Sustainability
Sustainable Marketing and Growth Strategy
Our Global Sustainable Transformation Practice helps brands embed sustainability and inclusion into marketing strategies to drive growth, strengthen consumer trust, and deliver measurable brand impact. In 2024, we partnered with 965+ organizations worldwide, guiding them through sustainability transformation that resonates with consumers and accelerates business performance.
Our Four Pillars of Sustainable Transformation
Strategic Sustainability Framing
Position sustainability opportunities at corporate, portfolio, and brand level to create competitive advantage and align with consumer expectations.
Sustainable Marketing Activation
Build meaningful storytelling and campaigns that connect sustainability with brand purpose and consumer engagement.
Impact Measurement
Develop metrics and frameworks to track progress and demonstrate brand impact and value-led implementation.
Circularity and Sustainable Innovation
Support strategies that embrace circularity, reduce waste, and create long-term value for both brands and society.
of consumers say it’s business's responsibility to solve climate and environmental issues.
of marketers say sustainability agendas should be more ambitious.
of marketers believe it's part of their job to push sustainability.
Our Solutions
Equity-led sustainability intelligence for brand growth
Make better sustainability decisions with an equity‑led view of brand performance. BrandSustainability provides a validated benchmark of your sustainability credentials and the likely contribution of sustainability perceptions to brand equity, grounded in Kantar’s Meaningful, Different and Salient framework.
What it helps you decide
BrandSustainability helps you answer:
- How strong are our sustainability credentials today, and where are we exposed to risk or rejection?
- Is sustainability strengthening our brand equity, or being underleveraged?
- Where should we focus to build Meaningful and Different associations through sustainability?
- How do we turn sustainability credentials into a clearer positioning and growth pathway?
Key Features
Measure brand sustainability perceptions
Measurement is the starting point of taking better decisions for the brands and, in this incredibly important space, current methods are insufficient, not to say misleading. We measure your brand and competitors Sustainability Score to equip you with the most accurate KPI for a brand on sustainability – it is a validated measure against levels of rejection and adoption a brand faces.
Leverage Kantar’s Meaningful Different Salient Framework
By integrating Kantar’s Meaningfully Different and Salient framework, BrandSustainability assess the impact of your brand perceptions on sustainability on brand equity.
Find your path to brand building and growth through sustainability
Optimize brand sustainability strategy: positioning, go-to market approach, and innovation opportunities to resonate more deeply with consumers whilst building your equity.
See where sustainability reshapes your category and opportunity
A landmark syndicated study that helps leaders understand what matters most to people in their sector, where brands can credibly play, and how opportunity differs category by category. The Sustainability Sector Index provides consumer‑led, decision‑ready direction to set priorities, sharpen strategy and guide activation, grounded in a consistent cross‑market view of sustainability expectations and sector dynamics.
Within Kantar’s broader syndicated sustainability studies, the Sustainability Sector Index draws on more than 128,000 interviews across 41 countries and 66 categories, enabling robust sector‑level comparison and clarity on how sustainability expectations differ by category, market and level of sophistication.
Key Features
Develop a sustainability strategy
Shape your marketing guiding principles around sustainability. The Sustainability Sector Index enables you to prioritise key topics, ensuring your brand focuses on what matters most to consumers and the planet.Become a sustainability leader
Identify and leverage the factors that will have the most significant impact. By understanding consumer perceptions and expectations, your brand can position itself as a sustainability leader, driving meaningful change and building lasting trust.Sharpen your activations
Inclusion signals that unlock growth with underserved audiences
Understand how underserved communities experience your brand and where inclusion is strengthening or limiting growth. The Brand Inclusion Index enables brands to benchmark inclusion performance versus competitors, identify the most meaningful gaps to close, and prioritise actions that build relevance and growth with high‑potential populations. It combines a global ranking of inclusive brands with diagnostic insight at brand and category level to inform inclusion‑led brand strategy.
