Marketing
December 02, 2025
After greenwashing, the era of truth marketing
COP30 and the Global Initiative for Information Integrity point to a new communication logic
The Conference of the Parties (COP30), held in November 2025 in Belém (PA), marks a turning point for Brazil — not only by reaffirming its leadership in global sustainability, but also by repositioning the debate on climate communication. More than a meeting of leaders and scientists, the conference emphasizes the role of reliable information in collective mobilization in the face of the climate crisis.
But it is not just diplomacy that comes into play. Marketing too. And, this time, not as a supporting role, but as a strategic force in the dispute for public trust. If the last decade was marked by the advance of greenwashing (a practice where organizations use environmental discourses inconsistent with their actions), today we are entering the era of truth marketing: grounded, traceable, and verifiable climate communication.
The turning point gained institutional reinforcement with the Global Initiative for Climate Change Information Integrity, launched by Brazil with the support of the United Nations (UN) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). For the first time, information integrity entered the official agenda of a COP, recognizing disinformation as a real threat to climate action. From here on, narratives are not enough; evidence is needed.
Verifiable commitment
The private sector is experiencing a turning point similar to what journalist and researcher Jonathan Rauch describes in “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth” (2021) as the “era of institutional epistemology”: a time when the value of information depends less on the authority of the speaker and more on the possibility of verifying what is said. In other words, public trust today is a product of coherence, transparency, and accountability. In the field of climate communication, this movement requires brands and organizations to act with three essential principles: accountability, transparency, and traceability.
The first, accountability, refers to public responsibility, that is, the ability to produce metrics, be accountable, and correct course. The concept is widely discussed by Mark Bovens (2007), who defines it as the duty to explain and justify actions to society, and it appears as a structuring principle in international public governance guidelines, such as those of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2014). Transparency, on the other hand, involves the openness of information about impacts, criteria, and decisions, a principle detailed by Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil in Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (2007), a work that argues that informational clarity constitutes one of the pillars of social trust and modern governance.
Traceability, in turn, has become central to contemporary environmental policies by requiring organizations to demonstrate the origin, path, and impact of products and processes throughout the entire value chain. This principle appears in technical standards such as ISO 14068, which guides carbon neutrality practices, and in international regulatory frameworks, including the European Green Deal (European Commission, 2019), which sets the goal of making the European Union economically emission-neutral by 2050 and reinforces the need for full transparency in supply chains.
Another widely used framework is the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol, 2004), a global methodology developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which standardizes the measurement and reporting of emissions, offering comparable and verifiable criteria for governments and companies.
These concepts, widely incorporated into Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices, have ceased to be technical jargon and have become strategic imperatives. In a landscape saturated with green discourse and sustainability promises, brands face what researchers have called green fatigue — a collective weariness with empty environmental narratives. This means that, more than communicating values, it is necessary to prove real deliveries.
As philosopher and historian of science Naomi Oreskes, author of “Merchants of Doubt” (2010), highlights, “trust is not born solely from information, but from institutional credibility”. In the context of sustainability, this credibility is built when there is alignment between discourse and practice, when marketing ceases to be a promise and becomes evidence.
The advancement of socio-environmental agendas has led to cause marketing gaining prominence in corporate communication strategies. However, as sustainability and purpose become watchwords, so does the risk of what researchers call “green aestheticization”, when the visual or symbolic narrative about environmental responsibility overshadows the concrete practices that sustain it.
The phenomenon is an evolution of greenwashing, a term coined in the 1980s by environmentalist Jay Westerveld to describe campaigns that simulate environmental commitment without real effectiveness. In a context saturated with green messages, this performative aesthetic can paradoxically undermine the trust it intends to build. It is in this scenario that the need for a new communication paradigm arises: truth marketing, a model oriented by the coherence between narrative, data, and action.
The concept is anchored in principles of responsible communication, such as those proposed by John Grant in “The Green Marketing Manifesto” (2007), who argues that sustainability is only authentic when it translates into shared value and concrete transformation. The logic of truth marketing therefore relies on the verifiability and traceability of its demarcated promises, requiring campaigns to be accompanied by metrics, reports, and measurable public commitments.
Recent cases demonstrate how this change in mindset is already underway. Patagonia, for example, has become a global benchmark by declaring that “the Earth is our only shareholder” and transferring its ownership to an environmental fund focused on combating the climate crisis. Unilever has reformulated its production chain and impact reports under stricter transparency standards. Klabin invests in origin traceability and carbon neutrality, connecting ESG to the Brazilian forestry industry. Microsoft, on the other hand, stands out for applying the GHG Protocol in emissions measurement and for its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030, removing more carbon than it emits.
These examples show that the purpose narrative only generates value when supported by accountability and governance. The contemporary public, immersed in the attention economy and accustomed to real-time checking, not only consumes stories: it audits them. Cause marketing, therefore, needs to evolve from aesthetics to evidence, from promise to performance.
When brands become educators
The Global Initiative for Climate Change Information Integrity proposes a new pact between science, communication, and society. Among its objectives are funding research to map climate disinformation, creating networks of trusted experts, protecting scientists and journalists, and defining global standards for environmental communication.
This movement redefines the role of marketing. If before its function was to translate brand values, now it also acts as curation of credibility. In an ecosystem saturated with contradictory information, corporate communication becomes a bridge between the public and reliable knowledge. The UNESCO report Global Principles for Climate Information Integrity (2025) highlights that effective climate communication depends on the combination of scientific rigor, narrative empathy, and institutional transparency. This triad defines truth marketing as a new model of mediation between brands and society.
For marketing professionals, this change implies incorporating new practices: auditable data, impact traceability, coherence between discourse and action. Storytelling becomes data storytelling; reputation campaigns transform into integrity reports. Consistency becomes the true competitive advantage.
The Edelman Trust Barometer 2024 indicates that 71% of consumers trust companies that demonstrate verifiable impact more than public institutions. This shifts marketing from the persuasive field to that of informational responsibility, where each campaign or content contributes to strengthening public trust in science and transparent dialogue.
In the end, communicating sustainability is communicating the future. And the future of communication lies in uniting data, purpose, and authenticity. Marketing ceases to be just a means of persuasion to become a language of commitment, capable of translating complexities into trust and discourse into real transformation.
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Who wrote this column
Natasha Barreto de Oliveira
