Loving this!

Check out more comic book brilliance at xkcd.com (and thanks to Dr Neil Cutland for the tip off - we clearly share a similar sense of humour).

After one of the busiest and most exhilarating quarters for the business we have seen for 10 years, I actually took a holiday last week.

Among the glorious highlights of my first visit to Cornwall, I spent two days at the Eden Project (a business also celebrating its tenth birthday this year) and yes, I admit it, caught up with some work-related reading.

Both of these events have sparked some thoughts on the perennial questions for communicators in our industry: Do we need a new word for sustainability and, if so, what could it be?

It all started when I was struck by the fact that at Eden I could only find one written reference to sustainability - and that was a statement about the development of the Eden Project as a "sustainable business".

Who was the only person to say the S word on the Eden Project video? The architect.

All the other messages, especially those for young people (and their exhausted teachers and parents grateful for a coffee at The Core, Eden's education centre), were about a "cool future", "inspiration", "transformation"...

So this got me thinking. Is it just us lot in the property and building world who seem so wedded to this word? We put so much effort into positioning our businesses, our projects and products, our corporate ethos, as sustainable. But given that there is so much confusion about what the word actually means (and downright bans on using it in advertising and many marketing communications now) is there another way, a better way, to communicate the essence of what we are doing to the audiences we want to reach?

Framing the issue

This issue was also raised within one of the many interesting topics for discussion at the recent IBM Start Jam - an online summit for environmentalists, celebs, communicators and business leaders to share thoughts and ideas about, well, sustainability.

One of the discussion threads started by Ellen MacArthur looked at the issue of framing - how do we frame the changes that have to happen in order to get maximum support from the population?

Here are some of the interesting points made in response:

• Sustainability must be associated with other lifestyle-enhancing benefits
• Sustainability must be framed as cool, aspirational and achievable within a short to medium term (up to 5 years, say)
• Sustainability must be communicated visually, not just with words
• Sustainability must emphasise the national/local, not global
• Sustainability should be presented as incremental steps, not one big leap that people will perceive as too disruptive

I've commented on these and other excellent tips before.

In the meantime though, back to words.

Ellen MacArthur suggests substituting the words "our future" wherever the word "sustainability" is used. I will give that a try and see if it works.

Other people suggested words like "survivability", "vitality" and "climate prosperity".

An education expert pointed out that she didn't need to use the S word at all - just start with the issues that matter most to people, and don't try and frame it as 'sustainable'. It's implicit, not explicit, and key audiences can label it any way they wish. I am increasingly seeing this approach adopted by leaders in the field. The day will soon come - maybe it has already - when a company's claim to be "sustainable" will sound dated.

Thinner and cooler

But while relaxing in Cornwall and indulging in maybe a few too many cream teas, I did rather like the comment that, to be successfully communicated to the public, sustainability should offer the promise of making us all thinner and more attractive.

So, having checked this out with a few people including my kids, we have come up with a proposal for two new slang terms:

Slim. adj. slang. To be sustainable, or to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability (eg. "OMG, that's like sooooo slim!" - this works well with girls)

Unsus. adj. slang. To be seriously unsustainable, a person considered antisocial and uncool due to excessive consumption, environmental damage etc. (eg. "You're such an unsus" - this seems to work better with boys)

What word would you use instead of sustainable?

How can we get "sustainable" to be the best compliment anyone could pay us, and "unsustainable" the worst insult?

You may already be familiar with Defra’s Green Claims Code. For 10 years it has set out best practice on the content of environmental claims including accuracy, truthfulness, relevance, use of unambiguous terminology, presentation of claims and comparative claims. 

About a year ago I blogged that Defra was consulting on an update to its guidance - well, the final consultation paper is now published. It is open for comment until 15 June this year.

I will put in a response. I'm very likely to echo the views of the great people at Futerra who have pointed out how toothless the guidance appears to be. (Read also this viewpoint by Fred Pearce in the Guardian).

But in the meantime, a flurry of new rules and guidance has emerged this year to help us understand what more we need to do to promote our green credentials in a way that guarantees greater credibility, consumer protection and social responsibility.

In January the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) published a framework and practical checklist for Responsible Environmental Marketing Communications (PDF).

The influential Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) also published its new codes just weeks ago. They bring in additional explicit rules designed to prevent exaggerated environmental promises by products, services and organisations.

The new CAP codes come into effect this September and will be regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority. They state that advertisers must ensure all environmental claims are crystal clear to consumers and all absolute claims must be backed by a “high level of substantiation”. We must acknowledge areas where scientific opinion is divided. We must also base environmental claims on the full lifecycle of the product.

It’s not just about standalone statements in some advertising copy. Linking a single, truthful claim (“we use natural paint to ensure no volatile organic compounds...”) with a broader claim (“Acme Homes are kinder to the planet…”) is likely to get us into hot water.  Even a scientifically accurate claim can be misleading if, taken out of context, it implies or omits something relevant.

The rules apply over all paid-for media, and even to websites and social media. 

And it goes well beyond what words we use – green claims can include pictures, colours and logos as well. 

