How well can brands convince UAE’s Gen Z about their sustainability best practices?

How well can brands convince UAE’s Gen Z about their sustainability best practices?

Dubai’s hosting of Cop28 encouraged UAE businesses and brands to focus on the importance of their environmental agenda - and that’s a good thing.

For many UAE organisations, it provided an ideal PR vehicle to communicate their Environmental Social Governance strategies (ESG). However, some continue to operate a contrived greenwashing agenda, using this issue as a mere booster to their short and medium term PR, marketing and sales programs.

Astute business leaders are recognising the potential dangers of this and are starting to distance their brands and organisations away from it. Recently, the Unilever boss Hein Shumacher commented about how brands within the FMCG giant’s portfolio ‘will be encouraged to continue their environmental purpose as part of their overall brand proposition. But we will not force fit this across the entire portfolio. For some brands, it simply won’t be relevant’.

The problem with short term greenwashing is that today’s sophisticated and informed audiences can instantly spot an insincere marketing ploy, and that is particularly true of Gen Z. Labelled the first ‘digital natives’ by McKinsey – or the TikTok generation - most members of Gen Z are now in their mid-20s, are tech-savvy and are champions of sustainable consumer practices.