B Corp and The Communication of Authenticity
B Corp certification was once heralded as a beacon for businesses who balance purpose and profit, but the narrative has changed. It started, as many a backlash has, with an open letter. It seems as membership balloons and the B Movement Builders bring MNCs into the fold, the more vulnerable the certification is to negative scrutiny and, many believe, the dilution of its core values.
The certificate’s lost some of the pristine authenticity it once had, but labelling it a tool for greenwashing seems a touch extreme. The narrative tells us that the wolves have been allowed to play with the sheep and it’s getting harder to tell them apart. But isn’t there room for nuance in those definitions? If we’re finding it harder and harder to tell the businesses that are profit-driven from the purpose-driven ones, that sounds more like a symptom of a healthy business ecosystem where everyone is somewhat purposeful.
Let’s B Real: Why do Some Companies Struggle with Sustainability Comms?
A lot of these issues come down to communication. Companies are struggling to demonstrate when they’re doing the right thing, and there tend to be 2 major reasons:
They’re tempted to embellish the truth so they can maintain their license to operate in a sustainability conscious world. They end up greenwashing.
They see greenwashing as a trap that’ll spring as soon as they claim they’re making an impact, so they don’t say anything at all out of fear of being accused of greenwashing. They end up greenhushing.
For companies looking to communicate impact, the first thing to do is make sure your data is accurate in the first place, then hire someone who knows how to communicate your achievements well. This is exactly what we do here at Other One - our highly specialised sustainability copywriting services help businesses to steer clear from greenwashing and greenhushing; communicating their message authentically, ethically, and accurately.
Some Wins are Easier, But None Of Them Are Easy
One major criticism is that, under the B Corp certification process, companies can excel in one part of ESG but fail in others and still get certified. Many point this out as evidence of B Corp greenwashing. But what are we asking here? That they hit all of their targets at once? The level of sustainability maturity for most companies at the moment is such that just measuring emissions/social performance is admirable. Joining B Corp is a sign that they're doing at least that. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be able to slam them for poor performance in any given metric in the first place, and they’re doing so voluntarily.
Trust us, many companies don’t even want to reveal that much. We’ve worked with companies that didn’t want to reveal that they’d lowered supply chain deforestation because that would imply there was deforestation to begin with. But isn’t it the progress that matters? Communication is key. Well-informed sustainability copywriters will know how to package positive progress. Certification should never be the end goal, what’s done on the ground is most important, and in that case, good work was done, it just wasn’t advertised.
Be Flexible To Find the Best Path Forward
The failings of certified companies have called the certification process into question, but that process can be altered, and certifications aren’t safe once earned. After failing to meet their social performance responsibilities, Brewdog had their B Corp certificate revoked and haven’t been allowed back into the fold, instead relying on the home-brew Brewdog blueprint. Here’s some quick comms advice, you’ll never build a rep for authenticity, transparency and trust if you mark your own homework. Don’t certify yourself.
B Lab will need to be flexible by constantly improving its methodologies, especially with the inclusion of MNCs, because supply chain transparency is hard. Gathering data on it is hard and measuring a company's performance is just as hard. Sometimes even the experts can't tell what a good job looks like. This counts for B Lab too, who are reassessing their methodology so companies won’t find it as easy to rely on only one element of ESG at the expense of others and must re-certify with increasingly stringent standards.
Make Money Doing the Right Thing: Profit and Purpose
What drives your company to do what it does? For some, it’s profit. For others, a company is nothing without its values, its ethics, its purpose. But no successful company is entirely profit or purpose-driven.
It seems B Lab agrees. Their own white paper Financial Performance and Resilience of B Corps, demonstrated the profitability of purpose-driven companies - which is probably quite easy to do when your membership includes Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's and the Body Shop. Purpose-driven companies are demonstrating their financial clout without being extractive. B-curious companies should take note.
Take Scope 3 emissions calculation as an example. It’s a two way street: Scope 3 data allows companies to improve efficiencies in their supply chain, and its value is increasing as companies take steps to comply with ESG-driven mandatory Scope 3 reporting regulations. In the procurement world, total cost of ownership is a methodology that shows the benefits of taking an ethical approach in financial terms; purpose meets profit.
These are complicated ideas, and only apply to companies that are far along on their sustainability journey. But good sustainability copywriters will be able to communicate the value of what companies are doing at any stage of that journey, because as long as you’re on the way and focused on progress, you’re doing the right thing, and that's the message that ought to be spread.
Health Means Wealth
It’s not always a case of maximising financial gain at the expense of purpose or vice versa. A company can be judged on its financial health; the ability to thrive financially under a purpose-driven model while sowing the seeds of sustained success and ethical well-being. How to do it? Listen to the stakeholders. And we mean all stakeholders here, people, planet and community.
Amplifying stakeholder voices is a sign that you’re listening, so dedicate some column inches on the company blog to what your stakeholders have been up to, you'll be surprised at what you learn from a healthy, transparent supply chain where new ideas are cultivated and sustainable initiatives can flourish.
No Business Exists Outside of the Global Community
Where did the idea that a company driven by purpose can‘t also be a company with good business at its core? Are our hearts not big enough to contain both? It’s A Wonderful Life comes to mind. Much more than just your nanna’s favorite Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life tracks changing attitudes to what business can do as far back as the first half of the 20th century. The capitalists are pitted against the idealists and the angels teach George Bailey that his business wasn't worthless because it had a purpose. It turned a profit and his community were better off for it. If we take the local community as representative of the global community, isn't that what business and B Corps are all about?
Image credit: Andre Mouton