Ioana David-Narby - Building authentic trust in sustainability marketing

We are currently navigating a highly challenging political and cultural landscape for sustainability communications. In the face of media pressure and evolving regulations, many corporate marketing teams have concluded that staying completely quiet is an easier operational tactic than speaking out.

During an episode of the Sustainability Marketing Survival Conversations podcast, host Simon Badman and climate comedian Stuart Goldsmith explored how leaning into human imperfection, rather than hiding it, is the ultimate way to dissolve audience scepticism and build authentic trust.

In corporate boardrooms and sustainability departments, climate communication frequently suffers from a fundamental design flaw: it reads like a health and safety briefing.

When we discuss sustainability in corporate environments, the conversation quickly separates into distinct silos. Executives look at a matrix of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on a screen, treating climate action, poverty reduction, and economic growth as separate line items to be managed via independent corporate budgets. But out in the real world, these goals do not exist in isolation. They are deeply entangled, often pulling against one another in a delicate, high-stakes tug of war. To understand how to cross the bridge from sterile datasets to deep stakeholder loyalty, corporate leaders can learn an enormous amount from the fundraising models used by leading NGOs and foundations. In the charitable sector, organisations cannot afford to go silent or rely on vague annual summaries. When an organisation like the YMCA hosts a donor event, they don't just show a spreadsheet of financial distributions. They place an individual on the stage to tell their story firsthand, sharing the concrete progress they have made through the charity's support. That raw, personal connection is what inspires long-term investment. It provides immediate, undeniable proof of impact. The SDGs Come to Life To see what this looks like when applied to a macro-ecosystem, you have to travel to the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. This is where sustainability and marketing strategist Ioana David-Narby spent her childhood, learning environmental stewardship from her grandfather. It is also where she now serves as a trustee on the board of Conservation Carpathia , a foundation executing one of the largest and most complex ecological preservation initiatives in Europe. The Carpathian Mountains house some of the last remaining virgin forests in Europe, but the ecosystem faces a severe, systemic threat from illegal deforestation, often referred to locally as the logging mafia . The primary objective of Conservation Carpathia is to permanently protect a major section of the range, the Făgăraș Mountains, by converting the territory into a world-class national park. This is the ultimate legal shield required to halt illegal logging entirely. However, executing true nature conservation requires far more than mapping out a physical boundary and deploying scientific advisors. It requires intensive community engagement and social impact work. "You cannot simply march onto a mountain that families have lived alongside for generations and declare that it is closed," Ioana explains. "You cannot tell local communities that they are suddenly banned from foraging for wild berries or collecting firewood for the winter. These populations have an ancestral, balanced relationship with the land. It is their home." Reversing the Brain Drain via Green Capitalism The foundation's strategy provides a masterclass in how to align ecological targets with human development. Rather than cutting locals off from their environment, the project focuses on showing mountain communities that preserving nature is vastly more economically viable than stripping it dry. This approach directly addresses Romania's severe rural "brain drain", an ongoing demographic crisis where educated young people systematically abandon mountain villages for urban centres. To reverse this flow, Conservation Carpathia created an entrepreneurial support arm designed to stimulate local green businesses. For instance, the foundation provides modern branding, operational support, and distribution networks to local artisans, such as the traditional "mamaie" (the Romanian term for an old lady) who has hand-crafted regional cheeses her entire life. They channel everything through Roadele Munților ("Fruits of the Mountains"), a dedicated food hub that takes these regional products to market: selling them online and through the foundation's own boutiques at its visitor and activity centres, as well as into major cities like Brașov and Bucharest. By connecting these ancestral products with the rapidly growing global sustainable travel market, the foundation enables locals to command a financial premium for their heritage. Suddenly, sustainability is no longer viewed by the community as an external regulatory restriction; it is embraced as a source of local pride and long-term financial security. The same logic powers Travel Carpathia, the foundation's own ecotourism operator. Rather than letting tourism extract value and leave, it knits local innkeepers, restaurateurs, trained mountain guides, and artisans into a single offering for travellers seeking slow, authentic, ecologically rooted journeys. Visitors trek the Făgăraș Mountains, sleep in eco-friendly wildlife hides, stay in village guesthouses, and eat meals made from locally sourced ingredients; all guided by people from the region who share what they know about the land and the rewilding work underway. The income, the storytelling, and the pride stay in the valley. Tourism stops being something that happens to the mountains and becomes something the communities own and profit from. And most importantly, it makes the case that nature is worth more in its most conserved form than in its most developed one. A pristine valley that draws travellers seeking wildness generates lasting income precisely because it was never turned into a ski resort or clear-cut for timber. Conservation isn't the cost of doing business here; it IS the business. Fostering Future Stewards The social architecture of the park also extends directly into the regional school systems. The foundation funds completely free nature camps for local children, like the Richita Nature Exploration and Activity Centre, giving youth from rural villages the opportunity to step out into the wilderness to study native botany, learn to identify a maple leaf, and discover the biodiversity thriving in their backyards. By fostering ecological literacy from an early age, the project ensures that the future stewards of the region view the national park not as a political boundary, but as a collective inheritance.  "When you support the local culture, provide entrepreneurial tools, and respect the social fabric of a region, the community itself becomes the ultimate shield protecting the landscape," Ioana concludes. "Identify what your stakeholders value, build verified platforms they genuinely want to engage with, and consistently show them the human receipts of your work."

