Driving commercial growth with sustainability in mind

Sustainability has been at the heart of many organizations’ communications messaging in the past few years. Between January 2020 and September 2023, 35.2% of conversations about sustainable development emphasized the importance of improving lives through better health, better access to innovation and opportunity, better education, and more. Many organizations have made strides to build and promote their sustainability efforts, but there has been skepticism about how effective, genuine, or far-reaching enough some of these attempts have been. Many companies still don’t see the full economic benefits of a robust, authentic, and future-looking sustainability strategy.  

Most know that embracing sustainability is good for business in that it not only helps mitigate risks but also fosters innovation, attracts conscientious customers, and secures financial investment. Born out of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability is now seen as a key driver of business growth. However, understanding how to translate that belief into growth is the ongoing challenge.   

Less than 25% of conversations about sustainable development focused on curtailing energy use, slowing climate change, and preserving environments. Organizations that integrate the SDGs into customer experience planning, innovation, and their product roadmaps will drive greater value to their customer base and ultimately to their own growth. It can no longer be just an exercise in ticking boxes but instead must become a fundamental business imperative.   

Last year started to see a shift away from “greenwashing” to the establishment of firmer and more robust commitments to sustainability. And in 2024, this trend will continue as successful companies finally realize that sustainability strategies require genuine commitment, not only in communications but in every facet of their operations. Increased regulations—such as the standards that the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) determined should be implemented starting in January 2024—mean the onus will fall on marketers at all levels and remits to be aware of the requirements and what their company is doing about it.  

All of Metia’s B2B clients have sustainability strategies, so at the end of 2023 we carried out an extensive insights exercise into this increasingly important subject, examining over 13 million B2B digital conversations on the topic. (The results are fascinating and worth a deeper conversation with our leading insights specialists.) Through this exercise, we’ve predicted eight essential trends that will underpin 2024 sustainability strategies. Here’s a peek at some of them:  

Sustainability investments will evolve from being a differentiator to becoming a core driver of decision-making and revenue strategy.  

A sustainable development strategy has become necessary for long-term resilience. It isn’t just about doing good or being seen to be good. Sustainable development needs to be a core consideration in your overall business strategy planning. Successful companies will achieve this goal.  

The definition of “sustainability” will be broadened.  

As hugely important as it is, sustainable development is more than climate action and energy transformation. It’s a complex web of environmental, societal, and economic drivers that can’t be achieved as a siloed workstream. Companies’ sustainable developments will need to become an intricate tapestry where corporate ESG initiatives, inclusion and diversity policies, technological innovations, social advocacy, and more are woven together to create a fabric of progress toward a better world.  

Investing in change management will help scale sustainability efforts.  

Hard wiring sustainability levers into how business is done will require investments in evolving legacy practices as well as the implementation of new processes and principles. Currently, there is not enough investment in the change management required to embed and scale sustainability efforts.   

As emphasized at the Finextra Sustainable Finance Live event held in October 2023 in London, there’s growing pressure to create legislation and guidelines around investment criteria. In other words, investors want to support authentic structures and to put an end to greenwashing in the industry. For example, the ISSB’s new standards will ensure that financial statements include full disclosure in order to meet capital market needs.  

Embracing ESG data and measurement is critical to success.  

Successful measurement of sustainability initiatives and their impact is a key challenge in operationalizing sustainability efforts, and it will become critical to optimizing sustainability efforts and demonstrating their value.  

Big tech brands will start to become sustainability heroes.  

Technology is not the enemy. Cloud innovations, big data, AI, and smart devices are powerful catalysts for optimizing sustainability efforts, reshaping industries, and driving positive environmental and social outcomes. 2024 will see technology companies come to the fore as drivers of future sustainability success.