Key Features
Learn from brands leading on inclusion
Understanding expectations for diversity, equity, and inclusion is key to effective inclusive marketing. The Brand Inclusion Index helps brands assess their DEI perception, offering essential insights for brand inclusion strategies.Closing inclusion gaps
The Index identifies populations your brand needs to focus on, highlighting areas for improvement and strengths to celebrate. This helps close inclusion gaps and enhances inclusive marketing efforts.Insights for brand inclusion
Decode the value-action gap to drive adoption at scale
Build a decision‑ready view of sustainability audiences by understanding the different frictions and motivations shaping sustainable choices. Bridging the Gap helps brands diagnose what blocks action, identify which levers will move the “moveable middle”, and prioritise the interventions most likely to predispose more people to choose sustainable options, strengthening both demand and brand associations.
Key Features
Identify purpose opportunities
Identify the best purpose opportunities to build your brand’s positioning. NeedScope helps you pinpoint the most impactful areas to focus on, ensuring your brand purpose aligns with consumer expectations.Sharpen brand purpose activities
Sharpen your brand’s purpose activities to be consistent with your brand positioning. Our insights ensure that your brand’s purpose activities are aligned and coherent, enhancing overall brand effectiveness.Execute differentiated brand purpose
Design for adoption with behavioural intelligence and foresight
Turn sustainability into innovations people will choose. Our Sustainable Innovation approach combines foresight, consumer understanding and behavioural science to pinpoint the role of sustainability in category decision-making, identify what enables or blocks behaviour change, and prioritise concepts that can drive short-term sales and long-term equity.
It also supports brands to explore and embed circularity opportunities, translating circular economy ambition into actionable innovation and marketing direction, informed by our work and partnerships in this space.
Key Features
Focus on the Value-Action gap
Overcome barriers to sustainable behaviour using our proprietary approaches for idea development and validation. Our methods ensure that your innovation for sustainability translates into real-world impact.Support through the entire process
Our consulting toolkit offers holistic development and validation throughout the entire innovation process. We provide comprehensive support to ensure your sustainable innovations are successfully implemented.Commercial and conscious
Make better advertising decisions on sustainability
Test and optimise sustainability advertising with decision‑ready evidence from LINK+. We bring together two core capabilities built on LINK data:
- Sustainable Behaviours Ad Tracker (with Ad Net Zero): tracks how often sustainable behaviours appear in advertising and benchmarks change over time across markets and categories.
- Positive & Progressive People Portrayal (LINK Unstereotype Metrics): evaluates how people are portrayed in advertising and how this links to creative effectiveness and ROI potential.
Outputs are designed for integration into LINK deliverables and marketing dashboards.
Key Features
Sharpen your sustainability strategy
Align with cultural context and find relevant local activations to make a greater impact.Inspire innovation
Understand where the momentum is and the solutions triggering attention to transform your innovation pipeline.Guide communication efforts
Case studies
Perspectives
Our Sustainable Transformation Practice Experts
Ozlem Senturk,
Senior partner and Engaging activation lead
Our Partners
Q: What is Sustainable Marketing?
A: Sustainable marketing integrates environmental and social values into brand strategy and communication. It goes beyond campaigns to embed sustainability into the core of business operations, ensuring also long-term value for both society and the planet. Sustainability perceptions contribute up to 10% of cumulative brand value in the Global BrandZ Top 100. Yet, businesses are leaving an estimated $600bn on the table by not fully leveraging sustainability for growth.
Q: Why is Sustainable Marketing important for brands today?
A: Consumers expect brands to take meaningful action on sustainability, and this expectation is now a key driver of purchase decisions. Kantar data reveals that sustainability perceptions not only enhance brand equity but also allow brands to command a premium. Furthermore, 90% of marketers believe sustainability agendas need to be more ambitious, and 94% agree that bold experimentation is essential to deliver transformative change. Authenticity and transparency are no longer optional—they are critical for earning trust and loyalty.
Q: What is Sustainable Innovation in marketing?
A: Sustainable Innovation means creating products, services, and business models that drive growth while reducing environmental impact and promoting social responsibility. It embeds sustainability into the innovation process, helping brands stay competitive and meet consumer expectations.
Q: What is Inclusive Growth in marketing?
A: Inclusive growth ensures that marketing strategies represent and engage diverse consumer groups across gender, race, age, ability, and identity, while driving equitable access and representation. Kantar’s studies show that 75% of consumers globally say diversity and inclusion influence their purchase decisions, and progressive advertising delivers up to 16% higher sales uplift compared to less inclusive content.