Who wants a sustainable marriage?

If I described my marriage as "sustainable" you’d probably feel sorry for me, because after all it doesn't sound like much fun. A long lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. If the best you can say about your work and marriage is that they don't actively deplete you -- it might be time for some kind of change.

Herein lies the problem with brands successfully getting on board with sustainability. Brand people are big thinkers. They are people who want to entertain and change the world. Their motto is: It's gotta be big! it's gotta be bold! So far The Green agenda has been characterised by fear rather than positivity. The call to action has been less about change and more about making sure things remain the way they are. On the surface they appear to be two very different ideologies.

We work with many businesses who've come to us excited by the potential for their sustainability plan to change their category or business. Most already have the perfect strategy in place to achieve the change. The difficulty doesn't lie in having the perfect strategy. It's in realising the strategy, and to achieve that they must get brand teams on board. This calls for a very different approach.

One solution is to eradicate the word "sustainability" altogether. Sustainability is a bit of an uninspiring-status-quo-maintaining kind of word. It's not the sort of word that drives marketeers, or indeed consumers wild with possibility. Let's face it it's no "social media" folks.

Why not use different words to convey the idea? Words that capture the meaning but are less sustainable sounding. Less sack cloth and ashes, and more "hell yeah I want some of that". The words we use are important. They set the tone and signal our intent. You can be bold. This is a vision of where you want the brand to get to - the difference you want to make to the world. It's big news. Instead of simply preserving the status quo aspire to something far more positive. Use words like, "thrive" or "flourish"? The brands that have adopted this approach to sustainability, brands such as, TOMS shoes or Chipolte, are the ones that have succeeded in capturing the consumer imagination.

Sustainability has the potential to unlock the goodness in a category and a brand in a very real way. It's the good news that people want to hear about from the brands they love. But until we find ways articulate that in language that marketeers and consumers understand we'll never make it happen.