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🪩 Making Sustainability Lighter - Jonas Spitra from SCHOTT about making a super complex topic simple
60 Plays9 months ago
Jonas Spitra is the Head of Sustainability Communications at the SCHOTT technology group. In his job, he accompanies and explains the sustainability transformation of the energy-intensive speciality glass manufacturer. And he is constantly learning new things about the opportunities and challenges of change. Jonas has worked as a journalist, strategy consultant and researcher in Germany and abroad.
About the FutureStrategies podcast and your host:
I’m Florian Schleicher, a marketing strategist. I help brands gain clarity, spark momentum, and turn strategy into something that actually moves people. In 2022, I started my marketing studio FUTURESTRATEGIES. to do exactly that. I currently work with corporate clients from 11 countries.
If you want more, check out my FutureStrategies newsletter – weekly inspiration on marketing, strategy and sustainability.
And if something’s blocking your brand from doing its best work, let’s talk.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
We have to make sustainability lighter. you know It has to be something which is... I recently heard that term and I liked it quite a lot. Surprisingly sustainable. If you frame specific things in a specific manner, you create emotions.
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome to the Future Strategies Podcast. My name is Florian Schleicher. I'm a marketing strategist focused on sustainability and I'm your host here. Every two weeks you can listen to my interviews with international experts and together we will explore where marketing strategies and sustainability intersect with great examples, insightful stories, and a look behind the scenes of some amazing brands. If you are curious how to apply all of that for your own business, I do this for my clients from all around the world through inspiring workshops, guiding mentoring, and an exciting on online academy. But more on that at the end of this episode. Now let's jump into today's interview.
00:00:57
Speaker
My guest today is Jonas Spitter. He's the head of sustainability communications at the Schott Technology Group. In his job, he accompanies and explains the sustainability transformation of the energy intensive speciality glass manufacturer. And he is constantly learning new things about the opportunities and challenges of change. Jonas has worked as a journalist, strategy consultant and researcher in Germany and abroad.
00:01:24
Speaker
Jonas, it's a pleasure to have this conversation with you here today. Thanks for having me, Florian. So for all those who don't know what shot your company is doing, can you just briefly explain what the company is all about? Yeah, sure. I can try that. So I think we all know glass. I mean, like a normal kind of glass where you put some water in or maybe also nice wine glass. That's not what we're doing. What we're doing is we're a specialty glass company. Okay. What does that mean now?
00:01:54
Speaker
What's so special about specialty glass? Specialty glass means that the different glass we produce has very specific attributes. Maybe you can make it ultra thin, thinner like a human hair. And this glass is then used for foldable smartphones. We produce specific glass ceramics that have a zero expansion, which is very important for all kinds of space applications, for example, or other technology fields. And many products never are witnessed by B2C customers.
00:02:24
Speaker
However, we do have products where that is the case. And one of the most famous one is Saran, which you might know. yeah or If you look your arterial. Exactly. I think you look good cooking on it. So this is something a shot actually invented. here But another one, which is also maybe not known by everyone is we are one of the biggest producers when it comes to pharmaceutical packaging, glass, wiles, ampules, et cetera, to store medicines.
00:02:54
Speaker
safely, but very often you as a customer won't see it at first glance. That means you know we have a very, very strong B2B company. Most of our products are implemented quite you know deep in the supply chain, so to speak. So overall, we have thousands of glasses. I'm not sure if I know the exact number, how many different glasses we do have, and they all have specific properties.
00:03:20
Speaker
Well, I didn't know that. Let's move on to sustainability now, because that's also your role. On this podcast, I think I had 30 plus interviews already, either with marketing expert, communication experts, or with sustainability experts. But you are the head of sustainability communications. So I think it's even one step further. And I think it's a... Also a great example of how far ahead Schott already is as a company is that you have ahead of sustainability communications. Yeah, it's it's interesting that you mentioned that. I mean, I think there are some of some people now out there that have ah have this kind of role. I think someone at BMW, et cetera, but it's, we are rare breed. So you said like being ahead or, you know, it's also some kind of interesting bridging role.