The global business community is currently weathering a complex commercial season. Driven by tightening regulatory frameworks, geopolitical pressures, and intense public scrutiny, an atmospheric shift has taken place. We have entered what industry observers call a "sustainability recession", a period defined by a pronounced say-do gap where companies are actively doing the work behind the scenes but keeping entirely quiet about it. This corporate silence is known as greenhushing , and it stems from a profound fear of reputational risk. Terrified of a single bad headline that could dismantle years of work, brand leaders are choosing to say nothing at all. "Greenhushing frustrates me almost as much as greenwashing," sustainability and marketing strategist Ioana David-Narby observes. "It comes from the same place: a lack of bravery. Brands are so scared of being called out that they'd rather say nothing than risk saying the wrong thing. But when the brands doing genuine work stop talking, the only stories left are the bad or inauthentic ones. That actively degrades consumer trust across the entire industry." The Death of Reactive Marketing This pervasive fear has completely transformed how internal teams function. Historically, great marketing relied on speed and situational relevance—a quick, reactive social media post responding to a cultural moment. Today, that agility is stalled by compliance bottlenecks. Because sustainability and legal departments have implemented exhaustive, multi-layered risk assessment guidance, public copy has become strangled. Ioana recalls trying to craft a case study title for a major corporate client: "It had been edited down to two lines of completely sterile text. I had to tell them we needed to take a step back because it said absolutely nothing. It was vague and uninteresting, yet it was masking a wonderful, deeply impactful story. The answer isn't less communication, it's better communication. It’s knowing exactly what you can say, being precise, and learning how to land the message without hiding behind scientific jargon." The Rise of the Competitor Audit For large multinational corporations, blatant greenwashing is largely a solved problem due to rigorous internal playbooks; however, for medium-to-small enterprises (SMEs) that lack the capital for crisis PR or complete corporate rebrands, a single misaligned claim can serve as a total company killer. Interestingly, the biggest threat to brands today isn't just regulatory bodies like the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which now uses sophisticated AI systems to uses AI to proactively scan tens of millions of ads a year for problem claims (like green claims) annually. The primary driver of recent enforcement actions is actually direct competitor challenges . This creates a fascinating competitive paradox. Giant corporations like Nestlé communicate cautiously to protect themselves from scrutiny, preferring to focus on internal, action-driven communications. But by greenhushing, they leave an open narrative register. Agile challenger brands immediately sense that conversational vacuum, step into the space, and aggressively try to peel away market share by shouting about their own impact. However, if those challengers overstep and fall out of line with their green words, the established giants are waiting with a regulatory audit. Driving Internal Culture Change Moving an established organisation through this minefield requires treating sustainability messaging like any other specialised technical discipline. "It's a language like any other," Ioana notes. "For some, learning Java code is the hurdle. For others, it's mastering regulatory compliance or Gen Z TikTok lingo. It takes time, but it is an entirely learnable skill." Internal advocates can drive this change by moving their teams past the what and straight to the so what. To build momentum inside a busy corporate culture, you have to frame sustainability around three core organisational incentives:  The Urgent Challenge : What are the operational, financial, and regulatory risks of inaction? (e.g., Shifting investor demands, like when institutional shareholders publicly pressured Nestlé to shift its product portfolio toward healthier, lower-sugar options). The Positive Opportunity : What does the business or the individual gain by participating? The Reputational Cost : What market share do we concede to competitors if we choose to stay completely silent? By translating technical frameworks into distinct, relatable commercial outcomes, sustainability transitions from a top-down compliance chore into a shared organisational victory.

