Sustainability
Strategic Intelligence for Sustainable Transformation
Why sustainability now demands strategic intelligence
Sustainability has moved irreversibly into the C‑suite. At the same time, increased transparency, regulation and AI‑enabled decision environments are reshaping how brands are researched, compared and chosen.
Sustainability signals are now more visible, more comparable and more consequential, making sustainability one of the fastest‑moving sources of both risk and opportunity for brands. Leaders need clarity to make confident decisions.
Our strategic intelligence approach
Our approach goes beyond diagnosing sustainability perceptions. It is designed to support decision‑making, prioritisation and action, grounded in Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth and our proven understanding of how brands create value.
By linking sustainability to Kantar’s Meaningful, Different and Salient framework, we deliver an equity‑led approach to sustainability intelligence, validated against commercial outcomes. As AI increasingly influences brand discovery and recommendation, our intelligence ensures sustainability signals are credible to people and trusted by the systems shaping brand choice.
Proven at scale
Our Strategic Intelligence is built on industry‑leading scale and continuity of evidence, including:
A database covering
brands, providing consumer‑led sustainability benchmarks that inform brand decisions, prioritisation and macro learning
More than
people interviewed across 41 countries and 66 categories through our syndicated sustainability studies
We worked with
brands in 2025 alone, to guide sustainability decisions linked to growth and brand performance
Our multi‑award‑winning portfolio moves brands from ESG to Equity, connecting sustainability strategy directly to brand value, competitive advantage and enterprise growth.
Our Solutions
Equity-led sustainability intelligence for brand growth
Make better sustainability decisions with an equity‑led view of brand performance. BrandSustainability provides a validated benchmark of your sustainability credentials and the likely contribution of sustainability perceptions to brand equity, grounded in Kantar’s Meaningful, Different and Salient framework.
What it helps you decide
BrandSustainability helps you answer:
- How strong are our sustainability credentials today, and where are we exposed to risk or rejection?
- Is sustainability strengthening our brand equity, or being underleveraged?
- Where should we focus to build Meaningful and Different associations through sustainability?
- How do we turn sustainability credentials into a clearer positioning and growth pathway?
Key Features
Benchmark your sustainability credentials
A robust benchmark of consumers’ overarching view of a brand’s sustainability credentials, balancing risk of rejection with opportunity for adoption. It provides a clear, comparable pulse on sustainability credibility and disruption risk.
Quantify equity contribution
An equity‑led measure that uses Kantar’s Meaningful, Different and Salient framework to assess the likely influence of sustainability perceptions on brand strength, relative to competitors.
Set priorities for brand growth through sustainability
Translate benchmarks into decision guidance. Identify where sustainability can build stronger Meaningful and Different associations, and where to focus to strengthen competitive advantage and brand growth.
See where sustainability reshapes your category and opportunity
A landmark syndicated study that helps leaders understand what matters most to people in their sector, where brands can credibly play, and how opportunity differs category by category. The Sustainability Sector Index provides consumer‑led, decision‑ready direction to set priorities, sharpen strategy and guide activation, grounded in a consistent cross‑market view of sustainability expectations and sector dynamics.
Within Kantar’s broader syndicated sustainability studies, the Sustainability Sector Index draws on more than 128,000 interviews across 41 countries and 66 categories, enabling robust sector‑level comparison and clarity on how sustainability expectations differ by category, market and level of sophistication.
Key Features
Set your sector‑specific sustainability direction
Understand which environmental and social topics matter most in your category and where your brand has the right to play. The Sustainability Sector Index helps you define strategic focus areas grounded in sector realities, not generic sustainability agendas.
Prioritise where to act
Identify the issues and levers most likely to build trust, reduce risk and create competitive advantage in your sector. By understanding how people perceive categories and brands today, you can prioritise actions that matter most.
Guide activation choices
Translate sector context into clearer decisions on how to show up. The Sustainability Sector Index provides a framework to sharpen activations, helping brands align messaging, tone and focus with sector‑specific expectations and levels of consumer sophistication.
Inclusion signals that unlock growth with underserved audiences
Understand how underserved communities experience your brand and where inclusion is strengthening or limiting growth. The Brand Inclusion Index enables brands to benchmark inclusion performance versus competitors, identify the most meaningful gaps to close, and prioritise actions that build relevance and growth with high‑potential populations. It combines a global ranking of inclusive brands with diagnostic insight at brand and category level to inform inclusion‑led brand strategy.
Key Features
Learn from brands leading on inclusion
Understand what good looks like in your category. The Brand Inclusion Index highlights brands that are perceived to be leading on inclusion, providing benchmarks and reference points to inform inclusive brand and marketing strategies.
Identify and close inclusion gaps
Pinpoint which underserved populations your brand needs to focus on and where perceptions are holding back growth. The Index helps identify priority gaps to address, alongside strengths to protect and build on.
Prioritise inclusion‑led brand actions
Translate inclusion insight into clearer decisions. Use Brand Inclusion Index diagnostics to prioritise actions that improve relevance, credibility and brand growth with underserved and high‑potential audiences.
Decode the value-action gap to drive adoption at scale
Build a decision‑ready view of sustainability audiences by understanding the different frictions and motivations shaping sustainable choices. Bridging the Gap helps brands diagnose what blocks action, identify which levers will move the “moveable middle”, and prioritise the interventions most likely to predispose more people to choose sustainable options, strengthening both demand and brand associations.
