What is Regenerative Branding?
How to Design New Systems and Stories to Regenerate our World
Regeneration has become a buzz word on the lips of many business and brand leaders. And for good reason. In many cases, sustainability strategies have only amounted to doing less harm. Emitting less carbon, using less energy, producing less waste.
For brands to really step up to the intersecting crises of climate change, equity, and justice, being less bad is not good enough. We need Regenerative Brands.
Regenerative Brands are a necessary evolution of “sustainable brands” and focus on making a net positive impact on people and the planet. Regeneration is a mindset that must be applied across the entirety of the business, from how we source materials to how we manufacture products, from the way we treat employees and partners to the way we use, re-use, share, repair and repurpose products over time.
In recent years regenerative agriculture has been breaking into the mainstream consciousness. Practices like no-till farming and planting cover crops can be traced back to indigenous wisdom that was more mindful of stewarding the land for the long term prosperity of all beings. Now we’re seeing that kind of long term, regenerative thinking making its way into other aspects of how we do business.
So what is regenerative branding?
If regenerative agriculture is a way of fixing one broken system, regenerative branding is how we use the vessel of a brand to redesign the systems and tell stories that transform culture. It’s taking a holistic approach to the role of a brand in order to meet human and societal needs, create additive business, social and planetary value, and shape beliefs, aspirations, behaviors – as well as our sense of identity, community, and cultural norms.
What does that look like in practice? It starts with becoming aware.
Aware
Regenerative branding begins with deep listening for the human needs and aspirations of your audience. The daily struggles of your customers. The ambitions of your employees. The nuanced challenges of all the stakeholders in the system in which you operate. It requires reflection on the role of the business and its impact on people and the environment – now, in the past, and into the future.
Empathetic listening to your internal team, your consumer, and to what’s emerging in culture can unlock the emotional truth in your business and dial up the humanity in your brand. It may reveal opportunities that you had not considered or turn hunches into strategic plans.
Through our work over the years with Target, BBMG has helped them adapt to new consumer desires for more sustainable choices and raise the bar on what a mass retailer can offer. Our research pinpointed feelings of ambivalence, guilt, and even remorse that consumers feel with all of the packaging and waste piling up in their lives. Target wanted to honor those experiences by making it easier and more delightful to access the products they need without the waste. BBMG helped design their Target Zero collection to make it simpler and more delightful to shop waste-free packaging products, and their participation with the Beyond the Bag initiative alongside Walmart, CVS, and other retailers is an ambitious collaboration to reinvent the retail bag and end plastic waste.
Additive
With clarity on your brand’s strengths, purpose, and unique role in society, regenerative branding then asks, how might your business be additive and give more than it takes in an interconnected, living ecosystem? It looks to unite what’s meaningful for consumers with what’s material to the business so that both can thrive long term.
Applying a regenerative lens can help integrate your business strategy with social and environmental impact to unlock new pathways for leadership. In our work with Macy’s, the retailer already had a strong history of community giving and volunteerism, but it had ambition to do more and revive its relevance for a new generation. The new social purpose platform we designed, Mission Every One, celebrates bold representation for all and includes a commitment to direct $5 billion by 2025 to their people, partners, products and programs to create a more equitable and sustainable future. Mission Every One has helped usher in a new era of positive impact for the company with more voice, choice and ownership including investing $30 million over five years to support entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups in the retail industry.
Alive
Successful regenerative branding will unleash the brand as a dynamic shaper of culture and enabler of positive behavior change. Regenerative brands are adaptable to changing norms and emerging possibilities. It may show up as invitations for creative co-creation with consumers or movement leaders, or collaboration with peers to solve a hairy industry challenge in service of a better future for all.
We’re impressed by the moves The North Face has made in recent years to embrace inclusivity and empower more people to explore the outdoors. Even our work with them to create The North Face Renewed recognized that refurbished apparel was not only a sustainability move, it was a way to make their gear more accessible to customers at a lower price point and build a more inclusive culture for outdoor exploration. In 2019, the brand created The Explore Fund Council to bring a more inclusive, co-creative approach to grantmaking, funding organizations like Adaptive Climbing Group and Native Women Running. These investments in cultural relevance, not just trend-chasing, have helped The North Face’s revenues climb even when other brands in the VF portfolio struggled.
5 Regenerative Brands to Watch
To help bring the concept of regenerative branding to life for you, here are five brands that caught our attention with their regenerative leadership and culturally-relevant brand campaigns and initiatives in 2023.
Coach embraces Circularity and Gen Z collaboration.
You don’t often see luxury brands talking (about) trash, but in their 2023 holiday campaign, Coach put a spotlight on textile waste to showcase the ethos behind Coachtopia, its sub-brand with a mission to reimagine their system for circularity. Not only is Coachtopia a collection of gorgeous and unique upcycled handbags made from recaptured and scrap materials, it’s an ongoing community hosted by Coach that includes Gen Z activists, artists, entrepreneurs and fashion enthusiasts coming together to innovate together with the brand. We can’t wait to see what’s next.
Tom Ford Beauty is accelerating a future free of plastic waste
Tom Ford’s Plastic Innovation Prize is helping design and scale seaweed-based packaging alternatives in partnership with Lonely Whale and brands including Stella McCartney, J.Crew, Vuori, Veronica Beard, and Burton. Now, Tom Ford’s Plastic Innovation Accelerator is beginning a cross-industry program to equip the three winning materials startups — Sway, Zerocircle, and Notpla — with the support needed to advance their innovations.
Angel City FC is here for its community
Angel City FC is one of the newest teams in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). Launched in 2022 in Los Angeles, this football club is mission-driven at its core. 10% of each corporate partner’s contribution goes to an LA community organization to support education, food security, sports equity, LGBTQ+ and gender equality, and more. In 2023 the club partnered with the brand Klarna on a capsule collection of upcycled apparel made from the epic tifo banner that was on display at the team’s inaugural game. ACFC continues to forge creative partnerships with brands, local nonprofits, and small businesses to help their community thrive.
Pure Leaf Tea helps women say no to unrealistic expectations
Pure Leaf Tea has planted its brand purpose in the idea of “No is Beautiful” – no shortcuts in making delicious tea, and no to anything but the finest ingredients including sourcing exclusively from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ tea estates. They’ve extended this ethos into their “No” Grants: to give women a little extra financial support to help them say “no” to unrealistic expectations. Pure Leaf’s awareness of the barriers women face from maternal care to self care, household work to job stress, is the inspiration behind the brand’s $1 million commitment to dismantle societal expectations that negatively impact women. And their 2023 partnership with author and mother Elaine Welteroth helped broaden the depth and reach of the campaign.
Crocs welcomes all on its journey to comfort without carbon
Colorful, comfortable, customizable Crocs have a brand ethos that “Everyone Should Be Comfortable In Their Own Shoes.” And with growing consumer demand for sustainable products, Crocs has expanded their “Comfort Without Carbon” commitment by launching a thoughtful takeback program that encompasses consumer research, redistributes usable shoes, and reworks their “Croslite” monomaterial into new products. And by launching the program across a range of locations that represent a cross-section of attitudes about climate change, the brand hopes to grow their awareness of how to best engage consumers in circularity. Their broad and iterative approach shows a real commitment to progress toward regeneration.
What other examples have you seen in the wild of brands taking a regenerative approach to their role in culture with systems change and stories that inspire participation? We’d love to hear from you – and let’s keep raising the bar for what regenerative brands can do.
This article was originally published December 20, 2022 and updated December 12, 2023.
