The ultimate guide to branding For Climate Tech businesses
Branding holds many long-term benefits for Climate Tech businesses that greatly increase funding opportunities, sales, partnerships with corporates, and access to top talent.
This article will walk you through the process of building a scalable brand for your climate tech business.
Overview
This guide contains seven chronological sections:
Introduction to Branding (this page)
Brand Foundations: How to define your mission, vision and storytelling narrative.
Market Segmentation: How to define your audience, position yourself and choose the right target audience.
Strategic Messaging: How to communicate sustainability and value simultaneously.
Brand Platform: How to build an identity and digital footprint which represents your potential.
Thought Leadership: How to position yourself as a leader in the emerging impact ecosystem.
Public Relations: How to leverage public relations to build your authority.
Introduction to branding for Climate Tech innovators
Welcome to the ultimate guide to branding for Climate Tech businesses.
This guide is designed to describe all major aspects of branding for sustainable technology companies.
The world of branding is complex and ever-changing, but the fundamentals of human psychology (the basis of all successful communications) are the same. Whilst the means and methods in this guide change with the technology of the day, the basic principles behind the methods will not.
Combine this information with consistent positive steps and you are well on your way to building a strong, sustainable brand that potential impact investors, clients and top talent will love.
Welcome to the era of Climate Tech
Sustainability over the last few decades has been defined by three distinct eras—each a product of their time:
Green Era (1970 - 2000): Defined by NGOs, charity and philanthropy.
Social Impact Era (2000 - 2020): Corporate social responsibility, Eco-friendly, social impact.
Climate Tech Era: (2020+) Entrepreneurship & technology.
As more investment has come into sustainable startups, we transitioned from The Social Era to the Climate Tech Era—where entrepreneurship is the key component.
The pivotal difference in the Climate Tech Era is that entrepreneurship is key. And as Blackrock CEO Larry Fink puts it: "The next 1,000 billion-dollar start-ups will be in climate tech".
To thrive in this new era, Climate Tech founders need to shed their product-driven mindsets, become true entrepreneurs, and embrace the commercial side of their business. Because technology is not going to do the job by itself. Or as Katie Rae, chief executive of Climate Tech-focused VC says, “Technology is important but only if you understand how to bring it to market and make money to scale it”.
However, this transition has created three key problems for entrepreneurs in the Climate Tech Era:
First, Climate tech founders give far more priority to their innovation than in their business's development.
Second, business partners and investors aren't interested in founders or startups who don't prioritize growth.
This leads to the third challenge: Too many Climate Tech founders still build their businesses using the outdated strategic playbook from the Social or the Green Era.
In this new era, it's simply not enough to be the "sustainable alternative". That's why Climate Tech founders need to ditch the outdated green/social narrative, embrace the commercial side of their business, and build new product categories.
Tesla, Beyond Meat, Northvolt, Edge Tech, Lilium Aviation, Ynsect and Climeworks are all proof that this is not only possible, but possible at scale. Because to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable future, we first have to bridge the gap between sustainability and entrepreneurship.
What are Climate Tech’s brands greatest challenges?
Building a climate tech business is fundamentally different from a non-sustainability related business for four key reasons—unproven technology, access to capital, challenges navigating policy and access to talent—according to PwC’s The State of Climate Tech 2020 report:
Technology. In terms of technology, climate tech startups have a lot of uncertainty in R&D timelines, unpredictable timelines for product development and no tried and tested standard operating procedures to reach product/market fit. As such, climate tech startups must demonstrate key competencies in terms of vision, mission and story to bring investors and parters along on the journey.
Finance. To access the capital required to scale and realize their impact, climate tech startups require long-term, deep tech investors who understand long R&D times, who will act without defined proof-of-concept and who will consider funding pilot programmes may require significant amounts of capital, meaning large investments may be required before products have been proven.
Policy & Process. Due to a fragmented regulatory markets and scaling complexity, climate tech startups face overly complex regulatory markets which may stifle innovation or struggle due to a lack of regulatory incentives. As a result, founders must be able to demonstrate leadership on key policy shifts to drive forward the creation of a more embracing regulatory market.
