Sustainability for Brands

We help brand, product, and marketing executives stay two steps ahead of expectations from retailers, consumers, investors, and other critical external stakeholders.

Sustainability for Brands

We help brand, product, and marketing executives stay two steps ahead of expectations from retailers, consumers, investors, and other critical external stakeholders.

Third Partners is the leading one-stop solution for brand owners that need to build, substantiate, promote, and protect a premium value proposition through positive impact.

According to leading market research findings, a substantial 87% of consumers place enough importance on various aspects of environmental sustainability performance to have a significant impact on their purchasing decisions.  

Today’s best-in-class sustainability programs align the core brand identity with major global, cultural, and environmental moments and provide the necessary evidence to support the brand’s unique value proposition in otherwise crowded markets.

What are the benefits of sustainability and ESG programs for brands?

There are hundreds of individual considerations that fall under the umbrella of corporate and product sustainability. Our highly customized approach to ESG and sustainability implementation for brands helps you quickly narrow the field.

Third Partners teams up with brand, product, and marketing executives to build authentic sustainability strategies:

Improve Customer Insight On ESG & Sustainability Issues

Obtain consumer insights around product sustainability features, sustainable packaging, and more.

Customize Action Plans for Social & Environmental Impact

Create custom programs that turn your brand into a platform for positive change on climate, social impact, and more.

Lead Product Design Innovation

Innovate specific products and services to improve positive impact through circularity, recyclability, use of renewable energy, and materials. We provide decision support including cost-benefit analysis of alternative materials, sustainability standards, and certifications.

Prepare Targeted ESG Reporting for Critical Stakeholders

Report accurately to stakeholders including retailers, customers, raters & rankers, and buyers. We help organizations manage increases in reporting requirements by providing support for data management, retailer-specific reporting, and other challenges that are not solved through broad spectrum ESG reports.

Develop & Validate Sustainable Product & Marketing Claims

There are specific guidelines for developing authentic data-driven claims. Third Partners helps brands go beyond compliance. We ensure your claims are backed not only by appropriate data, evidence, and certifications but also by thoughtful and intentional actions within the business, supply chain, and retail ecosystem.

Protect brand equity and improve sustainability performance along multiple dimensions.

Our comprehensive approach to sustainability consulting for brands

1. Retailer sustainability reporting

Retailers require more information than ever on the sustainability performance of your suppliers and products. We help connect the dots between your operations and merchandising teams. Our stakeholder communications services help you respond with accurate data and rigor to all retailer-driven sustainability disclosure frameworks, surveys, and RFIs including THESIS, CDP, EcoVadis, and more.

2. Data-driven impact campaigns

We design and run impact campaigns for some of the world’s most valuable brands, confronting global challenges including climate change and ocean plastic pollution. These programs combine rigorous technical analysis with elements of cause-related marketing and philanthropy to propel greater awareness, action, and impact that you can measure and celebrate.

3. Product carbon footprinting

Carbon footprinting is rarely the right way to differentiate on-pack. When GHG emissions matter to your stakeholders, we help you execute the right way. From data analysis to public-facing claims, we help brand owners navigate the complex world of climate, net-zero, and carbon-neutral science communications.

4. Product environmental risk assessment and innovation

We provide guidance on design frameworks, standards, certifications, and material risk mitigation to minimize the connection between products, materials, and issues like forced labor, deforestation, and environmental harm. Our product innovation process takes into account risks and opportunities across the full life cycle, from raw material sourcing to end-of-life.

5. Customized market research and stakeholder engagement

We provide custom research into buyer, retailer, and consumer sustainability preferences for products and packaging. Our role ranges from direct engagement to designing surveys and studies on multiple platforms. Materiality assessments are another way we engage suppliers and downstream partners to give you deep insight into current and future priorities.

Authentic sustainability for brand strategies protect brand equity and improve product performance along multiple dimensions.

Sustainable Branding Case Study: Honest Company

The Honest Company, an iconic baby and beauty brand, sought to incorporate sustainability into its fast-paced growth strategy. The company approached Third Partners to formalize environmental sustainability across their product portfolio, brand identity, and operations. To achieve those goals, Third Partners conducted a comprehensive sustainability assessment, industry benchmarking, and workshops with senior leadership to establish global best practices.

Our team then delivered a customized three-year sustainability action plan for integrating sustainability seamlessly across its entire enterprise. The plan included specific recommendations for fostering accountability and promoting ESG best practices. Third Partner’s guidance gave “The Honest Company” the direction it needed to enhance their environmental sustainability practices and further establish themselves as a leader in the industry.

Sustainability Branding FAQ

Sustainability can be a powerful tool for businesses in today’s market, as many consumers are increasingly conscious of the environmental and social impacts of their purchases. Companies that effectively incorporate sustainability into their branding can differentiate themselves from competitors, attract environmentally conscious consumers, and enhance their reputation as responsible corporate citizens. However, it’s important for companies to back up their sustainability branding with concrete actions and transparency to build trust among consumers.

One of our senior consultants will lead a discovery meeting to understand and diagnose the challenges or opportunities your brand is facing. During the call, we will discuss fundamentals of product marketing and positioning, including the competitive landscape, your level of awareness of stakeholder expectations on sustainability, and points of friction for your company. Following the initial call, we may organize additional meetings or workshops with other internal stakeholders to help build alignment and shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities. Lastly, we’ll create a customized scope of work that addresses your challenges through a combination of original research, program design, and implementation support, which can take many different forms.

Our clients include recognizable brands in nearly every consumer-facing industry including CPG, health and beauty, apparel, food & ag, and pharma. Our business-to-business customers include construction products and materials, professional services, healthcare devices and supplies, and many others. 

In the long run, market share, brand awareness, top line revenue, and product-specific metrics such as NPS (net promoter score) are the key metrics our clients use to gauge brand health. Our sustainability strategies play a supporting role and have very specific metrics, starting points, and endpoints. 

For example, a sustainable packaging innovation project will result in concrete before-and-after metrics such as tons of plastic avoided, tons of landfill waste avoided, percent increase in recyclability in a particular market, etc. There are also less concrete projects such as aligning a brand with a certain social or environmental cause in order to generate donations of time, money, or to drive a certain positive outcome. A program such as this produces a different set of impact metrics derived from the outcomes of the individual philanthropic or charitable causes and their activities.

Our sustainable branding clients are typically mission-driven organizations who are already having some form of positive environmental and social impact relative to peers in the same industry. 

Our objective is to help our clients become market share leaders, using data and transparency to support authentic storytelling at a corporate level, product level, or both. We do not help companies “cover up” negative impacts of their products or operations and we expect our clients to share this commitment. Clients must follow all applicable laws and regulations in the markets where they operate; for example, truth in advertising laws that govern how environmental claims must be supported by specific proof points. Beyond compliance, we expect our clients to follow all ESG reporting and disclosure frameworks that apply to their sector, size, and stakeholder audience. These guidelines include, but are not limited to, ISSB, SASB, TCFD, GRI, CDP, UNGC, GHG Protocol, various ISO standards and others.

Contact Third Partners to get started with optimizing and implementing your company’s sustainability branding

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Additional Clients and Work

Manufacturing

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ESG & Private Equity

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Public Companies

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Sustainability in Healthcare

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ESG for Startups

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