The era of branded change: how corporations deceive people
We are facing a new wind called corporate change: an intersection of sustainability and change. Specifically, corporations do it by advertising, sponsoring, hosting panels, summits, and so on. Which, in other words, sounds like branded change.
Either sustainability needed marketing to reach a wider audience. Or, we can clearly say this is greenwashing! Smoke in the eye to make money.
The conversations on sustainability encounter the favour of corporations. Indeed, the more the discussions multiply, the more they need to get involved. Fingers in the pie! But since our planet has reached the point of no return, the narrative turns out as dangerous. And even if facades are beautiful, questions should arise.
Every day a new greenwashing candy!
Eco-conscious movements sponsored by big conglomerates.
Corporations like Coca Cola sponsoring COP27.
Fashion Group Inditex (Zara) partnering with WWF.
It sounds weird. Don’t you think so?
And what about the fresh new one: UAE names oil chief to lead COP28 talks! Yes, an oil boss will lead the climate summit!
Does it make any sense? Can we trust them?
They make millions exploiting the planet, but they promote a conference to address climate change. It seems like one single institution sells the poison and the cure. All at the same time!
There’s a name to call these practices, a definition understood internationally: conflict of interest. Perhaps corporations or top managers aren’t familiar with it!
How can we trust those who created the environmental destruction we ended up in? And still, they make money out of it! In order to prioritise profit and growth, corporations have taken deliberate decisions ignoring the side effects on the planet and on the people.
Now they can even lead summits on the climate emergency, but they aren’t the ones who will ever bring effective solutions.
Corporate change? This is greenwashing!
However, you might think what counts is spreading the conversation on sustainability, no matter who puts the money in to support it. Well, no! Those who say that have other purposes than change.
We quote cobsinsights.com – “Can we trust corporate sustainability reporting?”:
“corporate or business sustainability is simply NOT planetary sustainability.”
And so, firms can invent stories to make the narrative engaging, but that doesn’t mean those stories are real. There’s a gap between talks and practice. All these people can do is keep an outdated system going.
Eventually, we can easily explain, in a few words, this new wind of corporate change & sustainability: this is greenwashing!