Why Net Zero is the Ultimate Creative Brief

This industry op-ed is by Sophie Morice, Global Brand Experience Associate at Reckitt.


Climate change paralysis is a reality. It’s that feeling when the magnitude of the challenge seems so overwhelming that you find yourself unable to figure out what the right direction is, much less move in the right direction.

Individuals feel it, with a growing number of people feeling helpless in response to the enormity of it all (a recent study found that half of young people believe that “humanity is doomed”). Businesses feel it too. A report by The Carbon Trust earlier this year found that a large number of businesses are “greenstalling,” getting stuck in a state of “analysis paralysis” in their efforts to progress toward net zero.

Science, governments, and global organisations have a huge role to play in tackling climate change – through innovation, legislation, and guidance. But when it comes to envisioning a more sustainable future, creative thinking and the creative process are also crucial. A report last month by the Design Council in the UK found that 46% of designers feel they have the skills to help tackle the climate crisis. I agree. It’s time we start seeing the true value of design when dealing with such complex issues.

Nothing brings out creativity and innovation like a deadline – and what could be more urgent than climate change? But every deadline needs a brief to deliver that creative approach. What if we looked at the climate emergency through this lens—as the ultimate creative brief?

Time To Provoke

A designer’s role is to take the parameters of a given project and inspire, provoke, and envision solutions within those constraints.

Look at one of the most famous creative briefs in history: “Design a bottle so distinct that you would recognize it by feeling it in the dark or lying broken on the ground.” If you haven’t guessed already, we’re talking about Coca-Cola. But you don’t need to be a designer to feel excited by that challenge. That’s what a good design brief does: no matter who’s reading it, it sparks an idea, inviting anyone to contribute to the thought process.

Among the creative industries, there is always much debate about what makes the best brief – and it’s not just about stating the practical goals and needs, and laying out the hard data to build on.
It’s so important for the brief to inspire.

So when it comes to the climate crisis, a good creative brief wouldn’t just start with the obvious “Reach net zero by 2050” and other neutral sustainability metrics. Instead, it would challenge us to “Inspire hope that reaching net zero is not only possible but everyone’s responsibility” or “Create a net-zero strategy so inspiring and collaborative that every person feels empowered to create change.” It makes the challenge clearer, more urgent, and tangible.

Getting People Involved

Another area where a good creative brief can show the way is through engagement and collaboration. Ideas and solutions can come from anywhere. The discipline of design is about applying the widest possible lens and then narrowing that view based on expert feedback and collaboration with people of different perspectives. That’s when you get a tangible and impactful result.

So when we’re designing for brand experience, not only do we take into account the people who use our products at the very start of the creative brief stage, but we involve the internal cross-functional teams, external suppliers and agencies.

The Double Diamond by the Design Council is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.

The Design Council distilled this process into the concept of the double diamond more than 20 years ago, with the steps of ‘discover, define, develop, deliver’ widening and narrowing the lens for the best outcome. As the then-director of design and innovation, Richard Eisermann, put it, “It’s not an instruction manual on how to design, it’s an invitation to get involved.”

If you apply this to climate change, it’s a reminder to unlock buy-in at every level. Everyone in or connected to the business should feel heard and accountable. They should all be asking questions about environmental sustainability at every stage. The preferred outcome of the marketing team or the constraints of suppliers when looking at sustainability metrics should be addressed by the brief just as much as users’ needs.

The creative brief then also allows you to frame the challenge in a language that people and businesses can understand. For climate change, you can explicitly state the ‘objective’, for example. For many businesses, this objective might be balancing economic growth with meeting net-zero targets. In some companies like Patagonia, this is weighted toward the latter – in fact, the company’s decision to make Earth its only shareholder is a prime example of how reframing the language around climate change can have a huge impact.

A creative brief also articulates audience, scope, and timelines. The ‘audience’ is who we’re designing for (in the case of climate change, people, planet and business), as well as what the competitor landscape looks like. For example, Reckitt’s involvement in the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Health Systems Taskforce, which is a public-private partnership to accelerate net zero healthcare, shows how businesses can understand the competitor landscape not only for market growth but for expanding knowledge.

Or take the ‘scope’ in a creative brief, where you stipulate the stakeholders involved and what resources are required. For a company’s climate change ambitions, stakeholders can be governments, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (above), internal business leaders, and individual people. The ‘resources’ are investment on the one hand and external benchmarks (such as the Science Based Targets Initiative’s net zero targets) on the other.

So, a creative brief is not just about maintaining the vision that pushes a project beyond its functional requirements. A creative brief also helps you focus and keeps everyone accountable.

The Human Connection

This is one of the most important aspects of the creative brief: to look beyond the immediate need and bring humanity back into the challenge. The dialogue around net zero often fails to connect the ultimate goal with the people who will be most affected. Corporations, governments, and organisations start with statistics or reduction targets. These are all important, but they separate us from the real imperative for change, namely billions of people affected. As designers, we start with a human problem and envision around it. It’s what we’ve been trained for.

The best design-led businesses do this. Airbnb, for example, recognised that people sought more authentic, personalised experiences when traveling rather than hotel chains and identical all-inclusive resorts – and its business grew from there. A great historical example was UNICEF and Pamper’s long-running ‘1 Pack = 1 Vaccine’ partnership, which distributed one vaccine for every pack of diapers sold. The idea that consumers could directly help provide life-saving help to the developing world shows how a focus on real-world change and human challenges is key.

A creative brief is always built around the insight, the human truth at its core. Design can take the functional and strategic requirements of a problem and embed humanity and emotion to create a shared vision. The human truth when it comes to climate change is that failure means growing inequality, reduction of liveable areas of the planet, public health risks, biodiversity loss, and food and water shortages.

Finding a way to keep this front of mind at the core of the climate change challenge – using the framework of a creative brief to do so every day can be part of the solution.


Sophie Morice is a Global Brand Experience Associate at Reckitt. As a Yorkshire-born creative with a passion for sustainability and inclusion, a key focus of her work is in developing strategies that implement sustainable practices into existing business processes, whilst driving to increase brand value and creative excellence.

Header image by Andrej Lišakov for Unsplash+

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