It seems as if almost every day heralds another bad news story about the environment. After years of apathy, global warming and concern about the environment generally has at last reached the mainstream public consciousness, spurred on by intense media interest.
Yet interest is not the same as action, and the failure to achieve universal commitment to the Kyoto Treaty highlights the lack of global political will to make the environment a top priority. Influential groups within many nations remain to be convinced of the necessity for environmental action, either because they don’t believe the predictions of catastrophe, or because they consider the steps required are too great an infringement on economic health and vitality. This latter group, unsurprisingly, includes many representatives of business, and the prospect of corporate resistance conjures up images of fat-cat directors pumping out CO2 and burning rainforests, whilst laughing all the way to the bank.
This is why it is all the more surprising that one UK body playing a pioneering role in the fight against climate change actually emerged from industry. Although the Carbon Trust is largely funded by government, its genesis lies within the private sector, and it is increasingly generating its own revenues through an innovative approach to service development and provision. It’s both a rare good news story about the environment, and an even rarer example of the philanthropic nature of businesses.
The main objectives of the Carbon Trust are to promote awareness of environmental issues to UK businesses, and assist them in lowering their carbon emissions. Whilst these environmental concerns take precedence, there are also some key business objectives, designed specifically to demonstrate the fiscal benefits of reducing emissions and to provide backing for new initiatives that will have positive environmental impacts.
In this respect, the Carbon Trust is rather schizophrenic: attempting to be both an environmental crusader and a business champion. As a result, its marketing has presented a very unusual set of challenges, one which has been met from the outset by Peter Hambly, its director of marketing & communications.
Given the Carbon Trust’s high profile, born out of big-budget TV ad campaigns, Peter Hambly is not the flamboyant character that might be expected: he certainly lacks the corporate arrogance often associated with prominent brands. Hambly has a down-to-earth, pragmatic air, but also a sense of quiet determination and passion for the organisation and its various causes. My role at the Carbon Trust is not just about delivering what has already been set out: I also have an opportunity to contribute to the vision, Hambly explains. It’s allowed me to think broadly and to take risks.
When he met B2B Marketing, Hambly was tastefully but unremarkably dressed in a simple blue suit that would fit in amongst the management consultants, lawyers and academics that are the Carbon Trust’s neighbours in its Aldwych offices. This location where the City of London meets the West End offers a broader metaphor for the organisation: it wants to rub shoulders with big businesses, but at the same time be set apart, as a pioneer of environmentalism with one foot in government. It’s a balancing act that requires skilful management.
Peter Hambly joined the Carbon Trust in 2001 as head of marketing, and as its third employee, a fact that he says, demonstrates that marketing has been recognised as an important support function from day one. The Carbon Trust itself was established in partnership by business and the Government with the objective of helping UK companies understand and address issues of climate change. Its status as an organisation is ‘limited by guarantee’, which means that although most of its funding is provided by government (through the Carbon Change Levy) it is neither formally owned nor controlled by the state. Significantly, it also means that the Carbon Trust can be flexible enough to generate its own revenue.
Back in 2001, however, one of its first tasks was to take on the government’s existing Energy Efficiency Best Practice Programme. This was quite a dry initiative, aimed at driving best practice. We remodelled it, to make it more responsive and to make more people take action.
Yet the team at the then embryonic Carbon Trust quickly came to the conclusion that the level of understanding of the issues and their repercussions was simply not high enough to drive action on the scale required. There is a complex relationship between carbon emissions and energy efficiency, and we realised that we had an education job on our hands, Hambly explains. Five years ago, the concept of carbon was more difficult to understand than it is now. We also had to show that reducing carbon emissions was not just a good thing to do for its own sake: it is a good business decision as it can save companies money.
The arguments, it would seem, are compelling; although the communications challenge was more complex than anticipated. As a consequence a greater emphasis on marketing would be required, resulting in the big-budget campaigns seen in more recent years.
Today Hambly describes the Carbon Trust’s objectives as three-fold. To raise awareness of climate change amongst the business community; to encourage and facilitate carbon emissions reductions; and to advise on energy efficiency. In short, it had to make UK companies become environmentally aware, both in their thoughts and their actions: this is a significant undertaking, although as Hambly explains, the need is urgent.
As the organisation has matured, and the recognition of the importance of marketing’s role has increased, so its marketing function has correspondingly developed. Hambly was promoted to director of marketing & communications in 2003, and now heads up a team of 12 within the 150-strong organisation.
He describes current marketing objectives as: to get carbon-mitigation up the business agenda; to raise the Carbon Trust’s profile in this context; and to get businesses to use our products and services.