In the final part of our series with award-winning strategist Wim Vermeulen , we move away from abstract marketing theories and look directly at the hard, financial data. For years, sceptical chief executives have viewed corporate responsibility as a moral duty, a cost centre to be managed rather than a driver of top-line growth. But Bubka's latest Responsible Business Index research reveals that responsibility has officially become a primary engine of commercial reputation and sales. If your brand ignores this shift, the market data shows it will actively cost you customers. The Brand Disconnect: The Case of Nike and Tesla Every single company operating today possesses a "responsibility reputation." Whether you choose to communicate it or not, consumers have already assigned a score to your brand, and no one scores neutral. You are either building equity or burning it. Wim points to traditional reputation models versus responsibility indexes to highlight massive corporate blind spots. Take a brand like Nike . In conventional reputation rankings, Nike consistently scores among the top global brands due to product innovation and cultural dominance. However, when you isolate the metric of responsibility, their score plummets. Consumers instantly cross-reference the brand against underlying anxieties regarding supply chain ethics, labour conditions, and plastic waste. An even more extreme example is Tesla . Historically viewed as the poster child for sustainable innovation, Tesla has recently become the worst-scoring brand on the entire Responsibility Index in Belgium, registering a staggering minus 55. This precipitous drop has absolutely nothing to do with the engineering of the cars; it is a direct reflection of public perception surrounding Elon Musk’s political actions and governance. Because responsibility is holistic, a CEO's personal brand can completely erase the environmental credentials of the product. And the data shows this reputation dip is now actively depressing Tesla's sales. The 0.91 Correlation: Responsibility Equals Revenue On the opposite end of the spectrum sits Too Good To Go , an app dedicated to reducing retail food waste. On a benchmark where the average corporate score is 41, Too Good To Go registers an astonishing plus 93 . What makes this truly revolutionary for boardrooms is the mathematical correlation discovered by Wim's research team. When they mapped Responsibility Index Scores against a company's Net Promoter Score (NPS), they found a correlation coefficient of 0.91 for top-performing responsible brands. In data science, a 0.91 correlation is incredibly powerful. It proves that an investment in perceived corporate responsibility directly drives consumer recommendation, brand preference, and immediate sales. It removes ideology from the conversation and turns responsibility into a cold, hard fiduciary requirement. De-risking the Narrative with the Responsible Growth Model Because the stakes are so high, companies can no longer afford to rely on gut instinct when designing their narratives. "In sustainability communication, gut instinct is wrong most of the time," Wim notes. "The subject is simply too complex, and emotional projection from executives usually alienates the consumer." To fix this, Bubka and the University of Ghent utilise the Responsible Growth Model . Rather than launching unvalidated creative campaigns, they present structured, unformatted claims and arguments to consumer testing panels to objectively measure credibility, honesty, and urgency before a single advertising penny is spent. For instance, a utility company might automatically assume its best headline is "Investing millions in offshore wind." But testing might reveal that consumers find that narrative distant and corporate. By pivoting the core narrative to focus on local economic stability, grid resilience, and long-term price security, whilst keeping net-zero targets as the supporting proof point rather than the headline, the brand instantly unlocks consumer engagement. Action Inspires Hope To motivate a population currently frozen by economic anxiety, corporate narratives must abandon the dark, data-heavy warnings of the scientific community and embrace structured, verified hope. Wim points to Bubka's cinematic project, We The Hopeful , which tested two futuristic scenarios with audiences. The film, focusing on a dark, failed future, lost viewer engagement within ten seconds. The version rooted in a hopeful, triumphant future drove unprecedented consumer action. "Action inspires hope, and hope inspires action," Wim concludes. "It is a full circle. Business leaders can no longer allow personal political views or legal timidity to dictate their communication strategy. The transition is happening, the world is rewriting its rules, and the winners will be the brands brave enough to speak the truth, back it with data, and lead their consumers forward."

