Marketing vs sustainability: Allies or enemies in the battle against greenwashing?
Following last week’s release of the AANA Environmental Claims Code and the launch of the Ad Net Zero Australian Chapter, Tess Ariotti, lead consultant at Salterbaxter Australia, explores why sustainability teams must stop discouraging marketers, and instead the two must collaborate to better address greenwashing.
I recently heard a sustainability leader joke that he’d crushed the dreams of many marketers in the past. The impression was that marketers are over-enthusiastic about sharing ‘good news’ sustainability stories, without understanding the substance of their claims.
It feels harsh to expect people to be experts on something that isn’t their discipline, that no one has previously expected them to understand, and that no one has ever taught them. It’s also not particularly accurate to suggest that marketers aren’t responding to these issues. The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) recently updated its Environmental Claims Code, effective from 1 March 2025. Meanwhile, Ad Net Zero has just launched in Australia, setting out principles for climate action in the advertising industry.
While the advice provided by that leader to marketers was probably sound, I was exasperated. Why are we, sustainability people, discouraging marketers and communicators? Surely, we should be the most robust of allies?