00:04:11
Speaker
I'm somewhere also in between, you might say. Why? Because there in many companies, there are sustainability departments. And of course, there is a marketing and communication department. What we realized is that this topic is very often very technical. So you need someone who can dive a little bit into it, you know, and understands the experts. And where you also have to do a lot of expert communication, which is very important really to get your message across in this kind of field.
00:04:38
Speaker
But then on the other hand, if you talk about transformation and if you talk about change, a lot of these outlooks, a lot of these strategies have very long lasting transformation processes and very often very abstract to many people. yeah So you have to create some kind of, I think, communication where you make it more specific, where you create storytelling, where you tell very complex endeavors with help of stories of people pushing it. you know The engineer who is driving change.
00:05:07
Speaker
the female expert who is like a super crack in melting glass and was pushing tests in the field of, you know, testing hydrogen, how to melt glass of hydrogen, or, or, or I could, mention you know, I could mention many examples, but I think this is very important. And what we realized is you need some kind of a bridging role to combine these different fields. So that the experts says, Hey, this is cool. I think I'm happy to communicate like this. I wouldn't have done it like this. The marketing communication experts maybe also say, Hey, okay, all right.
00:05:36
Speaker
This is in the beginning, maybe also quite complex, but now I got it. And there is, I think also, i well, I think there are specific rules also to some good some good sustainability or climate communication. It works, I think, a little bit differently than some other fields. Yeah, definitely. Because I believe there's also a trust issue, to be quite honest. you know If you just say something, you just say something. you know is Is it proven? Did an external party look at it? you can Every company can say a lot of things.
00:06:05
Speaker
yeah And of course, many companies do. Now, I would be curious, what does it all mean for you at SHOT as a company when it comes to sustainability? First of all, I think glass is a good material because itll it very simply, it lasts very long. So as a material, as such, I think it's in a lot of cases a very and you know durable material. So this is maybe something also you know when we talk about sustain sustainability in a broader sense.
00:06:35
Speaker
But if you look at Schott, I think we have two quite interesting topics. One is Schott as a company, as an entity, is something of like a little bit of a special animal because we are a foundation company. And um to explain that, I have to go a little bit back into the history. The founders of Schott and Seiss are deeply connected. Seiss is the sister company of Schott actually. And this all dates back 140 years back to East Germany, Jena.
00:07:04
Speaker
where different experts met. One of the experts was called Ernst Abbe. He was a professor of physics. The other one was Otto Schott, who was a specialist in glassmaking. The third one was Kyle Seiss, and he was an expert in the field of manufacturing. Back in the day, they produced microscopes, actually. And together, they basically revolutionized microscopes.
00:07:33
Speaker
really new quality of microscopes. And that helped them to create really new innovations on the field of medicines. And that was like the starting point for this kind of entity. So why is that important? Because this huge success um in manufacturing scientific microscopes, also then later, astronomical telescopes, etc et cetera, et cetera. Many other topics created quite some wealth.
00:07:57
Speaker
But Ernst Abbe was coming from a very poor family and he had one quarter particular like he said, I don't want to die as an interest to a millionaire. I want to have some kind of impetus. I want to create some kind of benefit for society. So they gave the money into the foundation and um set up a very specific set of rules. And the idea was that the the part of the money that is gained by its size, but also by shot is given back to the foundation. And with that money.
00:08:26
Speaker
they support sciences. And the other thing was that Ernst Abbe, because he was coming from this you know labor background. He basically was able to study, well, first of all, because he was, I think, a genius, extremely intelligent, but he was coming from a social background where it wasn't normal to study, because he was coming from a labor background. His father used to work very long hours, and he really also saw what this kind of capitalism maybe can do with people.
