Building a Better Tomorrow: ESG Strategies for Impactful Marketing

Intro VO  00:06

Welcome to revenue rehab, your one stop destination for collective solutions to the biggest challenges faced by marketing leaders today. Now head on over to the couch, make yourself comfortable and get ready to change the way you approach revenue. Leading your recovery is modern marketer, author, speaker and Chief Operating Officer at Tegrita Brandi Starr

Brandi Starr  00:35

Hello Hello and welcome to another episode of revenue rehab. I am your host Brandi Starr and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Orly Glick, Orly is the founder and CEO of ESG NGO, the AI powered operating system for sustainability. before founding ESG NGO, she was a partner at Vintage, where she invested in technology startups and VC funds and built and led the value added services practice bringing startup innovation to solve corporate challenges. Prior to that, Orly worked at McKinsey and Company for two careers driving digital transformation for global enterprises. Orly lives in Israel with her husband and three children and is passionate about technology, natural path medicine, cultures and diversity. Welcome to revenue rehab, your session begins now.

Orly Glick  01:35

Thank you so much for having me.

Brandi Starr  01:37

I am excited to talk to you today. But before we jump into our topic, I like to break the ice with a little oops, moments that I call buzzword. banishment. So tell me what buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Orly Glick  01:58

Well, I'm a CEO of a startup. And so by design, we're supposed to be thinking differently or out of the box. So I'll take a different angle and say what I actually love, rather than hate. We had a few days ago, we had Valentine's Day. So I love supporting diversity, and you mentioned it earlier. I really love it's a passion of mine to support diversity and diverse communities. This is one of the reasons actually that I started ESG go. So that's what I love. Let's keep that one. Awesome.

Brandi Starr  02:32

So instead of banishing a word today, we are going to keep the word diversity. I love the flip on the icebreaker. So now that we've gotten that out of out of our way, tell me what brings you to revenue rehab today.

Orly Glick  02:49

So I'm getting a lot of questions around sustainability, and how is it related to marketing? And how is it driving business. And I would love to actually share this information with everybody and bring value. And there is a lot of value into stability, sustainability in marketing, so helping the audience to learn how to leverage it. Awesome.

Brandi Starr  03:16

And I believe in setting intentions, it gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and most important, it gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our discussion today. So what's your best hope? What do you want people to walk away from our discussion, knowing or feeling or thinking?

Orly Glick  03:36

So I think that it's really important to note and to understand that sustainability is not nice to have. And when I talked about sustainability, or the term ESG, in general, its environmental and social as well. So diversity and sustainability, that it's not a nice to have, it's a must have. And in the context of marketing, if it's used smartly. And it's used coupled with the regulation in the right way, it can really support business that could really increase revenue.

Brandi Starr  04:12

Okay, so that's a good place to start. So I'd love to hear your perspective on how focusing on ESG. You know, should you know how it impacts the marketing strategy, how it helps to drive revenue, I like to level sets, you know, with the basic question to start so that we can get your perspective out. Sure.

Orly Glick  04:37

So if we look at studies that actually were done, on on companies, 45% of chief marketing officers see environmental sustainability as really a real part of their long term success of the organization. But 15%, it's not to say it's not important at all. So this is interesting how the different views are looking at it. The different there are different views also in terms of geography. Europe has a different view and is very advanced on the sustainability journey. The US is getting there now. So it's really interesting to learn from what's happening in Europe. And what we see is and by the way, in the US now, I think one or 2%. Now, last year, it was 96%. This year 1% of the s&p 500 companies have recorded a sustainability report. So we're getting there, it's getting there. And the way to leverage it properly for marketing is to take an approach of telling not just a story, but telling it in the right way, and assigning KPIs and measurements to the sustainability story. Whereas in the A few years ago, the sustainability report was very general and very, very high level, we are now getting more and more into KPIs and measurements and telling your consumers and customers in the sustainability reports in a really a marketable way. What are you really doing with your products, for example? And what are you doing? How are you supporting communities? And how are you supporting your employees and diversity in the company, so you have different levers to use it in your marketing materials. But on the other hand, the really important thing is to really be careful of greenwashing. And greenwashing really means that we're kind of talking about sustainability in a very high level, which can be interpreted as greenwash or as not really, or exaggerating about what we're doing on sustainability. So it's a really gentle play. And so putting more KPIs and more numbers, and measuring and showing the results and improvements versus last, the past years, really puts it in a very auditable way and in a very formal and trusted, trustworthy way to talk to your customers in the sustainability reports, and beyond in any marketing collateral.

