figures shared with Ad Age. Instagram is where the majority of brands talk about sustainability, over Facebook or Twitter, according to Emplifi.

Of course, there are examples of sustainable-leading companies that have always shied away from marketing, such as electric vehicle brand Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk, now also the controversial leader of Twitter, has long been philosophically opposed to advertising.

Some brands don’t want to publicize their sustainability efforts out of fear of repercussions, including sparking backlash from conservatives, Favaloro said. He also pointed to a new Texas state law that puts companies at risk of losing state contracts if they divest from fossil fuels.

But greenwashing fears are driving most of the pullback, with brands worried about being accused of deceptive marketing. 

At least 10 companies will incur $5 million or more in greenwashing fines in 2023, Forrester predicted in a report last month. The firm pointed to recent examples including BNY Mellon's $1.5 million fine by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for ESG misstatements and Walmart's $3 million fine by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive green claims about some of its textile products. And 76 percent of chief marketing officers said they would like to communicate more on their green initiatives but fear greenwashing, according to Forrester’s second-quarter CMO Pulse Survey.

“There is some sort of a paralysis on what to communicate and how to communicate it, which has led to this blurry notion of ‘green gushing,’” Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Thomas Husson said. “Traditional advertising on big sustainability claims are not that efficient anyway because consumers are quite distrustful. And 45 percent of U.S. consumers [believe] brands mislead them when they communicate on green initiatives.”

Nestlé has been accused of greenwashing for its continued use of single-use plastic by climate activists who have scrutinized the company's promotions of its commitments to make its packaging 100 percent recyclable by 2025. At the end of 2021, Nestlé said it replaced all plastic straws with paper ones and redesigned one-quarter of its non-recyclable products to be recycled.

The Changing Markets Foundation accused some big brands including Coca-Cola Co. and Unilever plc of greenwashing for claiming to be helping the plastic pollution crisis by using recyclable plastic; the foundation said there isn’t sufficient proof that the plastic can be recycled or that it would meaningfully help the problem.

“Consumers, more than ever, expect brands to be more authentic, honest and transparent,” said Greg Paull, co-founder and principal of consultancy R3. “You can’t put lipstick on a pig and hope for a positive outcome. Clients and agencies need to align with each other on a real ‘sniff test’ to ensure that the communication is going to be appropriate, intelligent and insightful.”

A lot of companies jumped on the “green bandwagon” a few years ago only to be called out rightly for enacting only surface-level sustainability efforts rather than making a real impact, said Aaron Shapiro, co-founder and former CEO of Huge, who just founded a new agency, Product, focused on using artificial intelligence to “future-proof” clients’ businesses through sustainability.

“It created a lot of flack,” Shapiro said. “The corollary to that is some companies are legitimately trying to move to sustainability but they’re understanding it’s harder than it seems.”

South Pole’s Favaloro said a lot of companies now want to under-promise goals so they over-deliver. It’s like when a restaurant host tells a waiting guest it will be 20 minutes until they’re seated, instead of the 10 minutes they really estimate it to be, so they’re pleasantly surprised when they get their table earlier than expected.

“‘We like to deliver results and let the results speak for themselves,’” Favaloro said clients tell his firm.

One PR executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said the agency's clients, which include a major oil company, are advised not to market their green efforts unless they are really substantial.

The executive said the oil company, for example, wanted to market some of its sustainability efforts but was advised not to because oil companies are the biggest targets of greenwashing accusations. The oil industry has taken certain steps toward sustainability like using more renewable energy and trying to reduce the release of methane during crude oil extraction. But oil firms are still producing a lot of air and water pollution.

“If it were up to me I wouldn’t talk about any sustainability work until we’re really making a difference,” the PR exec said. “It can’t be small things.”

Some agency execs don’t see green hushing as necessarily bad.

“Green hushing is actually a good thing,” said Andrea Grodberg, global chief strategy officer at VMLY&R. “And, I’ve been seeing some of it. Basically, with limited budgets, and a lot of change to make internally and externally around sustainability, a lot of clients are choosing to spend their money on actual change instead of marketing the change. Now, if you asked me, that’s amazing.”

The argument for green marketing

Companies need to talk about their sustainability efforts so they can lead by example and get others to follow suit, Favaloro argued. He said he is concerned that if companies increasingly shy away from marketing their green efforts, others already resistant to change could pull back on sustainability altogether.

According to the South Pole report, the main reasons companies said they didn’t have a net zero target were a lack of in-house capabilities to achieve goals, the belief that a net zero target was not important to consumers, and resistance from senior leaders who are reluctant to overhaul their current infrastructures.

Sustainability could already be on the chopping block amid global economic uncertainty, as it was during other particularly difficult times including the 2020 start of the pandemic. 

“Pre-pandemic there was a large push for sustainability. Then the pandemic hit and there were other priorities that went ahead of sustainability,” said Patrick Lafferty, chief operating officer of ad agency network Acceleration Community of Companies. “I’d say it still hasn’t come back to the level it was pre-pandemic.”

According to an early 2021 Deloitte “Climate Check” report, 80% of company executives reported being concerned with the climate and understood that making their businesses more sustainable would also improve profits. But almost two-thirds of companies also planned to cut back on their sustainability efforts in response to the pandemic and current economic downturn.

Shapiro said part of Product’s work is showing how sustainability can improve ROI for a company, but “​​certainly things disconnected to ROI will be much lower priority as we move into a recessionary environment.”

Shapiro said the most immediate impact of not marketing sustainability is losing consumers and “losing relevance.”

According to a June McKinsey report, reaching net zero by 2050 could entail a 60% increase in capital spending, with the required collective investments reaching $9.2 trillion per year until 2050. But growing demand for net zero offerings also could generate more than $12 trillion in annual sales by 2030.

“The brands that have absolutely taken off are the ones that have a very strong sustainability story,” Favaloro said.

Shapiro said the best way for brands to market their sustainability efforts is to just be transparent about what they have done and what they still need to do.

“A lot of it is about intention,” Shapiro said. “Companies get in trouble when they’re hypocritical. Communicate your goals to the public and document the process to get to those goals in a transparent way.”

To Kolster, the best approach to sustainable marketing is focusing more efforts on inspiring people to lead greener lives versus companies beating their chests over what they do individually. He pointed to Ikea's ads teaching people how to repurpose furniture as a good example of green marketing.

“Rather than talk about all the great stuff you're doing, inspire change,” Kolster said. “If we can't guide people toward more sustainable choices, we're not doing our job right. If we don't do that, we're screwed.”