Such aims are broad enough, but are complicated by the depth and diversity of the audience, which ranges from SMEs, right up to the largest corporates. These different extremes have very different cultures, priorities and decision making processes, so whilst Hambly has significant resources at his disposal (around 10 per cent of the Carbon Trust’s total budget) it has to be spread thinly. Larger companies are able to think much more clearly about the issues, whilst smaller companies are more concerned about the profits, he explains. For smaller companies the communications challenge is much more difficult.
TV, however, is far from the only medium employed by the Carbon Trust: much emphasis is placed on DM, the Internet, PR and events. The latter three in particular serve the education remit well. Hambly says communications with smaller and larger business are increasingly being split up: and targeted with messages that will appeal to their differing priorities. With small businesses it is about energy management, with larger ones it is about carbon management.
Whilst the Carbon Trust has spent significant sums on marketing, Hambly is confident that the results have been good. To date 170 large businesses have used our services, representing 30 per cent of the FTSE100. We’ve carried out 5000 on-site surveys for businesses with energy bills of over £50,000. Our call centre is receiving 20,000 calls a year and rising.
He also refutes suggestions that, because most of its funding comes via government, its marketing activity does not have to be as measurable as that of private sector firms, or accountable. In other words: he says there is no bottomless well of cash. Our chairman, Ian McAllister, is a former chair of Ford UK, current chair of Network Rail and has a marketing background. He looks very carefully at the results our marketing generates we have to justify everything.
However, he does acknowledge that there are differences in how the Carbon Trust’s marketing success is measured. Most companies are judged on their profits. We are judged on the amount of carbon we identify. This is our bottom-line. Since 2001, we’ve identified 3.9 million tonnes of C02, with a value of £390 million.
Just as the marketing director of the Carbon Trust is an unconventional role in an unconventional organisation, Peter Hambly has had an unusual background for a marketer. His first professional role began during university, in Liverpool, when he joined a company called Splash selling music and film posters to shops, locally and ultimately internationally.
Although lucrative, the poster business was far from the limit of the ambitions of the company’s founders, and the organisation soon evolved into running fashion centres. This proved so successful that property quickly became the organisation’s primary business, and having rebranded as Urban Splash, it has gone on to become one of the prime movers in city centre regeneration.
Hambly, however, jumped ship in 1990 to work for the Labour party, where he was ultimately responsible for marketing to voters in marginal constituencies in the run up to Labour’s landslide 1997 victory.
Although the election victory speaks volumes about the success of his work, Hambly’s pride in the achievement is strictly professional, he says, not ideological. It was more about the organisation: it could have been for any party. It was about marketing, rather than politics.
Perhaps surprisingly, given Labour’s well-documented obsession with all things media, marketing dropped way down the agenda after the election win, and Hambly felt it was time to move on. In 1999, he took on a role at the NSPCC to launch and run its ‘Full stop’ campaign.
With its big emphasis on hard-hitting and high-profile media and awareness rather than fund-raising messages, ‘Full stop’ caused much controversy in the world of charities. It also offers an interesting parallel with Hambly’s later work at the Carbon Trust, which he readily acknowledges. To get a change in behaviour, you have to raise awareness. I learnt a lot in this role.
He describes his time at NSPCC as very rewarding, but a bit harrowing. I went to some of the centres and spoke to the volunteers. It was emotionally quite exhausting, especially with kids of my own.
After five years at the Carbon Trust during which time it has evolved considerably Hambly appears to have considerable enthusiasm and passion for the organisation, and its objectives. More importantly, he is committed to the challenges that lie ahead. These will include not only encouraging more organisations to take action on carbon change, but also to increase the commercial basis of its operations, which will mean it is less reliant on state funding. These include development of its more commercial aspects, including an investment fund providing funding for companies developing products and services, which match the Carbon Trust’s objectives. The aim of this is to demonstrate that you can make money from a low-carbon economy, he explains.
To date, the fund has contributed £5 million to the organisation’s coffers, which is significant, although Hambly acknowledges this is still a very small percentage of its overall budget. We will rely on public money for the foreseeable future, he acknowledges.
So given that the government picks up the tab, does he see himself as a civil servant? Absolutely not, says Hambly. We aspire to be seen as a business when talking to others. We are independent, and this allows us to take a broad view.
A further description that he does not recognise in himself is environmentalist. From the moment the Carbon Trust started, we were clear that we did not want to be seen as a green organisation. We are a business, not Greenpeace. But now green issues have become part of the mainstream, and people are more aware. This, he acknowledges, is only good news for the Carbon Trust, and suggests its crusade will become progressively easier to fight. Hambly adds with a smile: At home it is my kids who keep telling me to switch the lights off!
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