Real Career Stories: Sustainability Expert

real-career-stories-sustainability-expert

[[p]]Curious about how ordinary people transform unexpected opportunities into successful careers?&nbsp;On the&nbsp;[[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/resources/podcasts" target="_blank"]]DMI podcast[[/a]]&nbsp;we get to chat with all sorts of digital marketing professionals - but their career journeys are all unique.&nbsp;[[/p]]

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[[p]]Laura Costello is an expert in advising brands on sustainability efforts and policies, working with clients such as Ben &amp; Jerry&#39;s and Who Gives a Crap. She gives us an insight into her career journey and roles, from graduating from university with a philosophy and literature degree to her current role as Head of Sustainability and Planet Services at youth agency &#8288;&#8288;[[a href="https://www.thinkhousehq.com/" target="_blank"]]Thinkhouse[[/a]]&#8288;&#8288;, as well as Ireland lead at &#8288;&#8288;[[a href="https://www.purposedisruptors.org/pd-ireland"]]Purpose Disruptors[[/a]]&#8288;&#8288;.[[/p]]

[[p]]Laura Costello[[br /]]
So I work in a youth marketing company, thinkhouse, and there I&#39;m leading quite a relatively new business unit, and that&#39;s focused on business for good. We&#39;re a B Corp organization, and so we&#39;re looking to kind of change the story of marketing and use, I guess, our skills as a force for good in the world. Our vision as a company is actually to create a world of brands and businesses that young people actually want. And so a lot of our work since becoming a B Corp has been in actually looking at our client portfolio and diversifying and working with, you know, governmental organizations as well as NGOs and so that&#39;s the side of the business that I&#39;m really looking to grow. So that&#39;s one big part of my work. We&#39;re working with the Department of Culture in Ireland. We&#39;re working with some big global charities, like goal. We work on a big, lovely project for Ireland&#39;s national broadcaster RTE&nbsp;called This is art, which is a young people&#39;s art competition. And then I&#39;m also doing work with purpose disruptors. And as you mentioned, we&#39;re a non for profit, a not for profit, looking to change the story of advertising. And really, our vision is a world where the advertising industry works in harmony with the natural world. And so a lot of that work is all about, you know, how do we bring people together to really look at how we&#39;re using marketing and advertising in the world, and kind of using it to be using those skills, I guess, in new ways, and reshaping the industry to work in harmony with the natural world. So a lot of the projects that come out of that are to do with measurement creativity. We&#39;ve got a project called good life 2030 which is all around telling a new story of a good life, one that is not based on, I guess, over consumption, but more connection. And we also have another creative project in the UK called agency for nature, which is all around connecting young people with nature in order to drive more pro environmental behaviors. So they&#39;re kind of the two different sides of my job. One is kind of really industry focused and quite experimental, and all about reimagining advertising. And the other is around, how do you kind of build, I guess, an agency for the future that&#39;s that&#39;s fit for the future, that that is doing work that is useful for the world.[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis &nbsp;2:28 &nbsp;[[br /]]
I&#39;m curious about how you got where you are, and how you kind of got into all this, really, what, what&#39;s your career trajectory look like?[[/p]]

