Sustainability communications: connect claims, evidence and creative

Your sustainability team has evidence. Your communications team needs a message people will understand. The challenge is connecting the two without losing the detail that makes the message trustworthy.

A clear evidence brief helps everyone do their job. It gives writers and designers a reliable basis for creative work, helps reviewers focus on the decisions they own and makes future updates easier to manage.

Start with the audience’s decision. Are you helping a buyer compare an offer, asking partners to join a programme or explaining progress to stakeholders? That purpose will guide which evidence matters and how much explanation people need.

Make the meaning of each claim explicit

For UK consumer-facing environmental marketing, the CMA’s Green Claims Code emphasises clarity, credible evidence and the information people need to make an informed choice. CAP’s environmental advertising rules also address substantiation, comparisons and the scope of a claim across a product’s life cycle.

In practical terms, your creative team needs to know exactly what has improved, where the evidence applies and what it does not establish. A narrow finding about one material should retain that boundary when it becomes a headline, image or campaign.

Build a small claims register

Use a shared document with one row for each claim you intend to communicate. The register should be usable by the person checking a social post as well as the person approving the technical detail. Include these fields.

• Proposed wording: Write the complete sentence people will see, including any comparison or qualification.
• Audience and use: State who will encounter it and in which format, such as a product page, report or advertisement.
• Evidence source: Record the report, measurement or supplier record that supports the wording, with its date and location.
• Scope: Identify the product, activity, location and reporting period covered by that evidence.
• Limits and conditions: Explain what needs to remain visible so the audience understands the claim accurately.
• Evidence owner: Name the person qualified to confirm the data, method and boundaries.
• Approved wording and reviewers: Record the version agreed by the relevant technical, communications and legal advisers.
• Review trigger: Set a date or event that requires another check, such as a supplier change or a new reporting period.

This creates a connection between the final communication and its supporting evidence. It also helps prevent a sentence approved for one context being reused in a different context where it means something broader.

Give complex programmes a clear communication structure

Some organisations need to explain a programme with several partners, activities and intended outcomes. In that situation, distinguish what the programme aims to achieve from what has already been delivered or measured.

Our brand and website work for the Rivers Trust’s Mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions programme supported a 23-partner initiative. The identity, guidelines and website provided a shared way to present the programme and its work. That is evidence of communication design and delivery; the programme’s environmental outcomes require their own evidence.

When briefing a similar project, give each content type a clear role: explain the purpose, describe current activity, report a supported result or invite a relevant next action. Readers can then understand both the direction of travel and the progress made.

Keep approval close to the published version

Agree who checks the evidence and who checks how the message will be understood. Technical sign-off and communications review answer different questions; both need the full context, including imagery and nearby wording.

Review representative final applications, particularly shortened versions. A qualification that appears clearly in a report may disappear when the same message becomes a small advertisement. Keep the approved version and its evidence reference together so the next person can reuse it responsibly.

Before your next campaign, select the three claims most central to the story and complete the register. Our campaign work can help turn approved evidence into clear, distinctive communications, with the relevant client specialists and advisers involved in verification. Bring us the audience, intended response and available evidence, and we can help define the creative brief.