Lack of alignment between marketing leaders and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) is a challenge to driving sustainable business growth.
While marketing leaders are professionals attentive to market perception and changing consumer behavior, sustainability executives, on the other hand, are characterized by their technical expertise, credibility, and responsibility for compliance and measurement.
The Institute for Real Growth (IRG) playbook recommends bringing marketing and sustainability areas closer together with common goals and complementarity (Credit: VZ_Art/Shutterstock)
The theoretical gap between the two areas highlights a significant misalignment of expectations, which prevents the full utilization of sustainability as a strategic driver of value growth, especially in the face of the challenges of the climate emergency and the growing role of corporations in taking responsibility for action.
The Institute for Real Growth (IRG), an institution that assists CMOs and other leaders in driving more human-centered growth for their organizations, presented the CMO-CSO Playbook last Wednesday, the 5th . The report – produced in partnership with Google, the UN Global Compact, ANA, and Ad Net Zero – is based on data from the IRG Impact Study 2024, which gathers information from 850 senior leaders and 50 interviews.
According to Marc de Swaan Arons, founder of IRG, the main challenge is the mismatch in expectations and the perceived role of Marketing in sustainability. "CSOs (chief sustainability officers) don't see them as strategic leaders who can help drive change in the market," he says.
Results indicate that low-performing organizations have fewer CMOs working effectively with their CSOs (only 13% in low-performing companies, compared to 25% in high-performing ones). According to the founder, this disconnect is due to often unconnected terminology and differing KPIs for success, leading to little incentive for positive collaboration.
Direct link between marketing and sustainability.
Most high-performing leaders (90%) view creating value for stakeholders as a business growth opportunity, compared to 50% of the other leadership group.
The result is based on the creation of strategies aligned with the United Nations' 1987 definition of sustainability: "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
“There is a great opportunity for collaboration because, naturally, marketing leaders are good and trained to identify stakeholder needs and engage with parties to define value propositions,” Arons points out.
Despite this, there are also knowledge gaps regarding the agenda in general, with marketing professionals often limited to the environmental aspect of ESG. Sustainability is also frequently seen as a cost center rather than a driver of strategic value.
In this context, the founder of IRG highlights the importance of organizational culture in encouraging the identification of each role's strengths and, consequently, collaboration to complement those skills with those of other areas of the company, such as technology and R&D.
According to Danilo Maeda, CEO of Beon, there is a natural symptom stemming from "a failure of sustainability advocates, who are poor communicators. We have an appreciation for technique that hinders communication," he argues. As a consequence, he criticizes a certain fetishism with an exaggerated simplification of messages, which makes it difficult to communicate more complex issues.
In Brazil, Vale, for example, even goes so far as to validate pieces for social media and other campaigns with its internal sustainability team. “We need to know if the level of precision they demand is present in the communication. Naturally, we want to simplify the message,” counters Leandro Modé, Vale's director of communication and brand.
According to the executive, striking a balance between technicality and simplicity requires maturity from both areas to define limits and possibilities. "The world needs consistently clear and engaging communication about sustainability. When we speak with excessive technical jargon, we lose that. It demands a lot of dialogue," he adds.
Five Drivers of Humanized Growth
The playbook presents the framework "The Five Drivers of Humanized Growth" so that CMOs and CSOs can work in strategic alignment, engaging the company as a whole by creating value for consumers, colleagues, communities, and the market.
Check it out below:
To substantiate
The first step towards understanding stakeholders, both internally and externally, means going beyond technical requirements to create a connection between the needs of the parties involved and the challenges of sustainability.
Reimagine
Establishing a positive market outlook through long-term thinking and investing in forecasting the future helps unlock innovation opportunities connected to the company's purpose and points of differentiation, and redefines sustainability goals as drivers of innovation rather than constraints.
“Sometimes we call this a utopian vision of the future. Marketers are very good at inspiring people to get excited about what we can achieve,” argues the founder of IRG.
Focus and Organize
Develop integrated strategies through interdependence between areas and with external stakeholders, such as suppliers, customers, competitors, NGOs, and government agencies.
“What ecosystem is needed to bring the solution you are trying to market to the target consumers?” asks Arons. This includes, for example, creating a dashboard where the C-level is aligned around the same KPIs and a common language.
Trigger
This relates to the leadership model needed to incite transformation. The playbook presents the concept of leadership inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, which combines an analytical, creative, and empathetic profile.
Da Vinci was a scientist, inventor, and artist, recalls the IRG spokesperson, but also one of the founders of the humanist movement, bringing necessary empathy to leadership, especially amidst the age of technology and digitalization.
"The most important point is that marketing professionals have the opportunity to stand out and, if they do, they will be much more involved in strategic areas for the business, which go far beyond the consumer," argues the founder.