Youths forging the way for eco-friendly businesses

As the arrival of June nudges us into Irish Summer, we celebrate World Environment Day, the annual UN vehicle driving positive Environmental action.

To mark it, we invited Laura Costello, Strategy Director with ground-breaking youth marketing agency Thinkhouse, to share her thoughts on environmental messaging and how the mindset of ‘Gen Now’ is more sustainably-focussed than ever before.

World Environment Day 2023 has arrived against a backdrop of rising Co2 emissions courtesy of Celtic Tiger 2.0.

As the UN issues a call to action to unite behind their mission to #BeatPlasticPollution, the Irish economy continues to steam ahead towards even more growth. In so doing, it is dragging Ireland in the opposite direction to most of its EU counterparts which are successfully reducing their Carbon Footprint in a sustained pattern of green transition.

As the Irish economy steams ahead towards even more growth, the CSO (Central Statistics Office) has issued a stark warning that this rise in economic activity comes at a price. And that price is the continued rise of GHGs (Green House Gasses), paid for by the Environment.

Worse still, statistics issued by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) on 1st June, 2023, indicate that Ireland is falling short of both its legally-binding EU GHG targets and its own Climate Policy by an inconceivable 51%.

As our carbon trajectory continues in the wrong direction and the number of plastic-laden landfill mountains grows exponentially, what has become all too clear, particularly in the last few years, is that the burden of responsibility for managing our arrested environmental development and driving change is going to fall on the shoulders of this and future generations of young people. Essentially, the future is now theirs to save.

But is it now simply a case of “Step aside Boomers, you’ve had your chance”, or can ‘middle Ireland’ take their lead from the generations book-ending our society and throw their lot in with them for the betterment of the planet?

Our Managing Director, Caroline Geoghegan, sat down with Laura Costello of “youth-powered, digital first” marketing agency Thinkhouse to discuss brand activism, environmental disruption and spreading the green word.

Thinkhouse Chat

Caroline started by asking Laura to talk a bit about Thinkhouse, how it started and what it does.

“Thinkhouse is a youth marketing company. We were born 21 years ago realising that there was a need for greater creativity within the PR industry to really connect with younger generations. We very quickly evolved into a youth-powered, digital first, full service creative agency, led by creating marketing for more progressive brands that care about people and planet.”




“Our services are in three core areas, Transformation, Planet and Fame. While fame is everything we traditionally associate with marketing companies, transformation is about helping companies to become future-fit in line with the insights, behaviours and attitudes of younger generations today. That can mean working beyond marketing teams into a lot of strategy and planning across business teams, alongside C-suite leaders. Planet, then, is the side of the business which focuses on how to accelerate the support and response of brands and organisations to the most urgent challenges of our time, integrating the response with the concerns of today’s young people.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

Thinkhouse’ full-service team of 50 people, some of which are Business Sustainability Graduates, comes from the full spectrum of creative disciplines, from social media and copywriting to creative design through strategy and production. In fact it was this strong academic background combining communications and sustainable strategy, that led them to design the CORE Planet Suite, a range of strategic tools and future-facing awareness training courses aimed at empowering green-leaning communications and marketing professionals. To underpin this, the Thinkhouse team have themselves undertaken the B Corp certification process, adding yet another accreditation to an ever-expanding portfolio.

In terms of finding a balance with clients in terms of sustainability, Thinkhouse takes a brand-specific approach.

“In terms of finding a balance, it depends on where the client is ,” explains Laura.




“It’s all about asking the right questions at the start. Does the brand have the desire for making change and undergoing the type of transformation that young people want?"




"Thinkhouse works with clients who are open to transformational change and very progressive in their mindset. With that comes a lot of the challenges that are facing businesses today."




"Thinkhouse tries to help as much as we can not only through the lens of communication but also by giving the client access to sustainability expertise.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

The Thinkhouse Planet team which works on these kinds of briefs offer the client a particular blend of communications & marketing mixed with sustainability literacy, leadership and management, unique skills which allow them to have client conversations at a very high level.

Thinkhouse is first and foremost a youth marketing agency, focussing on the shape-shifting nature and needs of youth culture. But what does it advise young people to do in terms of becoming more sustainable?

According to Laura, young people want information, but they also want easy access to that information.

“They want brands to make the better choices easier for them to make,” she tells Caroline.




“It’s about giving people more sustainable options. More and more, young people are expecting brands to be doing the right things, to be communicating where they are at in their sustainability journey and to make that very easy for people to find."



"The big buzz words are Transparency and Greenwashing and in terms of policy landscape, there are new EU directives coming out now on greenwashing. Things are changing by the day, so the focus for businesses now is to keep up both with policy and people’s expectations.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

Does Laura think this is the Green Revolution?

Absolutely. In her opinion, Sustainability is the new Digital. Businesses ignore it at your peril. While many Thinkhouse clients were hesitant to dabble in social media at the start of the digital revolution, now it’s fundamental to their communications and marketing strategies.

“Sustainability isn’t going to go away, because the world is changing,” she tells Caroline.



“Change is also in how people come to speak about it. Some brands we work with might be working on a myriad of things but they pick two or three things strategically that they want people to know more about. Trends will always differ in terms of what people want to hear about but in terms of making your business sustainable, people expect you to keep reporting on that.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

So what does Laura and the Thinkhouse team advise clients to do in terms of a Sustainable strategy?

