Opening keynotes at Brand-Led Culture Change featured insights from unconventional brand partnerships and keys to helping people and brands alike move beyond fear and embrace the changes we need to create a flourishing future for all.
Partnering to protect soil, for pets and humans alike
Image credit: Nutro
Regeneration will play a central role in adapting to the untold damages to the
planet. During the opening night plenary at Sustainable Brands®’
Brand-Led Culture
Change event
in Minneapolis, experts in the field of regeneration and behavior change shared
insights into how to inspire regenerative behaviors in business and consumers
alike.
Every five seconds, the world loses a soccer field’s worth of
soil. The billions of
organisms in a teaspoon of soil are vital to our global food system, for humans
and pets alike — and industrial agriculture’s penchant for monocultural farming
has greatly depleted our soil
health.
As a company reliant on natural ingredients, Nutro was
spurred to get involved.
The pet food brand has partnered with Kiss the
Ground — the advocacy group behind the 2020
documentary of the same name, which
exposed whole new audiences to the principles and benefits of regenerative
agriculture — to direct the power of brands toward accelerating regeneration of
natural ecosystems.
“No brand, no company, no organization alone can make the change that needs to
happen,” said Mindy Barry, Senior
Director Marketing at Mars Petcare,
which owns Nutro. “It’s through the power of partnership and many layered
actions that we will start to make an impact.”
Consumers are increasingly aware of where their food comes from; but they aren’t
as aware of the role of soil health in the process. Nutro created messaging from
the point of view of pet parents to propagate that message to expand beyond pet
food. Kiss the Ground put soil regeneration on the map, so a partnership in
sharing this message was a logical step for Nutro.
From resistance to buy-in: 3 science-based secrets for making change stick
Nadya Zhexembayeva
While there’s hope in regeneration, Nadya
Zhexembayeva — founder and
Chief Reinvention Officer of The Reinvention
Academy — asserted that irreversible damage to
nature has been done. Now, humanity’s ingenuity must shine.
“We are past the moment of prevention for almost every [environmental] issue we
face,” she said. “The only thing we can do with many of these issues is
adaptation. Whatever shit could happen most likely will happen — so, now we have
to get very good at figuring out how to regenerate.”
After globalization, industries need to reinvent themselves at least every
decade. From oil and gas companies to nimble startups, “not a single industry in
the world right now can stay away from reinventing itself every ten years.”
Some are reinventing themselves every 12 months or faster — a speed, she noted,
no sector has ever seen. But we’re still not moving fast enough; and it’s not
because of a lack of facts.
“The problem is that we are scared as human beings, not stupid,” Zhexembayeva
said. “It’s not about scaring people into behavior change — it will not inspire
people to move. It’s an emotional problem; so, how do we engage an emotional
problem?”
The law of diffusion of
innovation
helps leaders understand how to activate first followers to inspire others to
cast aside fear and adopt planet- and people-positive habits. As Zhexembayeva
explained, these early adopters fall in love with purpose, impact and
importantly, themselves — because they are empowered to chart their own journey
and dispel fear in the process.
“We are in the middle of one of the most challenging transformations that
humanity has ever known,” Zhexembayeva said. “From a scientific point of view,
we’re a bit late in this transformation. But the mother in me still believes
that this century can be an incredible century.”
Designing For Zero Waste: Unlocking solutions through collaboration
L-R: Target's Amanda Nusz and Cassandra Jones, Unilever's Jeff Hofmann
Meanwhile, both Target and
Unilever are working toward this positive future by
collaborating to unlock zero-waste solutions.
“I’m a believer, as a leader in retail and merchandising, that it’s our role to
not only create business — but through building that business, we are impacting
humanity and culture,” said Amanda
Nusz, SVP of Corporate Responsibility
& President of Target’s Target
Foundation.
Target and Unilever collaborated to promote more sustainable brands in retail
stores, one of them being Seventh
Generation. This has grown over time to
encompass not only product manifestation in stores — but labor, packaging and
how to move beyond niche offerings and truly scale sustainability in every
aspect of CPG retail. Taking cues from consumers and early adopters, Target
launched its Target
Zero
initiative in 2022 to inspire and enable consumers to live zero-waste
lifestyles.
Jeff Hofmann, SVP of Customer
Development at Unilever, pointed out the ever-evolving nature of the effort:
“It’s not a box check; it’s never one and done.”
Working with new brands is important, said Cassandra
Jones, Target’s SVP of
Essentials & Beauty, but less of a lift in terms of driving sustainable change;
equal focus must be placed on heritage brands, as they have an established
presence in homes across the world.
Published May 23, 2023 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST
Christian is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and outdoor junkie obsessed with the intersectionality between people and planet. He partners with brands and organizations with social and environmental impact at their core, assisting them in telling stories that change the world.