00:08:53
Speaker
And because of that, he also set a very specific idea into the gu foundation. And that was, for example, that there were labor rights, that there were pensions set up, that there was a lot of different rules, how you can basically benefit from a company system. how What kind of rights you have as a laborer, what kind of rights you have as a company, et cetera, is also written down. But this is basically the foundation of size and shot.
00:09:17
Speaker
and And that is quite important because this, is I mean, we all know that sustainability has different perspectives. We have economical sustainability, we have social sustainability, we have ecological sustainability, but this pillar of social sustainability was quite strong in the company and I think still is. The other thing is glassmaking is such as very energy intensive and has a high comfort foot print. And because of that, um the company shot, analyzed that in 2019 and said, Hey, we have to change that. But the first step was the, um you know,
00:09:47
Speaker
analysis and we realized that our carbon footprint just scope one and two was 1 million tonne CO2E annually. And that's quite a lot. Why is that the case? Because melting glass is very energy intensive. You have to produce glass and melting tanks or furnaces. And these tanks are, you know, quite big and you have to heat up the glass that hot that you reach temperatures of up to 1400, 1500 degrees Celsius. And we do this mainly still with fossil fuels. And that of course has a huge impact. And that's why we started an internal program first of all, and then also communicated it externally. And that is our so-called zero carbon program. We have the goal to reach a climate neutral or carbon neutral production. So this means scope one and two, and we want to achieve that until
00:10:44
Speaker
2030, which is very ambitious and quite a challenge because there are still a lot of open questions. Sorry, if I get it correct. And this was also the thing that you've been awarded on when you won the German Sustainability Award of 2024. Yeah, we won two things, which was quite surprising actually, and very nice. On the one hand, we got the German Sustainability Award for being very sustainable in the glass industry. So we won that in the category of the glass industry.
00:11:13
Speaker
And then there was a ah special award for companies that have very ambitious strategies to decarbonize its production or decarbonize their supply chain, et cetera. And we managed to get that too. So our climate strategy, so to speak, um was awarded with a special award. But most companies are not you know sustainability champions from the beginning. Most are nomads. They are on the journey. they're want to transform. And in the past, when you talk about sustainability communications, a lot of companies basically just said something. And then it was very hard for a reader to to get like transparency, to understand it, to follow that you know sense of logic. And I think that's why um it's quite good that but you know this little plant is now growing, that in different fields, people are now pushing for this, or also having great ideas to make it more specific. Because overall, it's a society issue, right?
00:12:14
Speaker
And if you do not make it understandable, or if you do not create also some positive outlook, then we exclude a lot of people because, and you just see it from psychological perspective. Well, of course, climate change is a huge issue and it also creates a lot of different feelings. Some people feel you know threatened, some people ignore it.
00:12:35
Speaker
But what is very important is also, I think, to create some positive feelings of change that things are possible. That's a topic for itself, I think, because we we also talked about that in our pre-conversation where we talked about the attention economy. like Whenever I give a talk, I was speaking at the University of Madrid this week. And I always start with, why do we need marketing for sustainability? And and it is because there is so much content out there.
00:13:04
Speaker
And we are all overwhelmed with it. We don't have enough time to consume any of it. And the things that then really get our attention is the simplest and possibly, and I count myself in for that, the dumbest content on TikTok that we give ours to when really we should focus on different things. So my question to you is, do you think sustainability as a topic is suffering from this attention economy?
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, sometimes I also wonder, you know, this part of my brain, I don't know how you would, how you would say that in English, maybe our reptilian brain, you know, yeah where you just so think, okay, 10 seconds attention span, et cetera. I think this issue is there. The positive news is we can change that. You know, we trained ourselves to maybe this attention span, but we can also detrain it. We can train ourselves to longer um and attention spans and, you know, reading a longer book or something like that ah can definitely help.