Brandi Starr  07:29

Okay, and so there's a couple of things you said that I want to dig into. So the first is this notion of greenwashing. I, you know, have seen discussions around certain things that, you know, different organizations do that appear to be very superficial, like, not that they actually care, but more so that they want to be able to say that they care, you know, because now I think consumers are a lot more conscious of sustainability and all these things. And so talk a little bit more about how you, you know, as an organization, can be authentic in the efforts? Or how do you recognize that a company is authentic and the efforts like, I'd love to hear more about the notion of greenwashing. Absolutely.

Orly Glick  08:21

So there are different reporting frameworks, globally accepted reporting frameworks, to report your system ability, according to this is we call it the alphabet soup a little bit, there are so many frameworks out there GRI SASB, tcfd. Now CSRD, now the California SB 253, there are so many reporting frameworks, but what the reporting frameworks are trying to do is put a little bit of an order in this information, spaghetti of the sustainability. And that's a good thing to take. It's bringing credibility to the marketing information and to the storytelling. And so the one thing I would do, the first thing is, if you're a CMO, or if you're responsible for the marketing, I would work with the head of sustainability or if you don't have a head of sustainability, maybe work with your legal or the advisors of sustainability or the compliance team, whoever is responsible for the sustainability reports. I would work with them to understand what frameworks first of all we would like to report and from there to get real clear KPIs and then measure them. The second thing is I would be very truthful, and the reporting, not to sugarcoat, not to overstate. Another thing I would do is use percentages instead of numbers, percentages are comparable. And consumers can compare it. And there are rating agencies that rate companies and they can compare it. And, for example, the number of women in the company, and the number of women in management, if you're just throwing a number out there, maybe 2345 years ago, it would be acceptable now companies, consumers, rating agencies, investors are comparing companies. So it's not enough to just mention the number of women in the company on the board. And in management. If you use percentages, then it's comparable. And then you show or you try to show every year that you improve, and then you can see the trajectory. So that's one more thing, and I have a lot of tips. So just guide me on wherever you want me to go.

Brandi Starr  11:03

Okay, well, before we get into more tips, I do want to step backwards a little bit, because just looking at, you know, our audiences are those that are leading marketing at all different sized companies. And I know that there are a lot of CMOS that you know, are in roles or may soon move into roles, where, you know, their company having a strong ESG effort and actually doing the reporting may be new for them. And so I'd like to just level set a bit, if you are, you know, first time exposed, you know, first time having exposure to an organization that is really, you know, putting forth the effort following whichever of the standards for reporting. What is it that you need to be thinking about how does this play a role? Is it you know, brand management demand generation, like, where in the big mix of all the things that we're doing? Where should I be thinking about aligning with the ESG efforts, because I know, you told me who to talk to kind of how to report the numbers, like some of the nitty gritty, but I'd kind of like to take it a little higher level in terms of related to ESG, what should we think be thinking about more strategically, around our marketing efforts? Fantastic.

Orly Glick  12:26

So the interesting thing is that sustainability touches upon every department, the companies that are very advanced in their sustainability journey already have either a department of ESG slash sustainability, or a head of sustainability, head of ESG. And then they are the ones that are kind of organizing the effort of sustainability. And the Senate sustainability report, but then they have to work with all the stakeholders in the organization, including marketing. And the written sustainability is touching upon the whole organization, because it touches upon everything. It touches, the operations, strategy, marketing sales, I our company compliance and legal. And the marketing perspective is one of the most important perspectives, because that's the external part of the report, how do we write it and a sustainability report can be actually audited. So it is actually an interesting document. It is a little bit of compliance, but it's also marketing. So it's kind of a hybrid. Therefore, this is really interesting. And it has to be a group effort. And actually, there's a study, I believe, from Deloitte, that they found that CMOS, agree, I think it was 70 or 75% of CMOS agree that one of the things that they find the most important things in sustainability is coordinating the effort to cross the enterprise.

Brandi Starr  14:17

Okay, so it's really making sure that the company's ESG story becomes a part of the brand story and that that information makes it into the marketplace. Exactly. Okay. Can you do you have any examples of ESG driven marketing campaigns that have effectively engaged consumers and contribute it to the business growth? I know you mentioned revenue at the beginning. Any examples that you've seen with clients are just in the marketplace?