In Part 1 , strategist Wim Vermeulen explained why the traditional marketing playbook of exaggerating benefits completely backfires when applied to sustainability. Now, we address one of the most pervasive myths circulating in boardrooms: the idea that the public has developed "climate fatigue" and simply wants brands to stop talking about environmental issues. According to Wim's ongoing data collection with the University of Ghent, this assumption is completely wrong. Consumers have not tuned out. In fact, corporate silence is actively making them anxious. The Reality of Climate Anxiety "There is no climate fatigue," Wim states bluntly. "People are highly concerned, and their stress levels are rising as the physical impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss become part of daily life. What marketers misinterpret as fatigue is actually a profound sense of isolation and disappointment." The data shows that everyday citizens feel completely alone in tackling the transition. They recognise the sheer scale of the crisis and look to policymakers and businesses to lead the way. However, public trust in politicians to execute this transition is disastrously low, hovering around just 9% in certain regions of Europe. Naturally, consumers look to the next most powerful institutions: corporations. Trust in businesses to drive meaningful change can reach as high as 83%. Yet, precisely when consumers are looking for corporate leadership, boardrooms have gone completely dark. The Trap of Greenhushing Terrified of strict green claims regulations and desperate to avoid public accusations of greenwashing, corporate legal departments have enforced a policy of "greenhushing", quietly continuing sustainability investments behind the scenes while scrubbing all mention of them from public marketing materials. Wim warns that this silence carries an incredibly high commercial cost. When consumers see a political class they do not trust and a business community that has gone completely silent, they are left with a terrifying question: Has the problem been solved, or is nobody capable of solving it? This vacuum creates profound anxiety, which quickly morphs into deep distrust of silent brands. Conversely, it creates an unprecedented commercial opportunity. The businesses willing to step into the light and communicate openly will capture a massive wave of consumer support. But to do that safely, they must design their messaging around the six indicators of credibility. The Six Drivers of Sustainability Credibility Through rigorous testing, Wim’s research identified six specific levers that determine whether a sustainable narrative will be accepted or rejected by the public: Honesty: The undisputed heavyweight. Is the claim transparent, admitting limitations rather than pretending to be flawless? Commitment: Is this a core, long-term business transformation, or a superficial, short-term marketing campaign? Urgency: Does the brand demonstrate that it understands the immediate timeline of the climate transition? Shared Value: Is it clear what is in it for the individual consumer (such as affordability or quality) and what is in it for wider society? Clarity of Proof Points: Are the facts accessible, easy to digest, and verifiable? Relevance: Is the message tied to immediate, tangible human needs, rather than abstract, corporate net-zero targets? The old paradigm of screaming "We will be net zero by 2042!" across a billboard is dead. Consumers do not understand abstract carbon metrics, and they reject narratives built around scarcity and sacrifice. To move the market forward, brands must learn how to construct validated, audience-centric storylines. In Part 3, we will explore the Responsible Growth Model, examine why Tesla’s reputation is cratering, and look at the hard correlation between audited responsibility and direct sales impact.

In conventional advertising, exaggeration is practically part of the job description. For decades, agencies have operated under a script perfected in the 1950s and 60s by industry pioneers like David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach: dramatise the benefit. Take a product attribute, magnify it, and turn it into a compelling narrative. Think of a standard toothpaste commercial. The voiceover confidently promises that your teeth will be crystal clear within two weeks. As consumers, we have spent a lifetime learning to decode this language. No one literally expects their teeth to replicate a diamond, and nobody returns a tube of toothpaste demanding a refund when they do not. We understand the unwritten rule: the benefit has simply been dramatised. But when you apply that same 1950s advertising script to sustainability, the system completely breaks down. I recently spoke with Wim Vermeulen , an award-winning strategist, author, and partner at the sustainable communication agency Bubka . Wim’s career began in traditional advertising, but six years ago, as the first wave of massive corporate sustainability campaigns began hitting the market, his gut told him something was fundamentally wrong. To figure out what, he teamed up with the University of Ghent to run a massive scientific study, testing 100 sustainability campaigns for effectiveness. What they discovered exposes the fatal flaw in modern green marketing. The Only Metric That Matters When Wim and the academic researchers crunched the data from those 100 campaigns, they expected to find a variety of creative factors driving success. Instead, they found that effectiveness was almost entirely dictated by a single, monolithic variable: credibility. Unlike conventional advertising, where consumers willingly tolerate exaggeration, sustainability communication operates under a zero-tolerance policy. Because sustainability campaigns are dealing with systemic, real-world crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, using the old "dramatised benefit" script triggers immediate scepticism. If a brand overpromises or wraps its message in corporate hyperbole, the audience does not read between the lines; they simply stop believing. In sustainability, you are either credible or you are greenwashing. There is no grey area. Introducing the Net Credibility Score (NCS) To help brands navigate this high-stakes landscape, Wim and the University of Ghent developed a framework called the Net Credibility Score (NCS) . Operating on a similar logic to the traditional Net Promoter Score, the NCS provides an objective benchmark for trust. You measure the exact percentage of consumers who genuinely believe a campaign's narrative, subtract the percentage who do not, and the resulting figure gives you your benchmark. The results across different European markets reveal a highly sceptical public. In Belgium, the average baseline benchmark sits at roughly 30. In the hyper-critical market of the Netherlands, the benchmark drops to just 15. If a sustainability campaign cannot score above these baseline numbers, it is not just wasting ad spend; it is actively damaging the brand's reputation. Perceived Honesty vs Internal Intent The core takeaway from Wim’s initial research is a brutal pill for marketers to swallow: honesty is not defined by your internal intentions; it is defined by consumer perception. It does not matter if a sustainability team spent three years meticulously crafting a carbon-reduction initiative with the best intentions. If the final marketing campaign feels dishonest, exaggerated, or vague to the average consumer on the street, it is functionally dishonest. In Part 2, we will look at why the corporate panic known as "greenhushing" is fueling consumer anxiety, and examine the six core indicators that determine whether the public will actually buy into your sustainability story.