People. Due to the seemingly rapid growth of the climate tech sector, availability of talent and skills with a knowledge of specific sustainability-related topics does not always match demand. From engineers to commercial leaders, attracting and retaining talent is critical. And no matter how sustainable or innovative a product is, top talent is attracted to startups with a defined mission and the potential to grow.
Outside of the technological realm, these are all challenges which a scalable climate tech brand addresses—and which many sustainability-driven brands fail to consider.
Why do Climate Tech brands fail?
“Sustainability startups that fail almost certainly neglect the commercial side of their business.”
Many businesses who have world-changing ideas fail to showcase their potential in the right way to the right people.
Both in terms of commercial viability as well as in terms of impact.
And those are the same businesses that struggle to access capital, that struggle to convince partners and investors to join their journey and they struggle to convince their target audience of their actual value.
In fact, one of the main things standing in the way of green startups accessing finance is a simple lack of business education in the eyes of investors. The main reason sustainable startups (or any startups at all) fail, is not because of lack of innovation...
But because of lack of capital.
So what's standing in the way of finance for green entrepreneurs?
According to a 2017 research paper by Linda Bergset, these two factors contribute to challenges financing sustainable startups:
A lack of business qualification
A lack of market orientation
"For sustainability-driven startups, there is a need for continued professionalization".
“While sustainable entrepreneurs/teams who are more motivated by their contribution towards sustainability than by earnings may have thorough knowledge of social or environmental issues, a very pertinent academic background and may be highly qualified, they may lack business qualification.”
“One consequence of this may be that aspects like marketing strategy and financial plan are given too little prominence in investment proposals and business plans.”
And as a result? They lose out on finance opportunities to their less-sustainable rivals. The thing is that it doesn't matter how groundbreaking your idea is... The only way to create a sustained positive impact is by convincing the right people to help you build it.
This challenge manifests itself when we realise it’s not happening in isolation: As more and more sustainability-driven initiatives are born, we need to access more capital from outside the green bubble than ever before to turn them into a reality. And if we’re still playing the relationship of donor-charity or philanthropist-recipient rather than investor-business, these ideas are going to be halted in their tracks.
At scale, this holds back the growth of the entire impact ecosystem — the fundamental shift which is going to help us prevent a cataclysmic global disaster due to climate change, biodiversity collapse, resource depletion and all the catalytic challenges wrapped up in these challenges.
Why branding is essential for Climate Tech businesses
The difference between a scalable business and a innovative product is a brand.
By building a brand, not a product, you can give your sustainable solution the best chance of scaling and realizing it’s impact. To take your Climate Tech solution to the world, you’ll need access to capital, top talent, and strong partnerships with people who believe your vision.
Brands can be exponentially more valuable than products themselves. The reason being is that products compete solely on facts and figures. They appeal to our rational decision-making process. Brands on the other hand compete with stories that are 22x more likely to be remembered and appeal to our emotions.
We know from numerous studies that human beings are emotional creatures. It’s what sets us aside from the rest of the animal kingdom. And it’s what drives us to make irrational decisions regardless of price or perceived gain. We know that human beings make almost every single decision based on their emotions.
So no matter how much impact your product can create or that the metrics show your product is how many times better than any other on the market, it’s only going to get you part of the way there when you’re looking to convince people to join your journey.
Over the past few years, I’ve worked with dozens of Climate Tech startups and impact-driven entrepreneurs and I’ve seen them make the same mistakes over and over again.
Mistakes stem from the fact that you’re far more likely to be an academic, an engineer, a scientist or even an activist than a commercial strategist. And if you’re in this boat, then you’re more likely to give your product or innovation more attention than the commercial side of your business.
But… and let me be very clear here: The startups that scale are the ones that build a brand around their sustainable innovation (Tesla, Oatly, Beyond Meat, Impossible Burger, EVBox, Vattenfall, Lime, Climeworks, The Ocean Cleanup, Edge, Greentown Labs), not just a product (electric vehicles, oat milk, plat based burgers, charging stations, renewable energy, electric scooters, carbon capture, ocean plastic, sustainable buildings, green ventures).
