ESG, three letters you may have seen, heard and dismissed as ‘not relevant to your business’. If you aren’t planning to seek investors or float your business, ESG would have been an abbreviation that didn’t resonate. However, the world is changing, and a business’s Environmental, Social and Governance policies are migrating away from investors and corporate stakeholders to future customers of the nation’s businesses. But why? Jay Evans, Mobas' Head of PR, explains all.
It is time to embrace your Millennial and Gen Z customers
The world in which we live is changing. Extreme weather is now commonplace and soon to be potentially irreversible. Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Generation Z (born 1997-2012) are the two core generations that have seen the devastation of the climate emergency while growing as inquisitive children. From a social perspective, your policies on diversity and inclusion, alongside your slant on equality are in focus as the world continues to react to the social agenda that was exasperated by the pandemic. Alongside wider and stronger political activism, businesses are now also in the spotlight with regard to political alignment, where they advertise and how they use data. With research discovering that these audiences make life decisions around these issues – including where they spend their money – now could be the right time to act.
What are the options for my business?
As a transformation business, we have been at the forefront of the growth in ESG policy, accreditation, and the integration of these policies into workable communication strategies, so that we can best advise our clients. Our strategy team have already worked with our clients on developing and understanding their policies, but more importantly providing strategic support, with key partners, to get those companies accredited.
As a comms team our focus has been on the development of communications strategies to support the integration of ESG policy for our clients. As part of this activity, we look at the company’s tone of voice and the language used, internal communications, website imagery, blogs and insight topics, public relations activity, and organic social media posts. The strategy ensures all messages considers the elements within the ESG policies, discreetly and effectively communicating to key audiences and appropriate stakeholders.
ESG policies, as opposed to a CSR strategy, have a real-time, positive impact on brand reputation because they are going to be expected. Without them, do your customers – or potential customers – know they exist? Does your brand project a positive view over issues that affect your customers? What are you doing to lessen the impact of your brand on the three policy sectors?
If you haven’t started your journey with ESG yet, now is the time. If you need support to understand what needs to be included in your ESG policy, how to get accredited and the benefits of open communication of your policy and status, get in touch and we would be delighted to discuss.