 In the final part of our series with food brand consultant Mia Hartwell, we look beyond carbon metrics. While calculating greenhouse gases is vital, the food industry possesses unique social, agricultural, and cultural complexities that require a much broader lens of accountability. We also look at the real-world success stories: the brands successfully transforming sustainability from a corporate metric into a premium consumer desire. Escaping "Carbon Myopia" in Food In many sectors, sustainability reporting has fallen victim to "carbon tunnel vision." But in the food system, carbon is only one piece of an incredibly intricate puzzle. "As soon as you try to calculate Scope 3 emissions in food manufacturing, you hit a massive, opaque web of global suppliers," Mia notes. "It gets incredibly complicated, very fast." Because food is deeply social, its sustainability footprint naturally expands into biodiversity, soil health, community resilience, and food waste. Mia highlights a shocking statistic to illustrate the low-hanging fruit available to everyday consumers and brands alike: In the UK, the average person wastes the equivalent of three full meals every single week. By tackling food waste through industry redistribution initiatives, brands are not just cutting carbon; they are actively addressing social issues like regional hunger and supply chain inequity. Sustainability in food cannot be reduced to a single data point on a spreadsheet, it is inherently holistic. Three Rockstar Brands Making Sustainability Aspirational When embedding these deep values into a brand, Mia emphasises that sustainability must never feel like a compromise. It cannot be something a marketing team "sorts out later." It must supercharge the commercial proposition. Here are three brands Mia highlights as masterclasses in making sustainability highly desirable: 1. Hotel Chocolat: Premiumising the Indulgence Chocolate is an indulgent, premium purchase. Hotel Chocolat brilliantly utilises its packaging to elevate that experience rather than detract from it. While you enjoy the product, their on-pack messaging clearly communicates their ethical cacao sourcing, ingredient upcycling programmes, and compostable materials. It alleviates consumer guilt and reinforces the premium, crafted perception of the brand, allowing it to command a clear market premium. 2. Bold Bean Co: Making the "Boring" Aspirational Historically, heirloom beans might have been viewed as a dry, unexciting pantry staple. However, Bold Bean Co took a naturally sustainable, low-carbon, healthy food and turned it into a cult-status culinary object. They focus heavily on provenance, clean sourcing, and soil health, but they ladder it all directly up to one thing: unmatched taste . They made sustainability cool, beautiful, and delicious. 3. Wildfarmed: The Rockstar Farmers Fixing soil health through regenerative agriculture sounds like a dry, academic subject. Wildfarmed completely flipped the script by creating a literal "rockstar brand" around regenerative flour. With bold, counter-cultural visuals, celebrity backing, and an energetic, disruptive narrative, they made soil restoration feel exciting, relevant, and revolutionary. Every Job is a Climate Job Ultimately, Mia’s mission is to empower the individuals sitting inside these corporate structures. Through her consulting work and her role as a leader of She is Sustainable , a volunteer-run Community Interest Company supporting women working across the green sector, she emphasises that real change requires human confidence. "Every job is a climate job," Mia says. "But if you are working in food, you have the leverage to make more of an impact than almost any other industry on Earth. If you can bake sustainability directly into the heart of your commercial positioning, show how it drives sales, and give your team permission to care, that is where you win." This concludes our series on the sustainable food revolution. To ensure your marketing strategy is resilient enough to survive the changing climate, keep your eyes on the soil, your messaging transparent, and your brand rooted in trust.