Sustainable Marketing

Ready for an AI opener?

May 2024

What would AI have to say about your organisation’s sustainability standing? Ever tried asking Claude, Chat GPT, Perplexity or any other platform what it can surmise from everything that exists on the ether? If you haven’t, you should.

AI is being used for a mind-blowing raft of applications in the marketing space alone. Beyond speeding up content creation, it’s a useful research tool - providing you closely scrutinise its outputs with a sceptical expert eye.

But, just as there’s a natural tendency for us to be somewhat distrusting of the technology’s capabilities, the ‘bots’ are also calling into question the reliance of human-generated data points. They too are dubious: does everything they’re telling us stack up? Especially when it comes to making environmental and broader sustainability claims.

We recently held a webinar setting out the reputational, regulatory and financial repercussions of greenwashing and AI’s role in aiding absolute transparency. You can watch it on catch-up here. We purposely brought together differing perspectives. Our (all-female) panel represented an environmental lawyer, director of culture design, marketer and data analyst.

Why marketers need to stay in the know

Examples of AI being deployed to determine the robustness of information being shared in the public domain highlighted the risk and opportunity for businesses committed to getting it right.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) pledge to scan 10,000 items for potentially misleading proof points in 2024 makes clear the threat for businesses leaning too much on artistic licence.

While, up to now, greenwashing cases brought forward by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have largely been as a result of consumer complaints, the technology is now there to widen the lens. Campaigns that would have once gone under the radar could be in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. And it’s no longer just a concern for big household brands, but for more niche B2B markets too.

AI's impact on greenwashing

Advances in AI are also enabling ESG investors the opportunity to scrutinise those seeking their backing in ever more depth. Connected Impact’s offering, for example, scans public disclosures to ascertain the credibility and consistency of the information extracted. For corporates this could mean thousands of articles.

It highlights any factors that may compromise the validity of certain claims - be it information gaps, vague references or a mismatch between what a company is saying and doing.

Rather than expose organisations, the intention is to give business leaders a fuller picture of how their sustainability activities are being reported. Knowledge is power and, in this instance, AI presents the opportunity to tackle any unintentional discrepancies and take a more transparent way forward.

Commercial benefits

The panel agreed that using AI to help address imbalance is a welcome development as greenwashing continues to hamper genuine progress. Not just from a planetary perspective, but in the interests of fair competition too.

As it stands, it is almost impossible to benchmark companies in respect of responsible environmental and social practices, both of which are becoming critical procurement criteria. Brands are being lauded that don’t necessarily deserve the recognition and arguably more committed companies are losing out.

There is an exciting role for AI and human analysis in establishing a level playing field that, in turn, drives businesses into positive climate action. But alongside all that is being invested in game-changing innovation, people need to be prepared to invest in their own learning too.

Getting clued up

You cannot critique what you don’t have an in-depth knowledge of, so in our evolving role as ‘expert editors’, it is paramount to have a base layer of understanding to build upon.

Sustainability is a complex and fast-paced world. Being able to unpick the jargon and spot any greenwashing ‘watch-outs’ is paramount, whether you or your teams are generating the content or leveraging AI’s time saving benefits.

The challenge is that many professionals are, perhaps, not as clued-up as they think - or feel able to admit - when it comes to signing-off on sustainability materials. With so many departments involved, it’s unsurprising that inconsistencies can creep in and greenwashing goes out.

So, what does AI have to say?

Even Claude has the self-awareness to realise they don’t have all the answers. According to the AI platform generally considered to be one of the frontrunners for content marketing, when asked whether AI can be relied upon to produce marketing materials containing environmental references, the response was as follows:

….AI-generated green claims would likely still require human review from legal/compliance teams and lifecycle assessment experts to ensure full alignment with the Code before publication. Ultimately, complying with standards like the Green Claims Code requires deep domain expertise and access to robust emissions data that current AI language models lack out-of-the-box. While AI may be able to assist marketing teams, it cannot automatically produce compliant green claims without integrating verified information sources.

Ultimately this is where the webinar discussion landed. AI is only as good as the data you feed it and it’s up to us to upskill in order to provide machine learning with the very best training.

Learn about our Carbon Literacy course for B2B sales and marketing teams here.

Watch our recent webinar: ‘Who has their AI on your green marketing claims?’ now.