Key Features
Build a decision-ready audience lens
Move beyond “one-size-fits-all” sustainability audiences. Bridging the Gap provides a clear segmentation of how people think and feel about sustainable living, enabling smarter decisions on who to target and how to tailor strategies by audience type.
Diagnose frictions that block adoption
Identify the barriers and tensions that stop people acting on their sustainability intentions. This helps brands prioritise where to intervene, from removing friction to unlocking motivations that make sustainable choices easier to adopt.
Prioritise levers that shift behaviour at scale
Use audience insight to guide action across brand strategy, innovation and communications, focusing on the levers most likely to convert intention into adoption and build stronger brand associations through sustainability.
Design for adoption with behavioural intelligence and foresight
Turn sustainability into innovations people will choose. Our Sustainable Innovation approach combines foresight, consumer understanding and behavioural science to pinpoint the role of sustainability in category decision-making, identify what enables or blocks behaviour change, and prioritise concepts that can drive short-term sales and long-term equity.
It also supports brands to explore and embed circularity opportunities, translating circular economy ambition into actionable innovation and marketing direction, informed by our work and partnerships in this space.
Key Features
Anticipate and frame opportunity
Use foresight and category understanding to map where sustainability is reshaping decision-making and where future-backed opportunities may emerge.
Design for adoption
From tactical to radical change, our Fuels & Frictions framework helps identify the influences that drive or block behaviour change, so innovation and experiences are designed to be meaningful, easy and rewarding, not left to chance.
Evaluate and prioritise innovations (test-and-learn for impact)
Evaluate sustainable innovation concepts to ensure they meet real consumer needs and deliver impact, then prioritise the most promising ideas to build a stronger pipeline and reduce failure rates.
Make better advertising decisions on sustainability
Test and optimise sustainability advertising with decision‑ready evidence from LINK+. We bring together two core capabilities built on LINK data:
- Sustainable Behaviours Ad Tracker (with Ad Net Zero): tracks how often sustainable behaviours appear in advertising and benchmarks change over time across markets and categories.
- Positive & Progressive People Portrayal (LINK Unstereotype Metrics): evaluates how people are portrayed in advertising and how this links to creative effectiveness and ROI potential.
Outputs are designed for integration into LINK deliverables and marketing dashboards.
Case studies
Perspectives
Our Sustainable Transformation Practice Experts
Jonathan Hall,
Managing Partner Sustainable Transformation Practice
To talk about: Setting the overall sustainability growth agenda, where to focus for impact, and how to turn ambition into commercial momentum.
Karine Trinquetel,
Global Head of Offer and Strategic framing Lead
To talk about: How sustainability can drive brand equity and growth, and how to make better decisions across brand, audiences, innovation and communications.
Valeria Piaggio, Inclusive Growth Leader, Sustainable Transformation Practice
To talk about: How inclusion can unlock growth, connect brands with underserved audiences, and strengthen relevance through inclusive strategy and marketing.
Dan Dexter, Client Lead
To talk about: Where to start, who to involve, and how to connect sustainability ambition to proven approaches and examples from leading clients.
Ozlem Senturk,
Senior partner and Engaging activation lead
To talk about: Kantar’s partnerships with leading sustainability organisations, and how industry ecosystems can accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth at scale.
Embedded in the sustainability ecosystem
Our work is strengthened by deep, long‑standing partnerships, including the UN Global Compact, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the World Federation of Advertisers and Ad Net Zero, ensuring our intelligence reflects real‑world standards and emerging best practice.
Kantar’s Environmental, Social and Governance
At Kantar, we aim to make a positive, long-term contribution to the communities where we live and work, and use our expertise to have a positive network effect with our clients. There are lots of issues to consider, but we concentrate on those most relevant and critical to our business.
Access our ESG report and Annual report
Q: What is Sustainable Marketing?
A: Sustainable marketing integrates environmental and social values into brand strategy and communication. It goes beyond campaigns to embed sustainability into the core of business operations, ensuring also long-term value for both society and the planet. Sustainability perceptions contribute up to 10% of cumulative brand value in the Global BrandZ Top 100.
Q: Why is Sustainable Marketing important for brands today?
A: Consumers expect brands to take meaningful action on sustainability, and this expectation is now a key driver of purchase decisions. Kantar data reveals that sustainability perceptions not only enhance brand equity but also allow brands to command a premium. Furthermore, 90% of marketers believe sustainability agendas need to be more ambitious, and 94% agree that bold experimentation is essential to deliver transformative change. Authenticity and transparency are no longer optional—they are critical for earning trust and loyalty.
Q: What is Sustainable Innovation in marketing?
A: Sustainable Innovation means creating products, services, and business models that drive growth while reducing environmental impact and promoting social responsibility. It embeds sustainability into the innovation process, helping brands stay competitive and meet consumer expectations.
Q: What is Inclusive Growth in marketing?
A: Inclusive growth ensures that marketing strategies represent and engage diverse consumer groups across gender, race, age, ability, and identity, while driving equitable access and representation. Kantar’s studies show that 75% of consumers globally say diversity and inclusion influence their purchase decisions, and progressive advertising delivers up to 16% higher sales uplift compared to less inclusive content.