00:14:02
Speaker
I mean, this is just, yeah I think when you talk about our interchange, does sustainability communication suffer from it? Yeah. I mean, I think every complex topic suffers from it. I mean, the the information is out there, the facts are out there, and yet people are maybe ignoring it or saying it's too complicated or feeling it's too ah abstract. It doesn't have too much relation to their own personal life.
00:14:25
Speaker
So I think marketing good communication is a very powerful force. It can be a very powerful force for for for greater good. And that's the interesting thing. I mean, we have many experts and many agencies that know exactly how to, you know, push these topics and then they have to decide, you know, what they want to do, what kind of topics they want to push. But I think there are many great experts out there that know quite well how it could work. I have a thesis and I want to to mirror that with you. Yeah. so I think that one of the problems why we are in this prices in this climate crisis is there has been a lot of communication about it since the 1970s or so. yeah But the communication was mainly about data. yeah It was about facts. It was all right.
00:15:16
Speaker
but It did not have an emotional component and it was always about something that will affect us in the future. Now I just watched a video this morning about the transatlantic ocean stream that actually cools our ocean and how it is slowly ah stopping to work and this will create a disaster, the the northern hemisphere will get even colder, ah the southern hemisphere even even warmer. And I think what we did is we talked so much about the facts that we lost people along the way, because people at the end of the day, and and you mentioned this also, they are not looking for complex stuff. They are looking for simple
00:16:01
Speaker
solutions, which is probably also sidestep a problem why we have far right in politics on the rise, because they claim to have simple solutions to complex ah complex topics. And I think sustainability is a very complex topic, also like politics, but we need to make it more tangible and probably more lighthearted also.
00:16:24
Speaker
And not just talk about doomsday, but talk maybe also about how this nice future can actually look like and why it would be nice for us all to live in that nice, more sustainable future and create stories that appeal to emotions of people and not so much the brain because in the brain we might take it, we lose people. Yeah, um I would agree. i I think it's both. So on the one hand, you need a solid base of facts. I very often compare that to like an iceberg.
00:16:53
Speaker
You need this kind of stable setup as a company, but also as any kind of organization entity when you have some good of you know communication framework and you set up a strategy to communicate sustainability because there will always be people that want to do a deep dive and that have questions and they want to check facts and they want to do you know scientific research or want to check numbers. So you have to create some kind of content who delivers that. How deep? That's a question. But the other thing is.
00:17:23
Speaker
If we really check how, you know, sustainability is perceived to many people, it's just like, yeah, yeah. Okay. You're just telling me that. So we are still having some kind of a trust crisis because in the past, I think this is also an issue where you have to be quite critical of the industry. A lot of marketing at agencies and also communication agencies set and told a lot of stuff.
00:17:49
Speaker
Some part was greenwashing by purpose. Some stuff was greenwashing by a lack of knowledge. Also very important point. There are a lot of people out there who do not do it purposefully. They just think, oh, it's a nice idea. Isn't that a nice point? and Because, yeah, because it's complicated. They they just don't know it. Oh, well enough. And I easily can also slip in that. Or, you know, it's a very slippery slope. And that's why we're having these other dangerous tendency of green hushing where people or organizations say, oh, I don't want to say anything anymore.
00:18:18
Speaker
because I might do something wrong. And that's like a dilemma at the moment, you know, that's like the green elephant in the room. And the interesting thing here, I think is, and we have to make sustainability lighter. You know, it has to be something which is ah you recently heard that terminal liked it quite a lot, surprisingly sustainable. You know, if if you, if you,
00:18:43
Speaker
frame specific things in a specific manner, you create emotions. I mean, I'm not telling you anything new here for sure, but let's take the term secondhand. Okay. Let's think about that. What kind of emotions does that create? If I say it's a secondhand jacket, what if I tell you? So I immediately think, okay, somebody else had it in their hands and it's not mine. And and I think that a lot of people want to make products theirs.