Orly Glick  14:51

So we see a lot of companies in the CPG world that are that are using it in a tremendous weigh, actually, all of the CPG companies have a fantastic report. And their websites are also reflecting their sustainability journey in a fantastic way, which is it really interesting hybrid between the regulation side and the compliance reporting of ESG, with all of the frameworks and exactly by their rules, but also in a fantastic marketing way and telling the story. So CPG is, are one of the, I think, most advanced in reporting, as far as we've seen, both from a marketing perspective and compliance perspective, but also other industries, mostly manufacturing industries, as they have a really heavy a footprint, in more and more software companies are going into it. But definitely, it's worthwhile to look at the large CPG companies, and also some of the large retailers fantastic way of depicting how their sustainability efforts are affecting the product and affecting many people's lives. Okay,

Brandi Starr  16:15

so essentially, what I'm hearing is some of the tactical things that they're doing is weaving that message into, like, their website and their collateral. So that that story is very present.

Orly Glick  16:31

Accurate? Absolutely, absolutely. And again, a big tip would be to really put KPIs and numbers and quantify the efforts, but in a very comparable way. So not very, very general. We are supporting the communities and we are really great in diversity, but really to show very hard numbers, KPIs percentages, we are last year, we were 30% women on the board. And we are aiming to be 50% by 2030, and show that you really every year show that you really progress. And actually, if companies over promise and don't deliver, that's going to be greenwashing. So it's, it's playing between both.

Brandi Starr  17:23

Okay, and so, when setting, you know, these goals, is this something, you know, what is marketing seat at the table? In terms of the big picture in organizations like this is, is this something that is, you know, typically handed to, you know, the the marketing team to say, here's what our message is around ESG? Is it something that, you know, the head of marketing should be leaning into to help to influence? Like, what is that? You know, what does that look like?

Orly Glick  18:00

It's a great question. It's so interesting, sustainability, and ESG is such a new topic. I mean, again, in some industries, it started 678 years ago, but for most companies, its recent journey to three years ago, maybe. And it's interesting to see how it's different between company and company, between country and country and between industry, the industry, the real successful stories that we have seen, that really make a big and meaningful impact on companies and company's revenues is where marketing is an integral part of the process. And the heads of sustainability, are frequently meeting with them, and going back and forth with strategy and with marketing, and seeing how to tell the story of sustainability in a very impactful and measurable way. So definitely 100% This should involve the CMOS and heads of marketing, in the full journey from the beginning. And its sustainability is very complex. It's very, very complex. It's a real complex domain. And so it's really hard to learn it from scratch, while you are a CMO and doing you're such a big job. So there should be somebody dedicated to sustainability, that is carrying that role, but involving the CMO intensely throughout this process, as this has many, many implications on the messaging and the branding of the company. Okay,

Brandi Starr  19:43

and I know you've hit on KPIs a few times and so as CMOS strive to align all their marketing efforts with the broader corporate ESG objectives, what KPIs should they really prioritize Um, in being able to like measure or impact brand Value, Customer Loyalty revenue, like what are those KPIs that you know, marketing should really be focused on.

Orly Glick  20:13

So the first and the biggest one is the GHG emissions or the emissions carbon footprint that the company generates. This is something that most companies are actually now they have to report now for the California SB 253 rule, or very soon, every public company, there's an SEC Rule coming up, or in Europe for another regulation. So every company would have to actually report their total emissions. That is one KPI. It's a general number, then there is on that's on the east side. On the east side, also, there's actually the emissions that the product generates. If you're a product company, then your product generates emissions, or even if you're a software company, then you have a data server, and you are generating emissions. But this data is really hard to get, it's really, really hard to analyze, and to find the number of how much your product is generating a mission. So I'll put this aside, it's a really important one, the world is going this direction, but it's really hard to measure. So it'll take two or three years to get there. So again, number one would be the total emissions of the company. Number two would be related more to diversity. And that's really the breakdown of diversity in the company. So it's not enough just to say, how many women do we have in the company. But really that breakdown that I mentioned earlier? How many women do we have in the company, how many women in management versus non management, how many women in technical roles versus non technical roles, and with other diversities as well, so not just to show one, but really to show that breakdown, that the company is really working hard to incorporate more diversity. And then on the governance side, there are many others. But I think I would start with these two of these are kind of the most prevalent one is in the most common denominator that companies are reporting in their reports, even if they were in the beginning of their journey.

Brandi Starr  22:27

Okay, and so those are kind of the key metrics related to the initiatives. And then how do we know if communicating these things is working? So you talked about, you know, some of the CPG companies, you know, do a lot in promoting their efforts. So, you know, I make sure that our carbon footprint, you know, that that's real clear what that is, you know, we've got great diversity, I get that information out there. How do I know that that is actually positively impacting our business, the fact that we're doing these things and so I think that's where I kind of struggled to make the connection is between you know, I know that all the ESG efforts means that, you know, we are helping our organization's be sustainable. We're being good people, we're being good to the planet. So I understand that aspect. But where I struggled to make the connection is on the marketing side, how do we see that talking about these things and sharing that the, you know, we are doing these things? How do I see that that actually impacts? You know, our brand perception or customer loyalty? And our bottom line?