“It’s very unique and depends on who the clients are and what industry they are in,” she explains, “but to start with our advice would be to look at your own business. Then look out at the world and ask where can you make the best and most impact - on people, society and the planet. In general it is about the impact rather than where the story is. The story comes from the impact."



"It’s not just about doing something one off, it’s about integrating a sense of purpose and impact into your brand. Rather than just focussing on what's trending, it’s about what positive changes you want your brand to make in the world and long-term planning around that.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

Have the more-green oriented brands Laura deals with come to the realisation that marketing 2023 has gone beyond sales and is now very much about generating awareness about sustainability, and that brand collateral can speak to people about sustainability?

“100%”, she replies.

“We’re hearing the term “Corpsumer” - someone who believes that a company’s values and actions are equal to their product in terms of importance” - more and more, which is basically reflecting the blurring of marketing and corporate comms that’s happening."



"We’re seeing marketing teams working with sustainability and legal teams more than ever before. The real magic of advertising and marketing is that we are architects of desire.



"The impact we have on culture and society is an enormous responsibility that needs to be taken really seriously. The signals we put out in culture have the ability to shift mass behaviour and attitudes so, if we’re putting out the right signals and influencing people’s behaviours and attitudes then that can have a really positive effect.”
“It’s not only about individuals, or individual actions. But individuals make up governments, they make up all of the power levers we have in society to be able to change.



"There is an enormous opportunity and responsibility on our industry to be able to recognise that the messages that we put out there are really key to the cultural shift towards sustainability that we all want to make.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

To engage with their clients, Laura and Thinkhouse have designed a global youth community programme called the Love Network (don’t you just love it!).

Overseen by their combined Youth Lab and PR teams it taps into young people all over the world. Because things change so quickly, Thinkhouse has adopted an "always on” mindset, a driver behind several initiatives like Youth Culture Uncovered, a project they carry out every year to answer the question ‘what’s it like to be young today?’.

Looking at the world through the eyes of young people, the outputs set the tone for the agency’s outlook for the year ahead. What do the results tell them?

“It’s very varied,” she says.



“Many young people would be on the climate activist scale, but then there are others who just want to see that a brand is doing the right thing. There isn’t one thing that stands out. There is a general sense that at minimum people don’t want to feel guilty about purchasing a product or interacting with a company.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

Does Laura think that the penny has dropped with the current generation of young people?

That this is the generation that will walk the talk and wherever they end up with their career, sustainability will be a priority and key driver for them. That they will implement and follow sustainably-focussed processes.

“Totally. More and more people in these younger generations are thinking more about sustainability and sustainable best business practices. You can’t speak for a full generation but it is something that is central to the youth of today. Risks in the area from legal to reputational continue to build.”



“There’s the human side, but there’s also the business transformation side too. Individual employees will put pressure on employers to do the right thing, so employee activism is going to matter a lot.”



“As a group, employees will hold businesses to account to ensure they are delivering on their pledges. People and planet related initiatives need to be integrated into the business and not just a ‘feel-good’ thing to be done on the side like CSR in the past.”



“Fundamentally, what has happened is there has been a mass realisation that a lot of business is not aligned with people the needs of people, society and the planet.”



“The word “justice” is something you hear more and more about in the environmental space. It’s about how people behave and how we treat each other.”

Larua Costello
ThinkHouse

Inspirational words from a leader in the field of youth-powered marketing. A big thank you to Laura for taking the time to talk to us.

Tackling Climate Change

Climate change means that the younger generations of today have a vital stake in how we act, and while a trajectory is in hand to reduce our emissions, it’s neither fast nor deep enough.

“Ireland to
miss
2030 climate targets by wide margin, EPA predicts”

Irish Times, 2nd June, 2023.

It has been said that while Ireland is great at climate rhetoric, it fails at climate action.

To counter this opinion and reverse the trajectory of our national carbon footprint, Ireland needs to come together as a country to put deeper measures in place to immediately halt and ultimately reverse the rise in carbon emission levels.

Governments and businesses need to act and act now for the greater good and if that means doing things differently including accepting lower profits in the short-term, then so be it.

Young people get this and ultimately it will be young people who solve his emergency. The rest of us need to clear the way.

It needs the boldness, creativity and energy of youth to rethink how we buy, do and use things.

Calling on governments for access to nature to be declared a right, today’s younger generations are driving citizen-led People’s Plans for nature and the environment.

Young disrupters, naturalists and scientists have come together to forge a strong alliance in support of initiatives such as the restoration of rivers and wetlands, nationwide introduction of food hubs from which people can access local product with minimal carbon footprint, and proposals for all product labelling to clearly show environmental impact.

ISOs for eco-friendly Businesses

The world is changing and many Irish businesses are struggling to keep up. Taking steps to put best-practice environment-focussed initiatives in place is fundamental to achieving the sustainability credentials expected by consumers today.

Sustainability credential frameworks such as ISO 14001 Environmental Management System provide business process guidelines based on best management practices, the aim of which is to demonstrate an organisation’s environmental, social and economic sustainability.

This in turn, allows eco-friendly businesses to leverage ESG opportunities and prove to their stakeholders, investors and customers that implementing sustainable practices both makes business sense in a competitive market and delivers products with minimal environmental impact.

While many Irish businesses today are changing and adapting to a more sustainable way of doing things, at the end of the day, it will take all of us, from the youngest kids to the most experienced ‘elders’ to tackle and hopefully put an end to the climate crisis, the biggest existential crisis we are facing today.

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won't come again

And don't speak too soon

For the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who

That it's namin'

For the loser now

Will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin'

Bob Dylan