00:19:13
Speaker
And it's second, second is not like the first, most people want the first, I think. Yeah. ah Thanks for that. I mean, maybe another question. What do I tell you if I say this jacket is pre-loved? Yeah, it's it's totally different because it is about love and it's about emotion. And I think the second hand is the factual term, whereas pre-loved is the emotional term for it.
00:19:41
Speaker
And it's also, I think about some interesting chain of emotions, because it means that you have something like a jacket, whatever it share. And this thing used to mean something to someone. It was important to them. It gives some meaning. So, um, and that, I mean, it's a very simple example, but if you think about that in a lot of, you know, fields, how can we create other words to drive meaning?
00:20:10
Speaker
How can we create other frameworks to really connect? There are studies out there when you say, you know, when you just write vegan on an ice cream, it won't sell very well. Yeah. Yeah. So, but if you say great taste or same taste, and then you just have a little vegan sign on the side, it creates a different, you know, set up a different impression. And that's quite interesting. You know, and if you really talk about the majority, because this is the big challenge.
00:20:39
Speaker
I mean, I think sustainability is not a niche anymore. It's a trend. It's a stream. It's like a subculture. But there are of course people that you do not have to convince anymore. They adjust their lifestyle a lot. And also I think people are not, or 99% of people are not looking for a sustainable product. They are looking for nice looking shoes. They are looking for a great new smartphone. Yeah. and And if we focus only on, hey, this is the most sustainable shoe, then it's not going to sell like the ice cream. This is the most sustainable ice cream. No, I want ice cream that I like to taste off. It's a very different, I think particularly, I mean, I'm not an expert for the food industry, but I think it's all about the taste at the end of the day. If it doesn't taste, get out of here. So, and I mean, the question also again is what does sustainability actually mean?
00:21:34
Speaker
The term is such as also problematic in some fields because it can mean so much. You have to define very particularly, what do you mean? I mean, let's, let's take barber, for example, I'm used to study in England and well, once they got pre-loved barber jacket, you know, was great for the British weather. And then I realized, Hey, this is actually a company you could call many fields quite sustainable because it lasts very long. You can re-walk, exit, you can put it,
00:22:03
Speaker
You can send it in so they're repaired for you. I think there's this famous image of Prince Charles who has like, I don't know how many times he did send it to the repair shop, but you know, it's a little bit this ship of thesis question. Is it still the jacket? Because so many parts have been replaced. Is it still the same jacket? And, um, but I like this idea. Yeah. But then you have other products that that you can also call sustainable, but you have to specify it. What does it mean? Is it sustainable because it has been produced and because it followed the human rights Right? Principles. Is it because, you know, it's decarbonized. It has a low product carbon footprint, etc et cetera, et cetera. And that is just the facts. Step one. Okay. And then we have to think about emotions. How do you create that? Yeah. And one thesis I would like to share with you is that's not so much about the product, but about the the transformation. A lot of companies, a lot of entities, um a lot of organizations, I think it's a general
00:23:00
Speaker
observation do at the moment, not communicate the journey. They're very often focused on, yeah, let's call it event communication. There's a specific event. Uh, okay. There's a great new product boom. And they can back beforehand that, you know, people were working on it. The R&D department was checking, et cetera. Everything was bulletproof. And now they go out with it. The problem of complexity though, is that's not how it works. Very often there are a lot of things we do not know yet.
00:23:29
Speaker
and many things we can also not influence. And you have, as a company, I think to decide then, what do you want? Do you want to communicate these kinds of complexities? And then you have, I think, to learn from startups. You have to learn to communicate the transformation as a journey, process communication, where you say, hey, you have a moment where you loop in, where you say, that's where we're at. And now we will transform ourselves. And then we give a new update and you say, hey, there that's where we stand.
