Sustainability
Sustainable Marketing and Growth Strategy
Our Global Sustainable Transformation Practice helps brands embed sustainability and inclusion into marketing strategies to drive growth, strengthen consumer trust, and deliver measurable brand impact. In 2024, we partnered with 965+ organizations worldwide, guiding them through sustainability transformation that resonates with consumers and accelerates business performance.
Our Four Pillars of Sustainable Transformation
Strategic Sustainability Framing
Position sustainability opportunities at corporate, portfolio, and brand level to create competitive advantage and align with consumer expectations.
Sustainable Marketing Activation
Build meaningful storytelling and campaigns that connect sustainability with brand purpose and consumer engagement.
Impact Measurement
Develop metrics and frameworks to track progress and demonstrate brand impact and value-led implementation.
Circularity and Sustainable Innovation
Support strategies that embrace circularity, reduce waste, and create long-term value for both brands and society.
of consumers say it’s business's responsibility to solve climate and environmental issues.
of marketers say sustainability agendas should be more ambitious.
of marketers believe it's part of their job to push sustainability.
Our Solutions
Equity-led sustainability intelligence for brand growth
Make better sustainability decisions with an equity‑led view of brand performance. BrandSustainability provides a validated benchmark of your sustainability credentials and the likely contribution of sustainability perceptions to brand equity, grounded in Kantar’s Meaningful, Different and Salient framework.
What it helps you decide
BrandSustainability helps you answer:
- How strong are our sustainability credentials today, and where are we exposed to risk or rejection?
- Is sustainability strengthening our brand equity, or being underleveraged?
- Where should we focus to build Meaningful and Different associations through sustainability?
- How do we turn sustainability credentials into a clearer positioning and growth pathway?
Key Features
Measure brand sustainability perceptions
Measurement is the starting point of taking better decisions for the brands and, in this incredibly important space, current methods are insufficient, not to say misleading. We measure your brand and competitors Sustainability Score to equip you with the most accurate KPI for a brand on sustainability – it is a validated measure against levels of rejection and adoption a brand faces.
Leverage Kantar’s Meaningful Different Salient Framework
By integrating Kantar’s Meaningfully Different and Salient framework, BrandSustainability assess the impact of your brand perceptions on sustainability on brand equity.
Find your path to brand building and growth through sustainability
Optimize brand sustainability strategy: positioning, go-to market approach, and innovation opportunities to resonate more deeply with consumers whilst building your equity.
Kantar’s Sustainability Sector Index offers invaluable insights on sustainability, derived from 32,000 interviews across 42 sectors in 33 countries. This data helps you understand what sustainability means for your sector, how consumers perceive your brand, and how to build trust and leadership in this crucial area.
Key Features
Develop a sustainability strategy
Shape your marketing guiding principles around sustainability. The Sustainability Sector Index enables you to prioritise key topics, ensuring your brand focuses on what matters most to consumers and the planet.Become a sustainability leader
Identify and leverage the factors that will have the most significant impact. By understanding consumer perceptions and expectations, your brand can position itself as a sustainability leader, driving meaningful change and building lasting trust.Sharpen your activations
Brand Inclusion Index focuses on people’s perception of a brand’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), giving a voice to people who tend to be excluded by brands. This solution also comprises a ranking of inclusive brands, as well as a diagnostic tool for category-level insights, crucial for inclusion marketing.
Key Features
Learn from brands leading on inclusion
Understanding expectations for diversity, equity, and inclusion is key to effective inclusive marketing. The Brand Inclusion Index helps brands assess their DEI perception, offering essential insights for brand inclusion strategies.Closing inclusion gaps
The Index identifies populations your brand needs to focus on, highlighting areas for improvement and strengths to celebrate. This helps close inclusion gaps and enhances inclusive marketing efforts.Insights for brand inclusion
Powerful purpose aligns with emotion. With NeedScope we help you integrate purpose seamlessly into your brand in a relevant and irresistible way. Purpose isn’t an afterthought. It should align with your brand cohesively — from its functionality to its emotive core.
Key Features
Identify purpose opportunities
Identify the best purpose opportunities to build your brand’s positioning. NeedScope helps you pinpoint the most impactful areas to focus on, ensuring your brand purpose aligns with consumer expectations.Sharpen brand purpose activities
Sharpen your brand’s purpose activities to be consistent with your brand positioning. Our insights ensure that your brand’s purpose activities are aligned and coherent, enhancing overall brand effectiveness.Execute differentiated brand purpose
Think strategically to move swiftly in the right direction. Plan to spread your initiatives across various types of innovation to maximise impact. We help clients design and develop meaningful and distinct propositions, applying lean innovation principles to move quickly.
Key Features
Focus on the Value-Action gap
Overcome barriers to sustainable behaviour using our proprietary approaches for idea development and validation. Our methods ensure that your innovation for sustainability translates into real-world impact.Support through the entire process
Our consulting toolkit offers holistic development and validation throughout the entire innovation process. We provide comprehensive support to ensure your sustainable innovations are successfully implemented.Commercial and conscious
With Digital Analytics for Sustainability, we leverage the power of search data to uncover meaningful manifestations of sustainability topics and identify emerging trends. This enables you to champion these spaces repeatedly, staying ahead of local and cultural shifts. We reveal the benefits people seek, the behaviours and solutions they turn to, and expressions of sustainability territories. This helps make complex topics feel intuitive, culturally relevant, and digestible for your audience.
Key Features
Sharpen your sustainability strategy
Align with cultural context and find relevant local activations to make a greater impact.Inspire innovation
Understand where the momentum is and the solutions triggering attention to transform your innovation pipeline.Guide communication efforts
Case studies
Perspectives
Our Sustainable Transformation Practice Experts
Ozlem Senturk,
Senior partner and Engaging activation lead
Our Partners
Q: What is Sustainable Marketing?
A: Sustainable marketing integrates environmental and social values into brand strategy and communication. It goes beyond campaigns to embed sustainability into the core of business operations, ensuring also long-term value for both society and the planet. Sustainability perceptions contribute up to 10% of cumulative brand value in the Global BrandZ Top 100. Yet, businesses are leaving an estimated $600bn on the table by not fully leveraging sustainability for growth.
Q: Why is Sustainable Marketing important for brands today?
A: Consumers expect brands to take meaningful action on sustainability, and this expectation is now a key driver of purchase decisions. Kantar data reveals that sustainability perceptions not only enhance brand equity but also allow brands to command a premium. Furthermore, 90% of marketers believe sustainability agendas need to be more ambitious, and 94% agree that bold experimentation is essential to deliver transformative change. Authenticity and transparency are no longer optional—they are critical for earning trust and loyalty.
Q: What is Sustainable Innovation in marketing?
A: Sustainable Innovation means creating products, services, and business models that drive growth while reducing environmental impact and promoting social responsibility. It embeds sustainability into the innovation process, helping brands stay competitive and meet consumer expectations.
Q: What is Inclusive Growth in marketing?
A: Inclusive growth ensures that marketing strategies represent and engage diverse consumer groups across gender, race, age, ability, and identity, while driving equitable access and representation. Kantar’s studies show that 75% of consumers globally say diversity and inclusion influence their purchase decisions, and progressive advertising delivers up to 16% higher sales uplift compared to less inclusive content.