The home page of our, the Fire NBM, website states quite boldly and categorically:
‘If you want to grow your business and are looking for help, you’ve come to the right place’
This is what we aim to achieve for our clients and what we are good at, with a strong track record over the years. Most commercial businesses have growth as an ongoing objective, whether that be revenue, bottom line or similar. Standing still is not generally an ambition, though with ups and downs this can happen, and deliberately reducing in size/scale is also not generally viewed positively.
However, there can’t be many business people who do not have conversations about, or at least consider, the nature of their growth ambitions, and what impact they might have ‘on the planet’. And larger organisations are more and more in the spotlight regarding their Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) policy and actions.
As marketing folk at heart, this was very much brought home in the last few months by a Philip Kotler article, entitled ‘Degrowth: The Case for Constraining Consumption’. Kotler is affectionately known as the father of modern marketing, so for him to be questioning growth is quite something (degrowth is a very ugly word, in my opinion, but it is now a recognised movement and set of theories).
Kotler argues that growth, as the normally unquestioned goal in politics, economics and societies, will ‘ultimately lead to disaster in a world of diminishing resources’ and that the challenge is to ‘promote wellbeing, equity and sustainability as our guideposts in moving toward more sensible growth’. And marketing needs to play its part, and not just be the promoter of endless consumption.
It's clearly a complex and detailed series of issues, and not one we intend, or are qualified, to cover in any depth. Suffice to say that growth does not need to be linked to harmful emissions and climate degradation (and it is a key way to help reduce poverty), including so-called ‘green growth’.
‘Our World in Data’, a project of the Global Change Data Lab, has shown that more than 30 countries have already decoupled emissions from economic growth, though they don’t include, for instance, China and India and there is still much, much more to do:
We can all do our bit as consumers (to consume less!).
For businesses, there are several approaches to taking action towards greener, more climate friendly growth. As an example, CDP, a client of Fire NBM and perhaps more well known for ESG and carbon disclosure with major international brands, have launched a climate disclosure framework for SME scale organisations and a guide for environmental action.
Fire NBM will still support our clients to grow; what we are committing to, however, is to help them grow in the most sustainable (environmentally and financially) way possible.
There’s no reason why they shouldn’t thrive just as well.
If you’d like to discuss any growth related business challenges, do get in touch via the form below: