Sheanne Mulholland - Why sustainability reputation is the new battleground for student recruitment

The higher education sector produces some of the most vital climate and environmental research in the world. From tracking glacial meltwater impacts on local communities to monitoring water scarcity levels, academic institutions house the raw insights required to navigate the climate transition. However, a significant barrier frequently stalls this progress: the language of academia is inherently insular. Specialised research papers are routinely dense with technical terminology, complex datasets, and niche methodologies that are completely inaccessible to the average person. For Sheanne Mulholland , the primary role of a media relations officer is to act as an active translator: stripping away academic jargon to unlock the human story hidden within the science. The David Attenborough Lesson To illustrate the vital need for simplicity in public relations, Simon Badman, in chatting to Sheanne, points to an anecdote shared by Sir David Attenborough. Early in his broadcasting career, a landlady at a guest house told him directly that she had listened to his live broadcast but had not understood a single word of it. From that moment onward, Attenborough reframed his entire approach. Whenever he stood in front of a microphone or a camera, he consciously visualised that specific landlady, speaking directly to her rather than to a room of scientific peers. He dropped abstract terminology in favour of clear, descriptive, and evocative language. This remains a foundational rule for modern sustainability PR. If a message is clouded by ambiguity or overly technical phrasing, it will fail to land. The ultimate metric for clarity is simple: if you cannot explain the core impact of a research project to someone in a lift within a few concise sentences, the message is not clear enough. Capitalising on Macro Narrative Hooks Unlocking the vocabulary is only the first step; a storyteller must also understand how to connect a localised research project with the broader global conversation. By leveraging major external events, such as international COP summits, media relations teams can position internal academics as thought leaders on the national stage. Whether securing television coverage for water-level studies in Scotland or coordinating with Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) representatives for community launches, effective PR involves connecting scientific insights with the real-world issues currently dominating the public news agenda. Pragmatic Communication During Sector Downturns This ability to communicate clearly becomes even more critical when an entire sector faces economic headwinds. The higher education sector routinely navigates challenging funding landscapes, shifting international student numbers, and intense budgetary pressures. During challenging periods, priorities inevitably shift. Marketing and communications teams must be sensitive to the external environment, tailoring their messaging to reflect current realities. "If you are in a crisis situation or an ongoing difficulty, it is probably not the right time to be putting out a behaviour change campaign, asking people to change their own actions," Sheanne notes. Crucially, a difficult situation does not erase years of legitimate operational progress. During these quieter periods, a pragmatic approach could be to focus on inward-facing projects such as internal policy updates, strengthening underlying governance frameworks, or looking at bringing existing public messages together in a more integrated, connected way.

When a communications professional inherits a sustainability portfolio, the initial instinct is often to look for quick wins: a solar panel installation to photograph or a single high-profile research paper to promote. However, treating sustainability as a series of isolated marketing campaigns is a high-risk strategy that quickly invites public scepticism. When Sheanne Mulholland took on the sustainability communications remit at the University of Dundee, she chose to bypass traditional promotional tactics. Instead, she treated the institution like an investigative journalist would, applying deep research and rigorous internal auditing to construct an authentic narrative foundation. Doing the Institutional Homework To truly understand an organisation's carbon footprint and societal impact, communicators must thoroughly investigate their internal operations. For Sheanne, this involved an extensive study for a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) diploma, evaluating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from an operational and administrative standpoint. She cross-referenced internal reports, analysed the university's carbon management plan, and conducted wide-ranging interviews across the institution. By speaking directly with sustainability officers and specialised action groups, she mapped localised operational achievements against global sustainability targets. This systematic framework ensures that every external claim made by the communications team is anchored by verifiable institutional data. Benchmarking the Competition An internal audit only provides half of the narrative picture. To communicate effectively, you must understand exactly where your organisation sits within the wider market landscape. By analysing the digital channels and communication styles of top-performing UK universities in the sustainability tables, you can uncover critical insights. Competitor benchmarking serves a dual purpose: it acts as a source of creative inspiration for presenting complex datasets, and it provides a clear warning system regarding what messaging structures to avoid. Managing the Journey and Avoiding Unintentional Consequences The ultimate goal of this deep-dive research is to give an organisation the confidence to share its true progress, including the challenges faced along the way. Genuine trust is built by celebrating clear wins without resorting to hyperbole. "Share your current status and share your ambitions, but do not be afraid to share everything that happens in between as well, because the journey is a big part of this," Sheanne advises. "If things get derailed, be honest with people about that. Explain your reasons why and show what progress you do have that is still keeping the agenda moving forward." A crucial component of this approach is auditing your messaging for unintentional consequences or omissions. If a marketing team focuses too narrowly on a single positive project while ignoring a contradictory operational practice elsewhere in the business, an outsider will quickly spot the inconsistency. Evaluating your communications holistically allows you to identify narrative blind spots before they turn into major reputational liabilities.