Why build a brand, not just a product?
The challenge with building a brand is that it’s an intangible asset.
As Climate Tech entrepreneurs, sustainability-driven founders and cleantech professionals are (at times) intensely product-focused and technically-oriented this makes it extremely difficult for them to commit time and/or resources to building one.
However, a brand is one of the most valuable things your company can have.
A brand is worth many times the value of the company itself. It is “the capitalized value of the trust between the company and the consumer,” James E. Burke, CEO of Johnson & Johnson.
A company can itself be measured by the building they own, the technology stack they use, the people they employ, their equipment and their intellectual property. A product can be measured by the revenue it generates each year. However, whilst it is difficult to measure a brand’s true value, it’s not uncommon to hear that it can be valued anywhere between 2x and 100x (or more) the value of the company itself.
Take for instance take Tesla. Tesla is wildly valuable, yet their values far exceed their sales. That’s because their current valuations are not just based on current sales. Rather, their worth is based on their potential — or their future sales. In our case, their potential is also based on their future impact, which is why measuring your project impact is becoming so important. When combined, they present your brand’s equity.
Why climate tech businesses should invest in branding In the startup phase?
Whilst every startup is different, they’ve all got a lot in common. They’re trying to break into the mainstream because they believe the world would be better if they did.
They all want to challenge the way things are currently done and put forward a new solution to an existing problem. And they all struggle with time and money.
Investing in branding early on can save you both in the long run, by helping you:
To differentiate your company from the competition. When it comes down to it, your customers or clients are human beings. When they're not shopping for your product or service, they're busy picking their kids up from daycare or polishing off that annual report.
They don't have the mental capacity to judge and measure exactly how impactful or sustainable your solution is compared to the competition.
When all product features align, how you present yourself can be a decisive way to set yourself apart from the competition.To attracts the right investors. Warren Buffett's famously said that one of the most important things for investors is to invest in businesses with a wide and long-lasting moat around it.
What Buffett's describing is a proverbial deep, wide ditch that defends your company.
In this metaphor, your moat is your brand. And, just like with a medieval castle, your brand protects those on inside and their riches from outside attack.To demonstrate leadership. Potential partners are looking for leaders to express long-term thinking, not just in their cause, but also in their business.
Because sustainability is a business value, not a market differentiator, they need to see more than just a sustainable solution. Especially in our fast-paced, internet-driven community, you as an impact entrepreneur have to show your adaptability to concepts outside of your specialty.
A brand helps you protect your long-term market share and investment in it now indicates that you’ll take this matter seriously in the future.To leave a good impression. Every time anyone has an interaction with your company, it leaves an impression. The only thing in your hands is whether you take ownership of this, or leave it up to chance.
If you're looking to grow, a bad impression can be a make-or-break moment. A good impression however can result in a check with lots of zeros on the end. Branding is when you decide to take control of the interactions which your company has with the public.
It can be the difference between whether that impression is “they seem like they’re in control of their future”, or “they’re inconsistent and they’ll never get anywhere”.
But I've Already Got A Logo?!?
If you're building a company that's going to take a bite out of some of the biggest challenges of our time, then chances are you're not going to be able to do it alone. Whether that's by partnering with governments, private investors or venture capital is up to you. But with the current state of affairs, we need to scale our impact as quick as possible...
...and unfortunately, those of us who weren't a founding partner at Paypal have to compete on a level playing field.
At the same time, branding is, for many, the last thing on their mind. They’re busy looking for proof of concept, product-market fit, or early adopters of their new solution. They’re busy hustling to keep the doors open rather than bother with the interior design. So as your market develops, is it branding that you should focus your attention on?
Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room: Branding is not your logo, the colors you use or the font on your business card. Or at least not just. Branding is about the stories that you put into the world. It's what people say about you and your business when you're not there to defend yourself. The visual assets are simply shorthand for these stories.
A strong brand's stories are it's most valuable assets. Stories that are easily digested and shared. If you're a B2C company, it's stories that your customers can tell their friends about your product. If you're a B2B company, it's stories which your potential customer can help them sell the investment to their boss.
