How professional services firms can help clients navigate change
Climate change is the defining crisis of our time. Claire Mason, founder and CEO of the award-winning consultancy Man Bites Dog, says marketing professionals have a pivotal role to play in driving the change we need to build a greener, more inclusive world.
How professional services firms can help clients navigate change
Climate change is the defining crisis of our time. Claire Mason, founder and CEO of the award-winning consultancy Man Bites Dog, says marketing professionals have a pivotal role to play in driving the change we need to build a greener, more inclusive world.
The scale of investment in innovation and organisational transformation required to bring about a net-zero economy cannot be underestimated. Research by Man Bites Dog shows nine out of 10 multinational companies require substantial transformation to make it happen, and eight out of 10 companies will need significant additional finance.
If we thought digital transformation was a challenge, net-zero transformation will put it firmly in the shade. We are all now in the ESG business and professional services firms must step into the role of purposeful strategic partner to their clients to make change happen.
Business will need to drive the transition – we know that the majority of climate reductions must come from corporate action. As marketing communications leaders, we can help our firms and their clients take a stand and accelerate net zero. This of course requires professional services firms to achieve their own targets across the full spectrum of ESG, but our greatest opportunity for impact is in how we enable clients to achieve theirs.
From global warming to biodiversity loss, we face major systemic issues that cannot be solved in isolation. Marketers can play a key role in positioning organisations to have a positive influence on the broader ecosystem, enabling them to help clients navigate uncharted territory and mobilise connections to build a community for change.
Professional services marketers have a particularly important role to play as their brands impact a wide and varied network of other businesses. Thought leadership is a powerful tool for professional services firms to highlight and quantify ESG-related opportunities and threats - and give clients the opportunity to interact with benchmarking data and expert insight to help them accelerate change.
Navigating The Sustainability Curve
Man Bites Dog’s Sustainability Curve is a thought leadership framework that helps organisations evolve from being a sustainable business (one that has its own house in order) to become a sustainability business – a firm that enables its clients to accelerate their sustainability journeys.
The Sustainability Curve has two key dimensions, which should be addressed in parallel. The first is a firm’s impact on its clients. How can a firm help its clients become fit to operate in the net-zero economy? This may mean re-evaluating your organisation’s capabilities and services and how you use marketing and business development to promote those products and services. How can you create content that will be genuinely useful to clients in advancing change and promote new services that will help clients solve the problem?
The second dimension is about a firm’s influence on its broader ecosystem. Reaching net zero is bigger than any company or nation, and it will take a collective effort on an unprecedented scale to mobilise communities for change. How can your organisation use its convening power to curate a coalition of change, bringing together clients and broader stakeholders to share best practice and tackle issues collectively?
We use this model to create and amplify strategic thought leadership platforms and agendas to deliver our clients’ purpose, and to achieve a wider purpose for people and planet.
“From global warming to biodiversity loss, we face major systemic issues that cannot be solved in isolation. Marketers can play a key role in positioning organisations to have a positive influence on the broader ecosystem, enabling them to help clients navigate uncharted territory and mobilise connections to build a community for change.”
“From global warming to biodiversity loss, we face major systemic issues that cannot be solved in isolation. Marketers can play a key role in positioning organisations to have a positive influence on the broader ecosystem, enabling them to help clients navigate uncharted territory and mobilise connections to build a community for change.”
The Sustainable Cities Index 2022: Prosperity Beyond Profit, for Arcadis
Man Bites Dog invented the first-of-its-kind Sustainable Cities Index (SCI) in 2015: a pioneering thought-leadership campaign that propelled the specialist topic of urban sustainability onto the mainstream news and business agenda. In 2022, with sustainability now a crowded market, Arcadis challenged us to refresh this visionary Index to help the firm retain its market-leading position and reignite the urban sustainability agenda.
We identified the opportunity for Arcadis to champion a new vision of city success, redefining prosperity to incorporate people and planet as well as profit. The 2022 Index – Prosperity Beyond Profit – ranked 100 global cities across 51 sustainability metrics, demonstrating that sustainability and prosperity are now one and the same.
The Index generated strong media engagement, securing over 800 pieces of coverage in more than 50 countries. The SCI platform not only enables Arcadis to lead the agenda but remains the primary sales tool for the firm’s urban sustainability services.
Read more about the campaign here.
Accounting for a Better World: Priorities for a transforming profession, for ACCA
Man Bites Dog created an exciting long-term brand platform for ACCA – the global body for professional accountants – redefining the role of the profession as shaping a fairer, more resilient and inclusive future for all. Based on qualitative research, Accounting for a Better World envisions the future of the accountancy profession, identifying seven new dimensions of impact:
Designed as “a big conversation” to teach, inspire and mobilise others, this brand platform enabled ACCA to convene and engage a community for change – global governments, policymakers, international business leaders and others – on the role of the accounting profession in shaping a path towards a sustainable and equitable future.
The initiative has been rolled out across the globe – to the ACCA community and beyond – and has already played an important positioning role at a number of milestone events, including an international assembly with senior business and finance professionals from around the world.
Read more about the campaign here.
Zeronomics: Financing the transition to a net-zero world, for Standard Chartered
Zeronomics positioned Standard Chartered as a thought leader by highlighting the critical role of finance in the greatest challenge ever undertaken: decarbonisation. We identified a new angle – the economics of transition to a net-zero carbon world and invented a new term to encapsulate it – Zeronomics – creating a unique platform to promote the bank’s sustainable finance capability.
Our research highlighted the risk of a “lost decade” as companies postpone action on climate change and revealed 55% of corporates are not transitioning fast enough to reach net zero by 2050, with insufficient finance the greatest barrier and the most significant transition capital shortfall occurring in emerging markets.
The campaign generated 246 pieces of international media coverage, and the report findings were viewed 2.4 million times. It has powered numerous stakeholder conversations, and been referenced in industry roundtables, webinars, and online conferences.
Read more about the campaign here.
Man Bites Dog is an award-winning global B2B thought leadership and strategic marketing consultancy, specialising in storytelling to help business brands mobilise change on the world’s most important issues – from accelerating net zero to building a more inclusive world.