What Sustainability Marketing Will Mean in 2024

In 2024, more businesses will adopt sustainability as a key growth driver because it will materially affect profit centres, stakeholder management and market share – but it needs to be intrinsically embedded at the core of the business before being used as a marketing pillar. 

Why sustainability in marketing matters

Sustainability is not a short-term marketing trend, it should be a long-term commitment that starts in the boardroom and runs through every strand of the business. Those who get it right will see brand equity, profits, talent, and loyalty soar.

CMOs have powerful tools at their disposal to drive large-scale consumer behaviour change, normalising climate friendly products and making it easier for industries as a whole to adopt more eco-friendly ways of working.

Takeaways

• Marketing can help increase demand for sustainable products and brands, and make it easier for brands to invest in fast-tracking their own sustainability ambitions.
• Collectively, the focus in 2024 and beyond must be on using marketing as a tool to progress conscious production and consumption from niche to normal. We need to increase adoption with mainstream consumers to reach the tipping point.
• Purpose-driven brands will experience higher growth over the long term. McKinsey reported earlier this year that sustainability-related claims helped products average 28% cumulative growth over the last five years. Products that made no ESG claims only grew 20%.

Key quote

“Those brands who find clever ways to align on values and value-driving will be rewarded with new customer acquisition who are more likely to become advocates and have increased loyalty and market share” – Nick Hoskin, Founder & ECD, Something™ and TMRRW.

Go deeper

• For a library of WARC’s research and insight on sustainability in marketing, check out our Sustainability Hub.
• Explore the best practice on the topic through What we know about sustainability marketing.