The playbook argues that closer collaboration between chief marketing officers and chief sustainability officers can drive smarter, more sustainable marketing and business strategies. It builds on the IRG 2024 Impact Study, drawing on 850 senior leaders and 50 dedicated interviews alongside work with Ipsos, Google, the UN Global Compact and Ad Net Zero.
Its core proposition is that stronger, earlier and more strategic collaboration unlocks sustainable innovation, credible communication and measurable business value, because the two functions bring different things: customer insight, segmentation, storytelling and scale on one side, technical credibility, measurement and accountability on the other.
Key findings
- The case is framed as a business case rather than a moral one, and rests on both the 2019 Growth Study and the 2024 Impact Study finding that companies grounded in creating value for all stakeholders outgrow those that do not.
- Ninety percent of overperforming leaders see stakeholder value creation as a growth opportunity, against 50 percent of underperformers, and 70 percent of overperforming companies take a long-term approach to strategy.
- The CMO and CSO relationship is the weak link. Only 25 percent of CMOs at overperforming organizations work effectively with their CSO, against 13 percent at underperformers.
- Misaligned KPIs are named as the number one reason for failure cited in the interviews, despite good intent on both sides.
- Marketing’s own footprint is material: the marketing process and its supply chain are estimated to account for between 10 and 30 percent of a company’s emissions.
- Media is not a small part of that. The media ecosystem’s greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to be similar to those of the airline industry.
Why the middle of the market matters
The strategic argument turns on where the audience actually sits. The most important opportunity for collaboration is in innovation and communication aimed at the broadest 70 percent of the population, rather than the 15 percent on either side who have already made up their minds.
The evidence cited is that committed opponents represent only 10 to 15 percent of citizens, and that the real problem is not polarization but inattention: most people are uninformed or not thinking about these issues at all.
The messaging consequence is counterintuitive. Effective messaging for sustainable products often means not leading with sustainability at all, and focusing instead on tangible benefits such as health, freshness, shelf life or local origin. The playbook cites a CMO describing electric vehicles landing better when discussed in terms of performance, safety and value.
The gap between intention and behavior is also stated plainly: 96 percent of consumers try to live sustainably at least some of the time, while fewer than 10 percent consistently act and purchase that way.
The four stakeholder cases
For colleagues, transparency has put employer brands back in the spotlight, most employees expect their employer to act ethically and on climate, and a third of Gen Z respondents in one study turned down job offers from companies with poor ESG credentials.
For customers, companies that move quickly have an opportunity to innovate and take share from less sustainable competitors, while those that do not risk losing it. The trust problem is real: six in ten people across 32 countries feel that companies failing to act on climate change are failing their employees and customers.
For communities, community development is identified as one of the most meaningful actions a company can take for corporate and brand perception, and reputations are described as won or lost in those choices far beyond advertising campaigns.
For the capital markets, reducing harm and driving positive impact reduces uncertainty and risk for investors, and regulation is moving sustainability from a nice to have to a business imperative with accounting verification standards attached. The playbook also notes that 77 percent of underperforming companies do not act to future-proof the business.
The five drivers applied to the partnership
Ground means stakeholder understanding, where 76 percent of overperformers understand their stakeholders’ needs well against 17 percent of underperformers. For marketers that means recognizing sustainability is not only about environmental impact but about creating better lives, and for sustainability professionals it means recognizing that change happens through human connection rather than through sharing data.
Reimagine means long-term thinking, where 70 percent of overperformers focus more on the long term against 23 percent, and overperformers invest twice as much in foresight as in insight. The practice described is agreeing both a utopian and a dystopian picture of the market’s future, then defining an inspiring role for the company in it.
Focus means an integrated strategy: 69 percent of overperformers define a value creation strategy across all stakeholders against 3 percent of underperformers, and in 73 percent of overperformers the former corporate social responsibility strategy is folded into the overall value creation strategy. The shift described is from bolt-on to built-in, with sustainability becoming a lens on everything from product design to media planning.
Organize means interdependence, where 67 percent of overperformers work interdependently against 7 percent, and 80 percent of overperforming CMOs have three or more effective C-suite relationships against 60 percent. The practical advice is a joint learning agenda: attend each other’s conferences and events, not to become fluent but conversant.
Unleash means leadership modeling. The da Vinci attitudes are described as learnable, and are set out as authentic, open-minded, courageous, optimistic and future-focused, with behaviors covering acting strategically, leading change, building talent, collaborating and influencing, and driving results.
Making marketing itself more sustainable
On creative production, the first move is to look before commissioning. Most assets rarely wear out with the audience before they are replaced, so reviewing existing asset and image libraries often yields usable material, cuts emissions and saves money by avoiding new production entirely. Where new production is needed, carbon calculators are used to benchmark proposals from the script stage.
Four areas govern events and shoots. Transportation, where air travel typically accounts for the largest share of emissions, making venue choice and attendance strategy decisive. Energy, where diesel generators are replaced by renewable requirements written into vendor contracts. Materials, designed for disassembly and reuse, with second-hand wardrobe and set materials sourced through agency partners. And catering, where plant-based, sustainably farmed and in-season options cut waste.
On physical assets, the packaging principle is just the right fit: avoid unnecessary weight or over-sizing, and avoid material combinations that recycling processes cannot handle. Reusable, durable and repairable assets or digital-first approaches are preferred over single-use promotional material.
On communication, the stated rule is evidence before eloquence, and the biggest risk in sustainable marketing is not saying too little but saying too much without substance. Every claim needs verifiable evidence with clear statements of scope and limitations, and the most effective communication acknowledges challenges rather than claiming perfection.
The specific greenwashing trap named is proportion: communicating a small, insignificant sustainability feature while ignoring far larger issues in the brand or company. Advertising reusable cutlery on an airline is the example given of what regulators and the public will read as greenwashing.
AI on both sides of the ledger
The cost is energy. AI’s carbon footprint is primarily the energy consumption of data centers, which are estimated to account for roughly one-tenth of the growth in global electricity demand by 2030, so cooling and real-time renewable power will have to scale with usage.
The offsetting claim is that by 2035, widespread adoption of existing AI applications could drive emissions reductions three to five times greater than the projected data center emissions. In production specifically, generating an image may use significantly less energy than shooting the equivalent live, and calculator tools help teams choose between them.
Scope and limitations
The findings rest on the 2024 Impact Study with 850 senior leaders and 50 dedicated interviews, and the comparisons are between revenue growth overperformers, defined as three years of superior growth against direct competitors, and underperformers.
Source
This page summarises CMO-CSO Sustainability Playbook, by Institute for Real Growth, Ipsos, Ad Net Zero, Google, 2025.