Over the last few years, ESG has been the topic of much debate, division and controversy. From political backlash and investors stepping away to greenwashing scandals and tightening regulations, it’s never been far from the headlines.
And it’s not going away any time soon, including in regions like the Middle East, where it is still slowly gaining pace.
ESG literacy, however, remains low, and in the realm of communications, it is often misunderstood.
ESG Mena’s Sal Jafar recently spoke to Boudy Nasrala, the Managing Partner of WonderEight, a global branding and digital agency, to hear about how the communications landscape is evolving and why making ESG accessible is more important than ever.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Boudy, to give our audience a bit of background about the company, walk us through its inception, operations and footprint.
We started 24 years ago, and we do everything around communication and marketing, such as branding, consulting, strategy, marketing, social media, and film production.
My brother and I started very young in Beirut, Lebanon, our first office.
Then we opened in Dubai in 2012, London – UK, Riyadh – Saudi Arabia, and 2 years ago we opened our San Francisco – USA office.
Why San Francisco?
When we became an aligned company, our calling was to help companies or brands that create a positive impact on humanity and the planet. We saw an opportunity to start learning from the other side of the world.
Being present in the bustling hub in Silicon Valley has opened our eyes to much newer and bespoke ways of communication, whether it is on sustainability, innovation and future of food. This has revolutionized the way we’re servicing clients a lot.
It’s a long-term plan, for the next five years, but we’re almost there.
From the first year, we were able to partner with one of the biggest startups in San Francisco, Climax Food, which is the future of plant-based cheese. It’s the equivalent of real French cheeses likes Blue and Chevre!
With the power of AI, they were able to do precision fermentation and achieve an end result that is not rubbery or made from oils but from real fermentation between different plant-based products, giving you a real cheese that ferments, rots and smells like French cheeses.
The second client we were able to service and also to partner with was Switch Foods. It’s the first and biggest Emirati plant-based meat company in the GCC, and it’s now backed by the government.
The amazing thing about Switch is love at first sight. We met a founder that is dedicated, passionate and transparent, and we discovered how clean the label of Switch products is.
It was a great opportunity for WonderEight to partner with a client, and we did. We invested in equity (same as we did with Berkeley’s Climax). This helped us to be closer to them and put in the extra effort we needed to, without counting the fees, and I’m happy to tell you that we learned a lot about this business when we got clients on board.
We learned a lot on how to communicate the health claims and the ESG pillars, how to get the message through. We learned how to create messages that resonate with the consumer.
At Gulfood Green, I’m asking people about ESG, carbon footprint, and sustainability. No one knows how to answer me on this, and they are not to blame.
Communication agencies like us (and the vendors themselves of course) need to create smarter and more approachable ways to deliver those messages.
I think there’s still a lot of work to be done by agencies like us to communicate what you know, whether to big corporations or to the end consumer.
This encouraged us this year to help an initiative we love, Chapter Zero. It’s a worldwide initiative that teaches corporate management about ESG, and we’re offering our services for free.
What are the biggest challenges you are encountering with regard to ESG branding strategies?
The first one comes from the clients themselves when the client comes to us with this request.
When they come to us to help them with their ESG communication, they have had a bad experience. They think that it’s unachievable, and they have a bad perception of it.
So we’re going back from the marketing management to the upper layers, which hold the power.
That’s the biggest challenge. This is why we are working with people in Chapter Zero to educate these world-level people on knowing that this also has ROI, but it needs time. It’s a long-term plan.
Tell me about the role of social media in promoting ESG. How is it evolving in the Middle East?
Social media is accessible to everyone, all you need is a phone and a free account, and this creates a plethora of fake content or just weak/un-referenced info. Our role is to advise people to follow through when they read an article, go to the source, see the background of who wrote it, and dig deeper. Great content is already available in the region, like ESG Mena for example, but there is still a way to go, in order to compensate for the misinformation.
More broadly, how are you encouraging people to overcome obstacles and persuade them that it is time today, not tomorrow, to start with ESG and sustainability?
At WonderEight, we have achieved through the years the perfect balance between strategy and execution.
We’re not pure strategists, who give you endless documentation that you cannot execute, but we’re not pure execution either, without strategic thinking. We’re in the sweet spot or practicality VS great ROI.
Our strategy arm is augmented by our network of investors, where we are matchmaking startup and investors, between the Middle East and the West Cost. Which comes complement our support in branding marketing and communication.
We are happy to have built a small but effective network of VCs and private investors in the innovation, fintech and most importantly future of food, that has already served some of our key clients in the region.
A big part of our ESG conviction comes from our San Francisco office, where we have witnessed the success of real case studies with ROI that we can show and learn from.
Why shouldn’t this happen also here, in this region of the world where businesses are thriving, and innovation is exponentially accelerating!
Failure will happen, but it is the same ration of failure for innovation worldwide. You should not be afraid of it, 80% of new startups, or products will fail, but this is an accepted rule even in the healthiest of markets. We’re showing our partners that it’s okay to fail, but there are also a lot of opportunities and amazing successes.
What’s next for you?
Next for us is to be rooted deeper into being an aligned company, a company that will help in creating positive impact on the planet and humanity. Our dream is to become the best reference agency in this book.