00:23:57
Speaker
And that also means that you have to adjust things on the on the road where you say, Hey, you said that two years ago, but you know, it's complicated. Some things are different now. And if you wait for too long, then you also lose traction. You lose opportunities because then, you know, because of the complex environment, you're in and a lot of situations because the whole, you know, question of sustainability is a transformation question for, for entire societies. Then there is a danger that you cannot communicate your complex challenges that you are not understood.
00:24:27
Speaker
And if like a company, like you know, let's take short or many other, you know, energy intensive companies. And we're doing a lot of, I think, research. Many companies are doing it to change their processes. Steel industry, there are players, glass industries are players, and a lot of other, you know, heavy industries there are players that are really pushing for that. But there are a lot of dependencies. ah You know, we need infrastructure and in the long term.
00:24:50
Speaker
um We need green energy supply. It has to be at competitive prices also to set this whole thing up in Europe. That's also important because sustainability is in many fields also a bubble discussion. It's not happening everywhere worldwide. And for that, you have to communicate differently. And so I think one thing is the emotional part, storytelling part. You also have to get your homework right and have to have your facts.
00:25:12
Speaker
But then again, also change your whole attitude towards communication is to be much more process orientated and not so much about we reached that milestone, boom, finished. that um and That makes it great. It's a lot of fun, but it's also challenging because you have to permanently adjust. But hey, that's that's a cool challenge. That's also why we have a job.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, as mentioned in the beginning, you you are learning new things about opportunities and and the challenges of change all the time. So I think that's also that. I would be curious, Jonas, do you have like a favorite project that you're working on right now where you are using this approach of also taking your audience with you on that journey of change? I think there are several cool projects to be honest, because we've really tried to set up a collaborative approach.
00:26:00
Speaker
So one, one topic I like a lot is we will set up an electric melting tank in Bavaria, which will produce pharmaceutical glass tubes. And this melting tank, it's a huge investment. Our R&D colleagues developed this for a long time, put a lot of, you know, knowledge into it. And now we will, the construction has started. The tank is supposed to run in 26 and, um,
00:26:30
Speaker
It will cost about, I think, 30 million euros. And at the end of the day, the carbon emissions in the production setup, in the furnace and the melting tank will be reduced by 80% because we will switch to green electricity. And to communicate this kind of very complex topic, I think is really cool because this very first tank, that's quite something. There are a lot of ifs and whens still. It's like it's a pioneer pilot project.
00:26:56
Speaker
But to learn from the experts, how they develop that, how they do their checks and balances. and Also, you know, that they will check how they can mitigate risks, et cetera. How, you know, that's really cool. And to communicate that step by step and to say, Hey, this will reduce in this kind of emission reduction that that this is how it works. It works very different than, you know, when you heat up a melting tank with with fossil fuels, yeah what will be about the product, you know,
00:27:27
Speaker
How many missions will this one then have also reduced, you know, missions? How do we communicate that? That's like an ongoing project at the moment. And that's really cool because you learn so much and there's no blueprint. Um, do you have to do a lot of check and balances. Just one example, but I like that a lot. And I'm very grateful to, to, you know, talk with a lot of, you know, very smart people and very often the answer in some fields is very clear because they're really experts and know what they're doing and some other fields where we have to discuss together. Okay. What's the best purpose? you driven you know message here, what's the best approach for a good strategy for marketing and communication or many other fields. So maybe that's also another observation. I don't know how it would be great to get your perspective here too. My thesis a little bit is this kind of sustainability communication at the moment, because we have this kind of a bridging role, you know, and we also, maybe the accident made my purpose also do some kind of transformation consultancy.
00:28:24
Speaker
Because words do give meaning and if you write texts, then you might might get feeling, ah, that's not how I'm ended. Hmm. Okay. That doesn't make so much sense. Oh, maybe we also have to adjust the strategy because I'm sometimes only the guy with the stupid questions. I'm like, yeah, but that's how it is currently. Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Okay. Then let's, ah let's adjust. You know, and that's something I'm, I find quite fascinating that communication is such also is maybe then not only the, the, you know, the role.
