Car brands aren't ready to talk about sustainability

Car brand bosses are distracted by today’s challenges, and figure that, as Google searches for their models don’t contain many key words relating to ESG commitments, they don’t need to address this yet in their marketing communications.

How wrong they are. Outside of the car world’s echo chamber, every other industry is getting their creative, advertising, PR and marketing agencies to carefully craft the brand narrative around where their materials come from, how they’re eliminating child labour from the supply chain, whether they’re paying minimum wage to their workers, whether they are B Corp credited or have signed up to the Science Based Targets (SBTi) initiative, whether their carbon offsetting is responsible and audited, and how far they’ve gone to reduce offsetting entirely, how quickly they are ramping up the percentage of recycled materials in each product, how they are reducing water usage, and more.

Why are other industries doing this? Because they pay far more attention to their consumers’ lifestyles, to Gen Z values and pressures, and to the purchasing power of women and how radically that differs from that of men. You see it daily in the global fashion industry, which now is moving as one towards slow fashion, where pieces cost more but last a lifetime, because they see consumers willing to pay more for transparency and quality – an attribute which encompasses both craftsmanship but also fair employment and responsible management of the Earth’s resources (if in doubt, just watch The Devil Wears Primark again).

You see the same consumer behaviour in the food and drink industries, where consumers are eating less meat and fish but eating more expensive wild and organic produce when they do, or drinking less wine, but buying English or organic fizz when they do.

Even the property industry, which is perhaps the nearest comparable in terms of household budget expenditure, reports a steadily increasing interest in heat pumps, despite the huge cost and the Government’s misinformation about them.

Consumers want to do the right thing, which means buying from brands that are trying their hardest to limit their impact on the planet, and communicating how far they’ve come, and how far they’ve still got to go, with humility and integrity. Increasingly, motorists are asking which brands behave most responsibly, so the marques that get their communications sorted ASAP will catch the early worm.

I’m in the middle of hosting a national roadshow for women interested in going electric, called She’s Electric, and I’ve been listening to what women want from their next car, and what they’re concerned about, as well as the environment in which they want to buy cars. It is enlightening. So far we’ve done a weekend event in Marlow and one in Warwick; next up it’s Cheltenham then Hampshire and finally, Yorkshire. Genesis is the main partner, providing electric GV60s and GV70s for test drives with PodPoint answering charging queries. But we also have responsible lifestyle and retail brands in partnership, with pop-ups at the events, to make it the sort of test-drive environment that women are interested in. And so I’ve been in conversation this month with Liz Warner, former CEO of Comic Relief, who has set up Different Kind, an online retail platform selling homeware, footballs, clothing, candles and more from brands that have to pass rigorous ethical testing to get on the site. They need to be giving back to their communities, for example by employing those who would struggle to find a job, or by donating one product for every one sold, as well as not using single-use plastics or other harmful materials. We also heard last weekend from the founder of Lisou, a beautiful fashion label using biodegradable silk which is sewn to last.

The sales vibe feels good, and honest, and the women have loved hearing the back story to the product, and quizzing the female CEOs and company founders, before buying from them. Genesis and PodPoint both understand that and have responded to the clear consumer demand for honesty on event too: Genesis personal assistants are not on commission, and are there to help and guide and help women feel confident behind the wheel, and PodPoint has brought along portrait artists to draw the women and give them a little thank you and a laugh for coming along.

This is car buying of the future: community building, honesty about manufacturing, transparency about upstream emissions and a strong focus on ethics in the supply chain. All delivered with empathy and humanity. Is it really so hard?