Sustainability is a Buzzword. And that’s our problem.

The Hollow Buzz

Take a look around and you’ll see it. Stamped on the back of every coffee cup. Stitched into every airline pledge. Splashed across bathroom signs. It’s the favourite word of the supermarket still packaging single bananas in plastic. The selling phrase for the hotel blasting air-con through empty corridors. The headline act in ad campaigns for banks still financing oil pipelines.

You guessed it: Sustainability.

Once a signal of urgency, it’s now a corporate lullaby – scripted, standardised, safe. The perfect melody to put us back to sleep. It reads well in a press release but truthfully, it says nothing, it demands nothing, it means nothing.

So, let’s be honest. The tidy little section on our websites called ‘Our Sustainability Journey’ isn’t moving the needle. It’s moving nothing. Sustainability is running on empty. And so is the planet. The language is everywhere, but it’s air. Nothing to hold, nothing to build on.

From Rallying Cries to Corporate Lullabies. 

Words create worlds. Movements live and die on language. A few words can wake the world up, or put it back to sleep. Politics and culture understand this. Greta Thunberg hasn’t delivered an environmental white paper but threw “how dare you” out into the world. Not rhetoric, but a line that pierced through parliaments. Sarah Palin might be on the other side of it but her infamous ‘drill baby drill’ still echoes years later. These are phrases that have sliced into public consciousness, seized attention, ignited emotion. They are sharp, and refuse to be forgotten. You don’t need to agree with them to feel the urgency.

Brands, meanwhile, default to language that cushions. Some of the favourites – “Our Sustainability Journey”, “Eco-friendly solutions”, “Net-zero by 2050”. Phrases designed to reassure everyone and challenge no-one. Words that are safe in the boardroom but powerless elsewhere. Nobody repeats them. Nobody truly remembers them.

That’s the narrative power gap.

One side speaks in words that spark headlines and movements. The other side speaks in words that only lulls and breeds cynicism. This gap isn’t just stylistic but consequential. Only 4% of UK consumers trust eco-logos for example. Yet over 80% of Irish consumers say they are ready to change if given credible reasons. The willingness is there but the words don’t work.

Why are we Enabling Brands to Avoid the Sharp Stuff? 

We’ve made safety the default.

Agencies have built a culture of sanding down the edges: turning urgency into reassurance, anger into “brand purpose”, and raw truths into safe, digestible copy. Risk used to be what made ideas cut through. Now it’s what gets edited out.

So, the language drifts towards what’s easy. Phrases that sound responsible, words that echo interest, but don’t do or change anything. Messaging designed to pass sign-off.

It’s not just a brand problem. It’s an agency problem. We are helping to keep sustainability in the safe lane. Smoothing it out, softening it, stripping it of any urgency and realism. And here’s the truth. The same agencies that have helped make the message safe can also make it sharp again. The same craft that helped minimise the language can restore it’s bite.

We’ve Branded the Planet. Now What? 

Think about it. We’ve branded the planet. Leaf logos, green palette hues, lovely ‘eco’ ranges, corporate manifestos printed on recycled paper. We’ve stamped sustainability across billboards, packaging, and glossy repots. Branding the planet hasn’t made it any better, it’s just numbed us to the scale of the problem.

But branding isn’t the villain. Done properly, it is one of the most powerful tools we have. It can change behaviour, shape culture, and rally movements. Agencies know how to do this but we seem to shy away from it when it comes to the planet.

A Slogan won’t Save Us

Let’s be clear. We aren’t naively suggesting a killer slogan is going to halve emissions, halt fossil fuels overnight, or flip human behaviour in a single line. The climate emergency isn’t waiting for copy to catch up. But here’s the paradox: bad words do make it worse. They buy time when time is the one thing we don’t have.

So no, language isn’t the whole answer. But it is a lever, and our industry has its hands on it. Done right, language can help re-establish the trust dissolved by years of our industry making poor word choices.

The Anatomy of Sustainable Communication

When words fall flat, so does the world. Consumers aren’t apathetic; they’re waiting for something real. When language fails, trust collapses. And when trust collapses, action halts. If we want to rebuild trust, we know a new slogan won’t cut it. We need a new anatomy instead.

Sustainability isn’t short on facts. It’s short on feeling. That’s why agencies like Publicis called for a new “vocab of values”, moving beyond metrics into meaning. But how? Well, think about the 2023 Anatomy of a Fall film. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that the truth isn’t handed out to the audience. You are asked as the story unfolds to weigh context, testimony and credibility. And this is how we should approach Sustainability Comms. At the moment we have two opposing sides: “Greenwash” on one side – melodrama, glossy over-performance, unbelievable. One the other “Greywash” – legalese, technically correct but emotionally inert. So, what language really lands? That which presents a case people can really believe. Language that is specific, simple, layered, and human.

The Anatomy of Trust

In Anatomy of a Fall, the verdict doesn’t hinge on one piece of evidence. It is dependant on whether the story holds together, whether the testimony, the facts, and the context aligns enough to be believed. Good sustainability communication, we believe, works in the same way.

When language, design, and culture reinforce each other, the case feels coherent. Consumers can weigh it, believe it, and act on it.

So, here is how the anatomy of trust comes together:

1. The Head = Language

   It’s time to retire placeholder words in favour of values-led language. Language of care, repair, craft, and stewardship. This is precisely the “vocab of values” others are arguing for. It’s about writing for comprehension, not compliance. It shifts metrics to meaning without abandoning the science.

2. The Skeleton = Design
   

   It’s time for design to move past symbols and start acting as evidence. Too often, sustainability is dressed up in arrows, seals, and icons. All that gesture towards taking responsibility without showing it. We cannot rely on simply dressing sustainability up. We need design that underpins it instead. Design that makes processes visible, systems legible and choices harder to ignore. Design shouldn’t soften the truth. It should hold it up.
   

3. The Heart = Story + Culture
   

   It’s time to put people and culture back at the centre. Facts and frameworks may inform, but it’s stories and rituals that make things stick. The heart isn’t about gloss or spin. It’s about showing care, conflict, and compromise in ways that feel human. When sustainability is told as a lived experience rather than corporate posture, it becomes something audiences can believe in, not just nod along to.

Big+Bold, or don’t bother

If agencies helped build the sustainability buzzword problem, they can also dismantle it. The job now is to stop decorating sustainability with soft copy, but to build communication that cuts through, builds trust, and demands change. At Big+Bold, we believe that sustainable communication has to be just that – big and bold. This means:

• Language that bites: Words that are sharp enough to be remembered, and honest and authentic enough in order to be trusted.
• Visuals that reveal: Design that shows systems and stories, not just the application of a “green” gloss.
• Proof that lives in culture: Real actions made visible through storytelling and rituals.

Anything less is just noise. Agencies shouldn’t want to hide behind safe slogans anymore.

If Words Change Worlds

Language has always helped drive action. Anti-smoking campaigns, the civil rights movement. All were propelled by messaging that cut through apathy. The climate crisis is no different. Right now, we have a communications crisis as much as a scientific one. Agencies and studios are not bystanders but architects of narratives, so it’s time to actually do something about it.

If words shape worlds, then it’s time to give sustainability a new vocabulary. One that works as hard as the planet needs it to. At Big+Bold, we believe that vocabulary has to be exactly that: big enough to matter, bold enough to cut through.