ESG

Marketing’s ESG Dilemma: A Social Risk

By Michael Moran

Marketing professionals are now intimately involved in their companies’ environmental, social and governance reporting as these periodic data releases become increasingly important to a firm’s share price, reputation and ability to attract talent.

This may seem to be a natural request; we marketers are, after all, the wordsmiths of the corporate ecosystem. Yet treating the ESG release as just another messaging exercise is dangerous. As much as the CEO may see the company in the vanguard of sustainability, the fact is that laying it on thick in your ESG data release poses a massive “greenwashing” risk. And greenwashing is quickly becoming the scarlet letter of our day.