For instance, think about Patagonia. They have a logo and colours. But when you see them what do you imagine? I think about their Black Friday Sale where 100% of their global retail and online sales went directly to grassroots environmental nonprofits. When I think about Netflix, I think about the time when their founders pitched to Blockbuster only to be laughed out of the room. When I think about BrewDog, I think about the time they stuffed 11 bottles of beer inside a deceased wild animal and sold them for hundreds of pounds.
Now not everyone agrees with these stories. Followers of liberal economics would be repelled by Paragonia's actions. Netflix's story appeals to the entrepreneur in us. And BrewDog...well, it's divisive, to say the least.
You either find your own values in them or you don't: Stuffing beer in dead squirrels probably isn't your cup of tea, but you'd be damn stupid to believe that those bottles didn't sell out in minutes.
There's one thing that binds them all together; they're memorable because they don't explain a problem or a product.
“Telling stories is a key concept in branding because your stories are your strategy. ”
The thing is that until they do, no one cares about your product or solution. Let me say that again… NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT. The only way to change that is to tell them why they should care. And if you want to be successful, then you’d damn sure better tell them something interesting.
People invest in solving their problems and want to tell a story about when it's done. The story that you tell shouldn't be aimed at everyone. If you have to water down your message so that it appeals to everyone, you've already failed.
But that doesn't mean that you should confuse your audience with industry-specific jargon either.
Your stories are your strategy for climate tech growth
Biologically, human beings are far more likely to remember stories over facts. This means that to avoid death-by-numbers and to help keep your audience engaged when you’re talking about your startup, a storytelling narrative is key.
A great story is easy to remember and recite. A great story can be the difference between a startup that receives investment and a startup that doesn't. And a great story can be the difference between a lineup of alternative straws. But it's not about the sustainability of your service or product, because in time, that will fade and you'll blend into a bland background of others who forgot to tell a great story.
A strategic brand narrative leverages storytelling to get the facts your business wants to present across in an engaging way.
As impact entrepreneurs, we are prone to talk in facts and numbers instead of telling stories. However, people react rationally to numbers but they react emotionally to stories and moving someone emotionally is far more valuable than doing so rationally. Emotions are the driving force behind decision-making.
Research shows that messages delivered as stories can be up to 22x more memorable than just facts — because they engage our emotions and our emotions drive us to take action.
Facts, on the other hand, envoke our rational and our rational brain exists to help you make calculated choices. However, rationality only represents about 20% of human decision-making.
A problem arises because if you’re a sustainability expert you’re likely to be a fact-teller, not a storyteller and that’s a problem. When we continue to speak in numbers, rather than tell stories, we’re hurting our own cause.
Let’s take the existence of climate change as an example. At the moment, it’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight. On one side — the side that relies on science — we talk about the hottest year on record, the weight of plastic in the ocean, and the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
On the other side, they tell stories. Stories about the negative impact of actions on peoples lives. Stories about the dangers of wind turbines. And stories about the danger to the global economic system if we pivot from fossil fuels.
For too long, this negative narrative has been weaponized by proponents of the status quo. And we keep trying to counter it by throwing facts against the wall. We’ve known the science for over 40 years, we can’t keep relying on facts to achieve our climate goals. We need to start framing our solutions in better narratives. We have to tell stories of the opportunities that come with change, not the challenges.
Those building a sustainable future can’t rely on numbers anymore, we have to tell stories. A strategic narrative is your brand’s foundations told in the form of a story.
It’s the basis of the commercial side of your brand and it intends to harness the same narratives that both Greek mythology and Hollywood has used for centuries.
How? By introducing the context first and setting the scene, then introducing characters, creating conflict and showing the journey — not telling.
Only once these parameters have been set do you introduce your product’s features. When you begin your sales deck or investment pitch with a product’s features, you’re likely to bore your audience to no avail.
So how can you build a scalable Climate Tech brand?
You have six mechanisms at your disposal to build a moat around your Climate Tech business. Each is a process rather than a lever, but when utilized correctly, together they can be extremely powerful and valuable.
