‘Drop the ego’ sustainability comms expert tells organic brands

Credit: Soil Association

Organic September 2025 may have reached over 96 million people, but sustainability communications expert Solitaire Townsend says if the organic industry is to truly break down barriers between consumer interest in organic and consumer spend on organic, then brands must change their marketing approach to make shoppers feel like the hero, rather than centring their brand founder as the hero. 

Speaking at Soil Association Certification’s Organic Trade Conference last week, Townsend said all too often organic brands get caught up in a ‘virtue bubble’, speaking only of the good work they do, as opposed to focusing on the consumer benefits of what they’re marketing.

‘Winning hearts and minds’, she told the delegates from across the organic industry, means accepting that shopper mentality may be more heavily weighted towards personal benefits than societal or environmental values.

“Most of the population won’t go for something unless there is a benefit for them, and this is even more pronounced with Generation Z,” she explained. “While millennials are more receptive to values-led communications, Gen Z simply want better products.” 

Townsend believes that ‘screaming about what’s so great about organic’ is key in driving up sales; whether it be better health or more value for money, as a sector we must start talking about the issues consumers care most about. 

“Many brands believe ‘organic’ on its own is the functional benefit, and that’s not the case,” she said, adding that not enough people have a ‘baseline understanding’ of organic’s benefits, therefore it ‘goes over their heads’ if organic is used as the benefit statement on marketing.   

If brands can let go of ‘ego marketing’ and communicate instead what’s in it for the consumer — not for farmers, the planet or the future — there’s every possibility of increasing organic’s market share to 20% within a few years. 

By Rosie Greenaway, editor