What is corporate washing?

In its most basic sense, corporate washing is when companies try to cover up their negative impacts by promoting themselves as ‘doing-good’ with misleading advertising campaigns and branding – either consciously and unconsciously.

Some forms of corporate washing include:

• Greenwashing: This is an attempt to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is. Greenwashing often includes making unsubstantiated claims or using misleading information to give the false impression that your company is sustainable.
• Social washing: Similarly, social washing is a strategy companies use to promote themselves as more socially responsible than they really are, using meaningful marketing tactics like charity donations as publicity stunts, instead of doing any real work to combat social issues.
• Blue washing: Blue washing refers to businesses who sign up for the UN Global Compact and use their association with the United Nations to enhance their image and shift attention from their controversial business practices. Similarly, ‘SDG washing’ is when businesses point to their positive contribution to some of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, while totally ignoring their negative impact on others.
• Rainbow washing: Rainbow washing is the act of using or adding rainbow flags, colours and imagery to marketing campaigns in order to indicate progressive support for LGBTQ equality, but with no real effort or pragmatic results.

Essentially, when more time and money is spent claiming to be an ethical, green, or socially responsible company, than is actually spent implementing business practices that make a real difference – this is corporate washing.

The prevalence of rainbow corporate logos during Pride month, without substantial backing for the LGBTQ+ community, is considered an example of corporate washing.

Lmao pic.twitter.com/bwxaKa5biC

— Alana Mastrangelo (@ARmastrangelo) June 1, 2022

How can corporate washing damage your brand?

Let’s take the example of a consumer who wants to make an eco-friendly choice, and therefore chooses a product that makes a positive environmental claim. However, it later turns out that the product was not as environmentally friendly as was advertised.

In this case, the consumer is left feeling like they’ve been lied to by the company. Apart from avoiding shopping there in the future, there is also the increased likelihood of the customer leaving negative reviews online, as well as sharing their bad experience to their friends and on social media.

Alongside your brand image taking a hit, you’ve also lost your consumer’s trust – something that’s incredibly difficult to win back.

Is it worth the risk?

The loss of trust from consumers doesn’t just affect you, but the whole industry. It results in brands that are sustainable needing to make even more effort with their communications when it comes to accuracy, precision, and positive environmental initiatives to successfully differentiate their brand from their greenwashing competitors.

There are also huge financial implications to corporate washing like this. If there is uproar around a claim you make in your marketing, you may need to pull an ad campaign, losing money you spent on its creation. If customers start boycotting your brand because of it, you’ll also lose revenue.

One of the biggest concerns that comes with corporate washing is the negative impact it has on innovation. How much better is money spent on innovating to achieve real and lasting change, rather than spending it on trying to keep up with the public perception of competitors?

How to avoid corporate washing

So, what can you do to help avoid the corporate washing trap?

1. Speak to your staff. Our number one recommendation is to get insight and feedback from internal stakeholders and your employees before pushing anything out to an external audience – use them as your test bed. This is great for sense checking, and it also serves as an opportunity to check what conversations really matter to people, giving you a sense of what people will engage with before addressing your external audience.
2. Carefully consider your words. Take the time really think about the language you use in your ESG comms. All too often brands fall into the trap of using words with no apparent meaning and this should be seen as a red flag. For example, buzzwords such as “green,” “natural,” and “environmentally friendly” communicate little about the actual environmental impact of a product or service so make sure your claims aren’t ambiguous. This could be as simple as including more detail. For instance, rather than saying your product is made with organic cotton, you could include the specific percentage: “Our bed sheets are made of 80% organic cotton.”
3. Choose imagery carefully. Unusually for us, when it comes to talking about ESG we often recommend dialling down on your creative. Don’t get too creative with suggestive pictures that may look nice but have no basis in fact or may accidentally allude to something incorrect. For example, flowers appearing from an exhaust pipe whilst a nice concept does not convey an appropriate story about the carbon impact of fuel.
4. Honesty is the best policy. Try not to tell part of the story, ignoring the parts where you’ve made less progress, it’s far better to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
5. Validate your claims. Think carefully about what you’re claiming. For example, it may be true that your product has the lowest emissions for your industry, but if your industry is all pretty terrible for the environment then say so and be clear on what you’re doing to make things better.

Overall, your ESG communications should align to long-term, sustainable change you’re making with your company. Brands need to meet the growing expectations of consumers to keep them engaged and consumers want to see real-life change that bridges the gap between a brand promise and their reality.

When it comes to ESG communications, honesty and authenticity are key.  If you’re looking for support in building trust with your stakeholders, get in touch to see how we could help.