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.

We live in an era obsessed with metrics, data points, and rational proof. In corporate boardrooms, the prevailing assumption is that if you present a mathematically sound, scientifically verified value proposition, your audience will automatically believe it and act. One plus one equals two; therefore, the strategy should sell itself. But human belief has never been entirely rational. Consider why a luxury heritage brand commands profound trust before a consumer has even touched the physical product, or why the diamond industry successfully constructed an entire cultural perception of timeless value out of raw carbon. These are the psychological threads that fascinated sustainability and marketing strategist, Ioana David-Narby , long before she began helping organisations decode their climate strategies. Growing up in Romania and later studying sociology at Goldsmiths in London, Ioana realised a critical reality that many modern sustainability teams miss: you can have all the data and genuine impact in the world, but you will still fail to be believed if your story and your proof do not move together. The Failure of Pure Mathematics The primary hurdle when working with data-forward teams is the assumption that facts speak for themselves. To an analyst or an engineer, a carbon reduction metric feels clear and undeniable. But out in the wider world, the human brain doesn't process abstract metrics the way it processes a narrative. To understand why pure data fails to inspire action, we have to look at the scale of the message itself. During a climate study trip to Iceland, Ioana met Andri Snær Magnason, an author and activist who famously wrote an obituary for the first glacier Iceland lost to climate change, Okjökull glacier in 2019 . Magnason’s work is a case study in abandoning traditional datasets in favour of human storytelling. His central argument is that the sheer scale of the climate crisis has become so mathematically overwhelming that facts alone now create psychological paralysis or nihilism. When a scientific report states that the planet is on track to warm by 2 degrees Celsius, the average person might think that sounds like a pleasant summer. The catastrophic reality of that metric is lost because a temperature variant feels abstract. A funeral for a glacier, however, creates immediate emotional resonance. Good communication doesn't dilute the science; it translates what an analyst puts on a slide into a message that answers the fundamental human question: Why does this matter to me? The Operational Sequence: "Do, Then Say" Once you have the human story, how do you make it credible? As green claims regulations tighten globally and consumers grow increasingly cynical, the era of using clever marketing to paper over a lack of substance is officially over. To build authentic trust, organisations must follow a strict, non-negotiable sequence: do, then say . "You earn the right to communicate by acting first," Ioana explains. "The story has to be built on real, verifiable action, not aspiration dressed up as achievement." Consider Patagonia. For decades, the brand has prioritised concrete action over marketing rhetoric; funding environmental litigation, building massive garment repair programmes, and transferring company ownership to a climate trust. Because their operational foundation is solid, their messaging is fundamentally credible. When they ran their famous " Don't Buy This Jacket " campaign, it succeeded because they had spent thirty years earning the cultural legitimacy required to deliver it. Earning this alignment also means companies must stop supporting arbitrary causes that have zero connection to their actual identity. True alignment happens when an organisation backs a cause that reflects its unique character. A prime example is the luxury jewellery house, Cartier . The panther has been the central aesthetic symbol of Cartier's brand identity for over a century. So when the dedicated biodiversity fund Cartier for Nature backs big-cat conservation, funding the protection of snow leopards and their habitats, the narrative connection is instantaneous for the consumer. The brand is simply living its own identity out in the real world. 

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."