00:28:53
Speaker
where you create a voice, where you think about how do I communicate internally and externally messages, but maybe you're also then this role where you sound ideas and you're a little bit of a mirror, ah you a little bit of an echo chamber.
00:29:11
Speaker
I think that's super important because at the end of the day, i think like whenever you're communicating, you're communicating with someone. And in order to do that, because you're communicating with your audiences internally and externally, you have to take their perspectives.
00:29:27
Speaker
And to take their perspectives, you have to be an empath in a way and understand what motivates them to then represent the voice of your customers or of your experts to the others and vice versa. So I think that's a super important role. And and I know that from experience also, I was smiling when you mentioned that that that being the the guy in the room asking the stupid questions i had a session with the client and her boss the other a week and after the call she. Call me separately and she said you were so good at asking the the questions because usually and it stops whenever i ask the first question and i got because i have no problem sounding stupid.
00:30:11
Speaker
If people think, okay, he's just stupid, he doesn't know, and that's why he's asking the questions and okay, I don't want to work with them. But I have, luckily, a lot of clients that appreciate me being the one who asks the stupid questions. I think that's super important. This is also, I think, a process, right? I mean, you have to make things simple, but not too simple. That's important, I think, distinction. Because, yeah and also, there's also maybe another thesis or observation.
00:30:41
Speaker
When we talk about sustainability at the moment, a lot of companies say, yeah, we'll have this great sustainability report. And don't misunderstand me, please. This document is very important because it structures, provide structure. It structures a company that provides strategy outlook. It gives transparency. So this work is very important. However, we know a lot of companies that create great sustainability reports now for 20 years or so.
00:31:09
Speaker
How many people really do read this? you know When do you sit at your fireplace with a glass of red wine and read a 150 pager? That's such an unused potential because I think we could actually, like every big company, and I suppose yours too, will have to provide this financially integrated sustainability reports.
00:31:29
Speaker
But I think there is such a big chance on using those reports also for external communications, because otherwise you do all this research and then, as you mentioned, nobody really reads it. And then it just ends up in a drawer and next year we do the same thing again. I think it's a very important document where you can get so much, you know, different content out.
00:31:56
Speaker
it's Basically like how do you put that an English stone query where you can get so many different stones on and say, Oh, this is a nice content piece. This is great. This is a great story. Of course you also have to set up, you know, a nice, maybe interviews or great layout and report, but it's again, let me get back to this idea of the iceberg. You have this as a fundamental, this has to be a fundamental pillar, but then on a higher level, you have to create emotions. And yeah, let's take your case off the TikTok or short.
00:32:24
Speaker
on video, you know, if this is like at the 32nd, how would you tell that? And I think one answer is, well, you have to go through the document, have to cherry pick specific stuff, and then you have to make it snackable content. That could be one answer. And then of course it all has to fit together. It should fit to the general communication and huge strategy most importantly, but Yeah, at the end of the day, it's a house, you know, cool and this can be built with a lot of different stones from the same query. And I think that's very important to have this kind of idea to say, Hey, okay, you have this report. It's great. Very important thing. But now how do we have, how can we create different content formats out of it? And some companies do this already. They do, I think a great job. But the reality is because of all the reporting obligations, there will be a lot of companies now who have to
00:33:17
Speaker
And we'll have to write these reports. So there will be a huge amount of content. So who is reading this? Exactly. But at the end of the day, let's get to back, let's get back to the topic we discussed before. You have this attention span issue and it's just, I mean, that's also important sustainability. I'm, you know, I'm um really someone who, I mean, i'm I'm preaching to the choir here, but I'm, I'm quite convinced that this is important.
00:33:44
Speaker
But it's also important to say, hey, guys, sometimes we have to walk into our own bubble and have to be very aware that we are living in a time where there are so many complex issues and conflicts that to many people, it's just another point among many, many, many other points. you know it's it's It's just another sound in a world full of noises. And the top of the struggles of their everyday life.
