March 22, 2023
Editorial Disclaimer
This content is published for general information and editorial purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice, nor should it be relied upon as such. Any mention of companies, platforms, or services does not imply endorsement or recommendation. We are not affiliated with, nor do we accept responsibility for, any third-party entities referenced. Financial markets and company circumstances can change rapidly. Readers should perform their own independent research and seek professional advice before making any financial or investment decisions.
Public relations has always been about narrative. Shaping perception, telling stories, positioning brands in a way that makes people care. That's been the job for decades. But something has changed, and if you work in PR, you've probably felt it. The old playbook doesn't work the way it used to.
Reputation isn't built on what brands say anymore. It's built on what they do. And audiences have gotten very good at spotting the difference. They've had practice. They've been burned before.
Sustainability is where this plays out most visibly. Five years ago, it was a CSR checkbox. Something for the annual report. Now? It's a trust signal. It's how people decide whether a brand is credible or full of hot air. That shift has massive implications for anyone working in comms. You can't message your way out of bad behaviour anymore. Values have to be lived.
Here's what's changed: stakeholders don't just consume brand narratives. They pick them apart and cross-reference what you say with what they can see. A sustainability claim gets tested against every touchpoint, every visible decision, every Instagram photo from your corporate event. And if the story doesn't match the reality, people notice.
So where does that leave PR? Not just as storytellers, but as consistency police. Protecting reputation now means making sure values show up everywhere, not just in campaigns. Operations, partnerships, physical spaces. Sustainability has to become part of who the brand actually is, not a claim bolted on the side.
The biggest shift in recent years is that sustainability has moved from internal policy to external judgment. It used to be something brands committed to privately, worked on over time, and reported on annually. Now it's something you get graded on constantly, whether you like it or not.
Trust is fragile. Audiences are cynical. And honestly? They've earned that cynicism. They've watched too many brands make bold claims and quietly walk them back. They've seen the glossy sustainability pages that don't match the supply chain reality. Sustainability reports and mission statements still matter, but they're not enough on their own. They're table stakes. The minimum.
What actually moves the needle is behaviour. Not abstract commitments, but everyday actions people can observe. The gap between saying and doing has become reputationally lethal. And the worst part? Inconsistency doesn't get read as a mistake. It gets read as a lie.
This is why treating sustainability as a compliance exercise misses the point entirely. It's not about ticking boxes. From a reputation standpoint, sustainability works as a trust signal. Brands that walk the talk get credit, even when they're not perfect. Brands that overclaim get punished, sometimes disproportionately.
For PR people, this changes the job description. Managing sustainability narratives isn't about amplification anymore. It's about stress-testing. Where might this claim get challenged? Where could our behaviour contradict our messaging? What's actually visible to the outside world? What could a journalist find with fifteen minutes of research? Those are the questions that matter now.
Nobody expects perfection. But they do expect consistency. Reputation gets built through patterns, not announcements.
Most brand communication happens online, but reputation increasingly gets shaped offline. In the physical world. People trust what they can see with their own eyes, and they draw conclusions from how brands show up in real spaces.
This is where a lot of sustainability strategies fall apart. Physical touchpoints get overlooked. Offices, events, uniforms, exhibition stands, printed materials, the environmental choices visible at a conference booth. All of these communicate values. Whether you meant them to or not.
Think about events. Attendees notice everything. The materials, the waste, the overall vibe. Your staff become walking representations of the brand. What they wear, what they hand out, what gets thrown away at the end of the day. These details get interpreted as sincerity signals. Or insincerity signals. You might think nobody's paying attention to the branded merchandise or the catering setup. You'd be wrong.
Physical contradictions are brutal because you can't spin them. A press release can be debated. A sustainability statement can be parsed and reframed. But when your "values-led" brand shows up with single-use everything and staff in fast-fashion polos, the disconnect is instant. People don't need to articulate it. They just feel it.
PR professionals are starting to understand this. Narrative coherence isn't enough. You need experiential coherence. Brands get judged on the environments they create, not just the stories they tell.
This matters most in sectors with frequent public contact. Retail, hospitality, events, education, any corporate environment where outsiders regularly come through the door. In those contexts, sustainability isn't theoretical. People encounter it directly. They form opinions based on what they see, not what they read on your website.
Most brands don't fail on sustainability because they're doing nothing. They fail because of misalignment. The gap between claim and practice.
The classic mistake is treating sustainability as a comms problem rather than an operations problem. When sustainability gets driven by the marketing team instead of embedded in actual decision-making, you end up with surface gestures. Photo ops. These might generate some short-term attention, but they crumble under scrutiny.
