Your Free Guide to Smart, Effective Sustainability Communications

Inspired by their recent Working Group, The Sustainable Restaurant Association has created a free-to-download PDF guide to creating effective communications around your sustainability work.

Once your business is doing the work on sustainability, it’s important to share it with your customers, staff and stakeholders; being open and transparent about your goals and progress is not only a valuable marketing tool, but it can help to drive change across the wider industry. However, we know many businesses are hesitant to talk about their sustainability work for fear that they’ll open themselves up to criticism – that’s why we’ve created a free, downloadable PDF guide on how you can do this in effective, meaningful and positive ways.

DOWNLOAD YOUR PDF HERE

Why is sustainability important in marketing?

1. Boost your brand image: Making real commitments to sustainability is the responsibility of any modern business – especially in the F&B sector, where our impact is significant and the potential for creating widescale change is huge. The good news is that, once you’re doing the work, sharing this with your customers (in the right ways) provides a valuable marketing opportunity and a means of connecting with people on issues that matter to them. This can improve your brand reputation, increase customer loyalty and generate positive press.
2. Attract more customers: Customers want to know that they’re spending their hard-earned money with a business that is doing good for both society and our planet. In a large-scale global study of more than 23,000 consumers around the world, 50% of respondents reported that sustainability was one of their top four purchase criteria.
3. Solve your staffing problem: With recruitment still an ongoing issue across the industry, F&B businesses can’t afford not to be creating credible sustainability communications. In one UK study, 94% of hospitality workers said that a company’s commitment to social and environmental responsibility is a significant factor when deciding where to work, and half have accepted one job over another partly because the company was more sustainable. Retention is also affected: 84% of hospitality professionals would be more likely to stay in their job for longer if their employer has a positive environmental impact. 
4. Lead the market towards a better future: The climate and biodiversity crises are at critical points and we need every industry to enact drastic, immediate change. Talking about your own sustainability won’t just benefit your own business, but can start a ripple effect, encouraging others to make positive changes of their own. If brands see competitors reaping the benefits we’ve mentioned above, they’re more likely to take action on sustainability themselves. For large companies and chains, there’s even bigger potential; they can leverage their influence to lead the market and create new benchmarks for sustainable hospitality.

The power of collaboration

At The Sustainable Restaurant Association, we have a strong belief in the power of collaboration. When individual F&B businesses work together to share knowledge and resources, the industry as a whole moves faster towards the progressive and environmentally restorative future we need. To facilitate this, we hold quarterly Working Groups for larger UK businesses in our network, where we encourage them to share and discuss their sustainability challenges, creative solutions and inspiring ideas.

The theme for this year’s final Working Group was ‘Effective Sustainability Communications’. With insights from the brilliant Young’s Pubs marketing team, renowned journalist, consultant and sustainability editor Juliet Kinsman and Assistant Director at the CMA’s Consumer Directorate Rob Dun, the session included:

• how to communicate sustainability initiatives through online and physical channels;
• how our own Marketing & Comms team at The SRA supports businesses in developing their strategy and messaging; and
• valuable advice for avoiding greenwashing and staying compliant with the Green Claims Code.

Your guide to sustainability communications

Following this session, we’ve pulled together a PDF resource on effective sustainability communications, combining the expert advice from these Working Group presentations with outcomes from the group discussions, as well as some insights from our own team. This resource covers:

• why it’s important to talk about your sustainability work with customers, staff and stakeholders, and how it can benefit your business as well as the wider industry;
• the practical actions you can take to build an effective and meaningful communications strategy around your sustainability work;
• best practice guides to terminology and which channels work well for which types of communication; and
• the questions you need to ask to ensure that your communications comply with the Green Claims Code.

This resource is free to download – get your copy here!

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