In my experience, every startup is at a different stage with each of these concepts, so what I recommend doing is an organizational sweep to determine your position before moving forward. They are the basis of the Impact Brand Building Methodology:
Brand Foundations. Solid foundations mean a solid house. A brand’s foundations are its stories, its vision of the future, and its purpose to exist, split into internal and external.
The internal aspect is your brand’s manifesto. The external aspect is your brand’s strategic narrative. In my experience, a manifesto is a fantastic way to exemplify all of these concepts together in a story: It’s the why, the how and the what all in one piece of copy, told with passion.
By connecting your own experiences as a founder with the things that drove you to start your business, you can create a solid base from which to scale.
The second part is your brand’s strategic narrative — the story that you will tell externally.
A strategic narrative wraps the facts you want to get across (your product’s features and impact metrics) within a story (of your view of the future). These two will in turn be the basis for many of the other branding endeavours like creating a brand position or determining your visual identity.Target Audience. Defining your target audience is an essential mechinism in business development, yet one which many startups downright fail to do.
The process itself, market segmentation, can be defined as the aggregation of prospective buyers into groups or segments with common needs and who respond similarly to a marketing action.
Often, impact entrepreneurs struggle to define our target audience due to an unwillingness to narrow their scope of impact. We want to help everyone. But if everyone is your ideal customer, how do you tailor your message appropriately?
Segmenting your audience and pinpointing exactly who you’re going to target lends clarity to the rest of the branding process.Strategic Messaging. Strategic messaging is the process of crafting a message or a story for a specific decision-maker in your target market.
Once you have a clear idea of exactly who your target market is, it’s time to find out what problems they have and how you can craft stories using your product as a solution.
By tackling the major pitfalls of impact communicating with strategic messaging, this step shows how you can add value with your communications and position yourself in your target audience’s mind as a viable solution when it comes time to buy.Brand Platform. A brand’s platform is where all this information comes to life. All the work you’ve put in building your foundatons, defining your target audience and birthing your strategic message. And will be the middle ground between marketing and sales. It’s the combination of your visual identity, your digital assets and your social presence.
Whilst I’ve said many times that a brand may be much more than its logo, its colours, your look and feel are a key component of differentiating your brand. But it goes deeper than that, just like a person’s identity isn’t only visual. Your brand identity includes your personality (e.g. is your brand optimistic, genuine?) as well as its tone of voice.
All of these concepts feed into your website’s design, your written content, your customer funnel — i.e. your customer’s journey from completely unaware to customer — and which social platforms you choose to own.Thought Leadership. A major part of building a brand is having a founder who inspires, builds a network and exudes confidence. Personal branding is 50% of the work.
A strong brand starts with a compelling brand vision — the way a brand wants to present itself — and a founder that embodies that vision is a valuable asset.
Speaking opportunities, publishing articles and engaging in meaningful debate around your niche are all ways in which you can tell your brand’s story and boost your reputation as a thought leader. It’s the way you can position yourself, rather than let those outside do it for you.Public Relations. As public relations lies outside your direct sphere of influence, it’s the most difficult aspect of brand building to tame.
Getting press coverage is difficult when no one cares about your product or solution. It’s downright frustrating when you send out 100 emails and you get no responses. But by leveraging your personal brand and using it as a stepping stone, you can begin your PR journey with the best foot forward.
By harnessing this strategic branding medium, you can actively get third-party verified information in front of your potential partners, investors and clients. Furthermore, press coverage can be extremely valuable when the right story is presented to the right person.
For instance, Bill Gates began his journey in water & sanitation after reading a new article. When employed correctly, this medium can fuel explosive interest in your topic of interest and can assert your position as a viable option to confront the challenge.
A brand is like a house. The more you invest in it now, the more it will be worth in the future. And similarly, to build an impactful brand, you first have to start by laying solid foundations. Your brand's foundations are:
The reason why you exist
Your unique view of the future
The stories that you tell
However, most startups & founders skip this part and go straight to decorating. In the next section, we will look at the foundations of a brand and how you can use brand storytelling to craft your internal brand strategy.