Over-claiming is another killer. Brands get excited, they want to show commitment, and they end up making statements that outpace reality. Vague language. Cherry-picked data. Exaggerated impact numbers. "We're committed to sustainability" without any specifics. "Carbon neutral by 2030" without a credible roadmap. It feels low-risk in the moment, but it creates massive vulnerability down the line. Once people decide you're not trustworthy, that perception sticks. It's incredibly hard to shake.
Then there's tokenism. One recycling initiative. One tree-planting partnership. A beach cleanup photo op. Presented as evidence of deep commitment, but totally disconnected from how the business actually operates. Audiences have seen this playbook too many times. They're not impressed anymore. Performative sustainability can actually damage credibility more than saying nothing at all. It signals that you think people are stupid. They're not.
The lesson for PR is restraint. Credibility comes from accuracy, not volume. Say less. Make sure what you say is demonstrably true. That's a stronger strategy than shouting about every green initiative.
This requires a different mindset. Stop asking how sustainability can generate visibility. Start asking how sustainability decisions will age. How will they look in two years? Five years? Reputation compounds over time. Patterns matter more than moments.
Credible sustainability positioning comes from alignment. Values matching decisions, Internal culture matching external behaviour and what is communicated matching what is experienced.
You don't achieve this through a single campaign or initiative. It builds through accumulated choices. Most of them small, most of them unglamorous. The kind of decisions that don't make it into press releases; choosing suppliers carefully, thinking through materials, considering what happens to physical assets after an event ends, and asking how visible decisions might be read by people outside the organisation. These aren't exciting decisions. But they're the ones that compound.
Here's something counterintuitive: sustainability doesn't need to be loudly promoted to be effective. Understated choices often land better than big announcements. When sustainable practice becomes a default rather than a marketing angle, it feels more real. It becomes how the brand operates, not how the brand performs.
For brands with a physical presence (events, frontline teams, public-facing staff) the details matter. Choices like eco custom clothing become expressions of values in the real world. Not talking points. Actual visible evidence.
This isn't about turning every operational decision into content. It's about recognising that physical brand expression and reputation are the same thing. Most people will never read your sustainability report. But they'll notice what your team wears. What materials you use. What ends up in the bin.
PR's role here is editorial, in a sense. Not amplifying everything, but identifying which decisions carry weight. Advising where consistency matters most. Making sure communications reflect reality, not aspiration.
Sustainability becomes about coherence, not volume. The goal isn't to be seen doing good. It's to avoid being caught doing the opposite.
The PR role is changing. Trust is lower, scrutiny is higher, and reputation can't be managed through messaging alone anymore. It has to be earned through behaviour. Reinforced through consistency. Protected through knowing when to stay quiet.
Sustainability is central to this shift. It's not peripheral. It's not a nice-to-have. It's a core component of brand identity, shaping how brands get judged and remembered.
For PR professionals, this means thinking bigger than campaigns. It means engaging with physical and operational realities, not just narratives. Prioritising alignment over amplification. Credibility over visibility. It's less glamorous work, in some ways. But it's the work that actually protects reputation.
Brands get remembered for patterns. For the choices they repeat. For what they do when nobody's paying attention, and what they do when everyone is.
PR in this landscape is less about spin. It's stewardship. Guiding brands to act in ways that support the stories they want to tell. Making sure sustainability isn't just communicated, but actually embodied. That's the job now. And honestly? It's a better job than the old one.
Today's audiences are cynical and well-practised at spotting inconsistencies. They no longer take brand claims at face value. Trust is built on tangible proof, so what your business actually does, from its supply chain to its event management, carries far more weight than what it says in a press release.
Brands often fail by treating sustainability as a communications issue instead of an operational one. Other key mistakes include over-claiming results before they are achieved, using vague language, and relying on token gestures like a single beach cleanup, which can be seen as performative and damage credibility.
These are the physical, real-world interactions people have with your brand. Think about the materials used at your exhibition stand, the uniforms your staff wear, the waste management at your events, or the energy efficiency of your office. These tangible details communicate your values more directly than any webpage.
Not necessarily. The article suggests that restraint is a powerful strategy. When sustainable practices become your default way of operating rather than a marketing angle, they feel more authentic. Understated choices often build more credibility than loud, self-congratulatory announcements.
Consistency comes from alignment across your entire business. Your internal culture, operational decisions, and external communications must all reflect the same core values. For expert guidance on integrating these principles, business coaching services like those from Robin Waite Limited can help align your strategy with your actions.
