Branding and storytelling for the environment

An established multinational with a newborn brand and an innovative eco product for a growing niche market. With branding under its belt, website copy would bring it to life.

The website copy brief

It’s not often I get a brief for website copy that doesn’t include keywords. Most clients for the last 20 years have wanted a ’page one of Google’ strategy but this was a rare storytelling brief. 

I never officially got to the bottom of Why No Keywords? However, they weren’t directly selling from their site, so I’m guessing they didn’t see the point in doing SEO. A sales partner, that had an established page 1 presence, would do all the heavy lifting in this respect. With a website in development, what they wanted was organic brand building, which would blossom from the seed of a new logo and strapline. 

I did, in fact, do a little keyword research because I needed to know the words their industry and target audience were using, even if they didn’t need an SEO strategy. It was super niche and they could own the SERP real estate, in the not-so-humble opinion of my competitive nature. In this case, I needed the keywords mainly for the words.

(Did you know that digital copywriters with SEO experience can use alchemy and common sense to improve SERP rankings without a strategy? Learn more in The 10 SEO habits of highly effective copywriters.)

I’m guessing they didn’t see the point in doing SEO. A sales partner, that had an established page 1 presence, would do all the heavy lifting in this respect.

Website copy and greenwashing

This project also required research into greenwashing. About 10 years ago or so, I wrote website copy for a sustainability-focused company belonging to a global drinks brand. I was proverbially hauled over smouldering fossil fuels at feedback time due to my naivety on greenwashing. Cue crash course – and one humbled copywriter. There’s no failure, only feedback etc…

It had been a decade since my ego hit this iceberg, and I was keen not to repeat the mistake. I did not want my client to get ensnared in regulation or have their reputation burned. Also, I really wanted them to be authentic and for their customers to be well-informed. Someone said to me more recently that ‘good marketing is the truth told well’. I wish it were always the case.

Many of my clients have shared their net zero goals and talk about the less impactful nature of their products. Cautioned by my iceberg past, these have been treated carefully in subsequent website copy projects, and I’ve benefited from clients’ guidance. My further research into greenwashing grounded me in what I could say and how I might say it, including relevant green jargon (which changes like the weather).

My approach

The environment was very much front and centre for this website copy project. I met with the client, hoping the product was as green as they claimed. What I had on my side was experience writing website copy about net zero and sustainability policies, and social value. I also understood the landscape – carbon sequestration, plastic pollution, the dawn of the Anthropocene epoch, you get the idea. The clients were engineers and businessmen and they could fill in any niche gaps. 

I dug deep to reveal exactly how truthful their sales claims were about the value of their products, both to the marketplace and the planet. Very, as it turns out. They were doing exceptional work. Praise be! This made my job so much easier and, in fact, joyful. 

Sometimes sales-speak takes over these meetings. It’s important that a copywriter keeps probing for the truth of the matter, to avoid greenwashing or, at the other end of the scale, green hushing (see that green jargon buster link above). So, we spent a lot of time talking about manufacturing and detailing the science – the R&D was fascinating, and important for transparency. 

At some point, this moved into trading collectable eco facts as if they were Pokemon cards and getting giddy over the future for these products, which offer a genuinely viable alternative to traditional plastic ones.

Anyone with Google can quote how long it takes plastic to degrade (600+ years FYI). Such data have a shock factor. But if you want to take a confident step into brand building, the story must be deeper. It must be about people. 

Their data confirmed how viable a green product this was. I didn’t have what really mattered though. Anyone with Google can quote how long it takes plastic to degrade (600+ years FYI). Such data have a shock factor. But if you want to take a confident step into brand building, the story must be deeper. It must be about people. 

The men in front of me – with solid corporate careers in a successful international group – had a deeper story. It’s possible that nobody, in any meeting ever, had asked them about how they felt about the product and what they had achieved. 

Getting to the heart of a story is achieved through trusted conversation. This allows us to get to the motives, values and the mission of these people – who are fathers and grandfathers, as well as businessmen and engineers. As it turns out, like all other fathers and grandfathers, they’re worried about the future generations and the world we are leaving them to deal with. 

Once we’d teased out that this amazing product felt like a gift to their grandchildren; that it was inspiring them to look at further applications for the materials and manufacturing process; that they had learned a lot about what true sustainability was; then we had a hook for our narrative and the beginnings of a tone of voice I could apply to the website copy.

Interviewing people is a process of really listening, really understanding what someone’s saying, and seeing what’s what through their eyes, very clearly. So you can take this and go away and do it justice.

Interviewing people is a process of really listening, really understanding what someone’s saying, and seeing what’s what through their eyes, very clearly. So you can take this and go away and do it justice.

What happened next

It tickled me when this client said they wanted their website copy to read like Innocent’s. This was a radically different sector to my client’s and drinks are a different kind of product altogether – one which comes in single use plastic bottles (see the ASA’s 2022 ruling on an Innocent advert).

But we know what they meant: Innocent is a byword for inspiring, relatable, playful, authentic… human. If my client hadn’t shared their feelings, this would have been more difficult.

I can’t share their identity for NDA reasons but I was very pleased with the wordplays, the metaphors, the inspiring active statements. I was proud of how I simplified data and complex information for the audience – who were decidedly not engineers, probably not even decision makers, but who needed to be able to brief their line managers, CEOs and CFOs concisely and confidently. 

And, I was relieved at how well I helped them talk about the game-changing nature of their product and manufacturing process, while being frank about how they can do even better, given time, not concealing the industrial behemoth they belong to. Transparency is essential for all brands, especially through the lens of net zero, with so much at stake.

Often, I will cut good website copy simply because it’s overkill, or there isn’t a place or purpose for it. But it’s still powerful, so I’ll include the best pull-out statements they can use as social media posts. I note, with satisfaction, that they’re still recycling these two years on.