PR consultants like myself may breathe a sign of relief that, technically, we’re immune - neither the CAP nor the ICC codes apply directly to ‘corporate communications’.  We argue that PR about a company’s aspirations and sustainability initiatives, its annual reports or CSR statements are usually provided in a context that will ensure there is no confusion with advertising claims. And anyway, we mutter, the media loves absolutes and hyperbole and has no time for all this qualified language.

However, we would be daft not to take on board every one of these new rules. 

It’s not as if it’s all so alien – the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) published guidelines on communicating about sustainability two years ago.

Green marketing is no different from regular marketing.  Business ethics still hold. Waging war on little green lies will protect corporate reputations, build more confident businesses and counter the cynics out to knock the industry.

10 top tips to avoid greenwash

1. If you talk about sustainability, energy,  waste, water, raw materials, noise,  air quality, global warming, greenhouse gases, wildlife, human health, toxins or other environmental topics in your marketing and PR, make sure you read up on the new codes and international standards like ISO 14021 which clarify requirements on environmental labelling.
2. Do an audit. Check the words, the pictures, the colours, the logos. 
3. Look at everything through the eyes of your most cynical competitor. Then apply what I call the Mum Test (would a “reasonable consumer” understand what this claim really means?)
4. Watch out for words like ‘reduced energy’, ‘reduced waste’ etc. Always make it clear what has been reduced.  Only make a feature of it if it has resulted in a significant environmental improvement taking all aspects of life cycle into account.
5. Verify as much as you can.  At the bottom of your advertisements, press releases and marketing literature, provide links to a section on your website where you publish the independent scientific evidence that backs up your claim.
6. Not everything has to have a full dossier addressing every conceivable impact of the product on the environment, but the greater the value being placed on the claim, the more robust verification needs to be.
7. If you’re planning a major campaign to promote your green credentials, first do some thorough consumer testing and perception research.
8. Reassess your claims regularly. Check whether circumstances have changed or what the latest scientific and technical evidence says.
9. Communicate the journey, not just the end result.  No one expects you to be zero carbon today. But you can gain respect by honestly communicating what actions have been carried out to help you work towards it.
10. Make sure your PR, advertising and digital marketing agencies understand the technical details.  No more fluff.  Demand compliance with the new legal requirements and best practice in communicating about sustainability.

PS. Need more advice? Check out my earlier blog posts on the '10 steps to absolution' from the 'Six Sins of Greenwashing'!

We all have words we hate. I happen to detest the word 'tasty'. It’s a meaningless, lazy adjective. It gives me traumatic flashbacks to the “tasty, tasty, very very tasty” jingle for Bran Flakes in the 1980s.

There are more of my personal favourites also listed this week in the Guardian’s poll of hated words.

But it was the Today programme yesterday that really set me thinking about this again. Was it just me, or did anyone else squirm at the interview with Nissan’s Senior VP who explained that the firm had to sack a quarter of its workforce in Sunderland in order to “rightsize our operations to the market demand”?

'Rightsizing' first appeared as a term in the late 1980s, but took hold from the mid-90s as an alternative to the previous favourite 'downsizing'. I hadn’t heard it for a while, but the current business climate has obviously given it a new lease of life.

In fact, its more youthful cousin 'dynamic rightsizing' this week joins a prestigious list of management jargon celebrated by the FT's Lucy Kellaway in her 2008 Top Twaddle Awards.

Lucy is a wonderful voice of common sense in a world too full of management gobbledygook. Her awards include a hideous collection of new verbs to join 'rightsize':

• to 'sunset' products (ie. stop selling them)
• to 'upgrade' someone (ie. make them redundant)
• to 'cascade around' information (ie. share?)
• to 'ladder off' (ie…. actually, I’ve no idea what this means)

The IT sector seems particularly prone to this sort of twaddle, but I have to admit that I’ve worked with a few companies in the built environment who might be accused of similar sins.

One was a construction collaboration software company (ok, I guess that’s IT again really) that kept banging on about  'acting in concert' with the construction industry. Even writing that phrase again years later, I still get pictures in my mind of subbies in the strings section trying to keep beat with Egan…

Consultants and architects can be a bit prone to this too sometimes: facilitated dynamic and collaborative engagement forums, structured iterative consultation exercises, transformational change in placemaking etc. etc. I’m sure you will know of other gems.

But the good news is that plain English is back in fashion. There are good business reasons for this. For a start, it attracts clients and improves your working relationships. It inspires trust.

A few years ago one copywriting consultancy even tried to put a financial value on clear expression, noting a 14 percent higher share price among plain-speaking companies compared to the FTSE 100 as a whole, and the worst jargon-junkies underperforming by 16 percent.

As the Observer noted at the time: “While successful companies will have a bias to simplicity, allowing a good story to tell itself, failing firms will be more likely to disguise bad news with vagueness and euphemisms… an onset of jargon and obfuscation may be an advance warning of a company on the slide.”

So, if you find yourself drawn towards total twaddle and baffling buzzwords, remember that firms that spell it out in simple words fare better.

Get it out of your system on the Plain English Campaign’s Gobbledygook Generator instead.

PS. My sincere apologies if you now have that irritating Bran Flakes jingle stuck in your head. I know I will be humming it all weekend.