[[p]]Laura Costello &nbsp;2:39 &nbsp;[[br /]]
So I actually studied philosophy in English literature. He quickly went into, went into communications, and pink house actually was one of my first jobs. I, you know, I worked a little bit in comms before that. My, my mom has a corporate PR company, so I&#39;ve always been interested in, I guess, creativity through the lens of business and using language in fresh ways. So started in, think house 10 years ago now and then, through that journey, and, you know, went into strategy. Went from, you know, account management into strategy, into purpose led strategy. But in 2018 I guess that was where there was a real shift. I think it&#39;s always fascinating to ask people like, where did sustainability, or the thing that you know, really energizes you? When did that become the thing? And as I said, I was, you know, Ben and Jerry&#39;s are my first clients. I learned a lot from them in terms of how brand world works, but it was a course called reclaiming agency that I did actually with one of the co founders of purpose disruptors. Before purpose disruptors was a thing, and which was all around bringing people together, leaders from marketing in advertising together, who were concerned about their role in the context of the climate crisis. So that was a six month long leadership course that I did. And after that, I guess, kind of just really supercharged the impact that I wanted to have in terms of climate and communications, but also then brought purpose disruptors in Ireland to Ireland in 2020 and then kind of got funding and stuff from there to be able to kind of maximize the impact of that, of that work. But I&#39;ve had, obviously a super supportive board, and think ice as an independent company. It&#39;s been, it&#39;s been really amazing to kind of stay in one place and still be able to to grow and develop and do things that are are quite disruptive and activist in a way, but still be able to, I guess, work with with some of the world&#39;s leading brands and businesses along the way.[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis &nbsp;4:34 &nbsp;[[br /]]
That&#39;s really interesting, that what are the most sort of surprising things that you&#39;ve learned along the way. what were the kind of like, oh, it works like this, yeah,&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]Laura Costello&nbsp;4:54 &nbsp;[[br /]]
I think there was one which was, you know, not all brands are like Ben and Jerry&#39;s not all brands actually want to talk. About politics or issues beyond themselves. I think that for me was a big learning curve to kind of say, Oh, you don&#39;t have, like, you know, you couldn&#39;t even bring up sustainable development goals in a meeting without kind of, you know, being kind of looked at, completely mad. So I think that for me was, you know, that not all businesses were structured in a way that enabled them to talk about things beyond themselves or or had had the bravery, I guess, to kind of talk about politics. And I think that&#39;s changed a lot, you know, since I started out. And I think now I&#39;m surprised that change isn&#39;t happening faster, because it just makes total sense, and I think some of the smartest people in the world have been talking about this for a long time. So I&#39;m by no means alone in a lot of the views that I hold are in the movements that are happening. There&#39;s so many people across the world that I learned from, and I think it&#39;s fascinating to see kind of how business as usual is resisting change. I think that, in itself, from a systems change perspective, is fascinating, but also quite, quite scary.[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis &nbsp;6:12 &nbsp;[[br /]]
Yeah. I mean, do you? Do you? Do you meet people who are just com sort of reminders that, you not saying a bubble, but that remind us that there are, yeah, there are people out there who think some of your ideas are completely wild and bonkers.[[/p]]

[[p]]Laura Costello &nbsp;6:31 &nbsp;[[br /]]
I think I meet people who are really afraid of be of their their life, life&#39;s work, being challenged. You know, I think you meet people who are so brilliant at what they do, you know, create, creative directors, people who&#39;ve been in the industry for a long time, CEOs who have, you know, enormous financial obligations,&nbsp;[[br /]]
who who worry about,[[/p]]

[[p]]Laura Costello &nbsp;6:58 &nbsp;[[br /]]
I mean, it&#39;s quite a personal thing. I think where people don&#39;t want to feel like what they have been doing has been bad, and that&#39;s quite an emotional kind of roller coaster to go through, where it&#39;s like, well actually, you know, some of the stuff that I&#39;m saying potentially might threaten their understanding of how they see themselves. So I think I see that more than people being immediately dismissive. I think I see people being dismissive as people kind of being protective of themselves. There&#39;s an emotional kind of journey there[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis &nbsp;7:37 &nbsp;[[br /]]
that&#39;s interesting that I mean, I, you know, I do I get that reaction with this things I talk about which, you know, like social media communities, people like, hang on a minute, what I thought would be throwing our promotional messages into these channels, and it&#39;s kind of free what you want about communities, you know? So there&#39;s definitely varying levels of awareness I think about, and ideas about how these communication channels work, and who they work for, who they&#39;re supposed to work for. You know, yeah, again, there&#39;s a lot of people do just think they&#39;re, they&#39;re there for free, marketing for brands, and I don&#39;t know what, yeah, but, um, that&#39;s interesting anyway, though, to hear your perspective on it. Yeah.[[/p]]

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