00:34:13
Speaker
And probably there are many more topics that are more immediate and that sound more urgent to them. And that's what the challenge is. Jonas, I think we could go on and on yeah sure how that we had started, but also looking at the time, let's move on to the three final questions. Yeah, please. So first question to sum this all up, what is good marketing or good communications to you in three words?
00:34:43
Speaker
Three words. Oh, that's a tough one. I think it's listening, proof and dialogue. Nice. I like that. I especially liked the proof part. And we mentioned this in our conversation. You mentioned it where you said you really need to show that you do this. Second question. What is the future of marketing? Oh, another rather minor question. You know, you have all this development, you have AI.
00:35:12
Speaker
Huge thing. I think it is very much about emotions, about empathy, about understanding how humans tick. And I think it is also very much about quality because AI will do a lot of the play in vanilla, so to say. But when we really talk about things that matter, AI can always work as an assistant enhancer. Surely it will. But the future of marketing, I think is much more about custom tailored solutions.
00:35:42
Speaker
which are really then happening in some kind of a high quality field where it really matters. And the other thing is also when we talk about marketing sometimes, I am a big fan of more dialogue driven formats because there's again, a danger that, you know, our bubble of communicators, marketing people, creatives, et cetera, that we, you know, believe our own bullshit too much that we do not do a reality check. So that's maybe also the future of marketing to listen.
00:36:12
Speaker
more to people that have a different opinion where you say, I don't like that opinion. And it's important. I think that's super important. Yeah. To also bridge the divide that we have in most of our democracies at this time. Yeah, sure. Last question. Is there a book that you've recently read that you would like to recommend here? Just looking at my bookshelf. Yeah, you have a couple there. Yeah. So that's a big one, really thick one. so You have to read that when you go on holiday. But there's a biography by Andrew Roberts about Churchill. i think it's like it's an audio I mean, I heard it as an audiobook. It's like 50 hours. well But I found it really interesting because in general, I love to read biographies when they were written. you know Some books are written like this happened, this happened, this happened. Very boring. But if you really understand the struggle, and I mean, you can think about Churchill, whatever you like. And I mean, you can criticize a lot about this man.
00:37:10
Speaker
But what is really interesting is to see how this person managed to reinvent himself again and again and again. And just to realize, you know, the the role he played and the role particularly in World War II, what kind of huge amount of energy he really provided to get this done. um That's just um marvelous, I think. So this is when you talk about any kind of, you know, huge challenges to look into a person like Churchill.
00:37:36
Speaker
on what you made me a great video about our film about him, read a book to just see, Hey, maybe I can learn something here. And again, I think there can be many things criticized, but to see that, I think that that's, that was quite something. So highly recommended book, very thick one. Cool. Thanks a lot for sharing. I will have a look at it. Cool. That's great. All right. Jonas, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for taking the time. It was really inspiring and I loved.
00:38:05
Speaker
expanding and challenging our thesis together. Yeah. Thank you for having me and doing, you know, this little deep dive about specialty glass, but also to, you know, discuss some ideas. Looking forward to do that again, maybe. Yes, let's do that. Thank you. Cheers.
00:38:22
Speaker
And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, please forward it to a friend or a colleague. This would mean the world to me as I pour my heart and a lot of energy into producing this podcast with all the brilliant minds that share their perspective here.
00:38:39
Speaker
And if you are curious to use the huge potential of sustainability marketing for your own brand and you know the value that a great marketing strategy brings to really connect with your target audience, give me a call or send me a message. I'd love to get to know you and your projects. You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok or through my newsletter, where I write in-depth thought pieces that help you build a successful and exciting marketing strategy.
00:39:08
Speaker
Again, thank you so much for listening. I really look forward to sharing more with you in the future.