Orly Glick  23:48

This is the million dollar question. It's we're being asked that all the time. I think that because it's the industry in the beginning, relatively the beginning, there are still it's really hard still to measure it. The one thing that you could see out there is ESG score, that's called ESG score, the credit rating companies, the Moody's, s&p, MSCI the companies that rate up companies on their financial strength. They now rate companies on their ESG as well. That yes, so there is there, there are now two scores, there's a score for financial strength and a score for ESG. Now, there's a lot of debate about this and a justified debate. And the justify debate is because at the moment, the methodologies are not 100% Clear. It's getting there. They're starting to publish their methodologies, but there is a low correlation between the results and scores. So there's a lot of debate. And one of the biggest debates about the name ESG came from there, because some companies got rated a very low score, and they were not sure why that started the big debate around ESG. But at the end of the day, it's it's the beginning of the industry. And now there's, it's getting closer and the correlation is getting higher. So one thing that we see with our clients is that they are looking at their score, and trying to make sure that there is a correlation between what they're doing to the score. And this is one of the things that we're helping them with. But actually, the bottom line is, if you're doing a good job, and sustainability, a really good job, you will get a high score. And that score is being used by investors. So when investors are building portfolios, when they're looking at your financial score, they're also looking at their ESG score. So then they will choose that company most likely, if it has a good score in both. So it has a direct effect on the stock price, you can say. And again, I I'll put a big asterisk there. And I'll say some states in the US are a little bit different, they are not looking at the ESG score, but a lot of the investors are looking at it. So it could actually affect the stock price. As for direct measurement, still no direct measurements. So the optimization at the moment is looking at that score in general, for the different scoring companies. Okay.

Brandi Starr  26:46

And then my last question is a little bit of a, I don't know what I don't know. Um, so I'm curious if there is anything that I have not thought to ask about, that you feel important to share with our listeners, and how you know, ESG strategies can help us build a better tomorrow and be more impactful in marketing.

Orly Glick  27:11

So I would say, really build a strategy or a real powerful strategy around it, because it is important. And if your company's already doing it, then it's fantastic. And it's you just need to highlight it, make sure that the report is accessible. From a marketing perspective, this is very important, and also for investors. Because the way that you place your sustainability report on your website or out there is really helping stakeholders, consumers, rating agencies, read your report in the right way and understand what's written there. So there's a big effect on how you put it out there. Some companies don't make it accessible. And that's really a pity they're doing a good job, but they're not writing everything that they're doing. So this is one of the things to take into account is leverage that report, make it accessible to your stakeholders, put it on the website in the right way, a readable way. And then everybody could enjoy reading it.

Brandi Starr  28:18

Awesome. Well, talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework, but here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. And so I always love making sure that everyone has an action item. And so I'd love to hear your one thing for those heads of marketing that are listening. And you know, have identified that, you know, they may or may not be really leveraging the work that the company is doing around ESG in marketing effectively. Where would you suggest they start? What's your one, your one thing, your action item?

Orly Glick  29:04

Wow. Maybe shameless shameless marketing on our side. So just come to our website and read. That's it. There's tons of material. We have a community a free community of sustainability leaders and CMOS that are related to sustainability. And just read and ask us question, we just love helping

Brandi Starr  29:31

out awesome. Well, orally. I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. Before we go, how can our audience stay connected with you and definitely give the shameless plug for ESG go I'd love to hear what you guys do. So

Orly Glick  29:49

we are a sustainability platform. All we do is sustainability and ESG we help companies do A to Z sustainability reporting thing, connect, collect the data reports a sustainability report with one click where it is actually serving regulation but also the marketing side. But just just come and read what we're doing come and read all of the material that we have out there. We're just here to support the community. And you can reach me on LinkedIn or you could go to our website, www ESG go.com. Or write to me directly on Orly at ESG go.com. And we're here to help. We're really community related, folks.

Brandi Starr  30:32

Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to your LinkedIn as well as ESG goes. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes to stay connected with Orly. Well, thank you so so much for joining me. Thank

Orly Glick  30:47

you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Enjoyed it.

Brandi Starr  30:51

Awesome. And thanks, everyone for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Orly. Until next time, we'll see you later. See you later.

Outro VO  31:02

You've been listening to revenue rehab with your host Brandi Starr. Your session is now over but the learning is just begun. join our mailing list and catch up on all our shows at revenue we have dot live. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at revenue rehab. This concludes this week's session. We'll see you next week.