Be Yoda, Not Luke: How to Use Story, Data & Advocacy to Win Hearts (Not Just Clicks)

In this episode, we sit down with Dario Berrebi to unpack one of the most overlooked shifts in brand storytelling: becoming the guide, not the hero. Think Yoda, not Luke Skywalker.

We explore why purpose-driven brands struggle with positioning, how to tell stories that resonate without sounding self-important, and why solving boring problems beats chasing cool ideas.

You’ll walk away with a smarter way to communicate your value, one rooted in empathy, simplicity, and timeless storytelling structure.

WE COVERED:

• Why most purpose-driven brands get storytelling backwards
• The “Hero’s Journey” framework—and how to flip it for your customer
• How to stand out by solving boring, painful problems
• Real talk: what scrappy SMBs can do instead of trying to look “premium”
• Tactical brand building on a tight budget: second-hand gear, focused offers, and positioning
• How to make your brand feel human, not polished to death
• The power of telling the truth, even when it’s messy
  
  

FOR WHO?
If you’re a founder, marketer, or creative working on a mission-driven product, and you're tired of performative branding that doesn't convert, this episode gives you a more grounded, actionable playbook.Most brands position themselves as the hero.

Chapters

• 2:00 Restless Stories and Sustainable Development Goals
• 4:10 Digital Marketing and Brand Strategy
• 8:35 The Power of Storytelling in Marketing
• 12:47 Sustainability Challenges and Greenwashing
• 17:23 Challenges in Sustainability and Greenwashing
• 23:31 Carbon Literacy and Employee Engagement
• 28:30 B Corp Certification and Ethical Practices
• 36:07 Advocacy and System Change
• 50:54 Final Thoughts and Advice

Transcript

[00:00:00] **Dario Berrebi:** You can serve 10,000 meals, you can build 10,000 homes never going to catch up with the need because the need is in the millions.We're in a system that's still very, money driven and not well being driven. And the only way to catch up with the need is by changing the law. And the interesting thing is that we're seeing more and more organizations move into advocacy as well and realize that. They can't catch up with it.

It's stupid game. you can never get there and so

advocacy is so much cheaper as well. You only need a team of One two, three four people who know what they're doing who know how to mobilize people To effect change and change millions of lives. 

[00:00:48] **Michel:** Hi everyone and welcome to Growth Leap. I'm your host, Michel Gagnon. We talked to pretty awesome business builders who are designing disruptive and meaningful companies. 

[00:00:57] **Michel Gagnon:** Hi, everyone. Today, we're joined by a creative powerhouse with over a decade of experience, helping businesses and charities grow their digital presence through innovative campaigns.

Dario Berube is the digital and creative director at Restless Stories, based in the UK. He specializes in blending market research, SEO, new digital technologies, and content strategy to craft stories that resonate with the right audiences. Over the years, Dario has launched and relaunched over 30 websites with millions of monthly visitors and produced more than 250 videos, including work for cinema and broadcast TV.

His impressive client roster includes major brands like Channel 4, BBC, Radio Africa, Procter and Gamble, and notable charities and startups driven by social and technological innovation. 

He's here today to share his insights on everything from creating authentic digital campaigns. To navigating the complexities of greenwashing and sustainability in marketing. So Dario, welcome to the show. How are you? 

[00:01:57] **Dario Berrebi:** Thanks. yeah. Good. excited to do this.


## Restless Stories and Sustainable Development Goals

[00:02:00] **Michel Gagnon:** I'd like to start and make sure that people know what restless stories is. and I've discovered that over 95 percent of your clients are aligned. With sustainable development goals. I'd like you, if you could start by explaining to us a little bit,how you differ, let's say from traditional agencies.

Maybe it's the differences in the process you use, the angle you take or the deliverables or maybe all of the above, but I'm curious to know more about how you're different

[00:02:29] **Dario Berrebi:** Yeah.so first, I will say that the 95 percent figure is mainly, I'd say taken from the fact that it will allow for a small room of basically new clients or like one off projects where sometimes we can see that there's potential and that they're open to,being aligned,with the SDG, the sustainable development framework,by and large, easily for the last two years, all the clients we've had, an element of sustainability essentially, environmental or social,justice. One of the key things that we'll bring is that we have a pretty good understanding of the SDGs to the point that we have a good understanding of its, uh, of its shortcomings as well.there's more and more,criticism of the SDGs. which, a lot of agencies moving into sustainability might not necessarily be aware of. We've written a kid's book on the SDGs,which was actually more aimed at teaching parents. we'll make it an exciting story for the kids. Somehow managed to cram all 17 SDGs into the story, which was a feat, to do. but yeah, it was endorsed by a couple of UN agencies who really, enjoyed the story.

I guess it's also our way of saying we know this stuff. we understand it pretty well. I think most of us have a a quite a multicultural background as well. So got a good understanding of what life is like outside of Western countries. and we're quite attuned to, like I said, to social and environmental justice and what that means, why it's important,and, why that's our focus. 


## Digital Marketing and Brand Strategy

[00:04:10] **Michel Gagnon:** when you approach, let's say, a new project, a new client. What's your typical process to get there? And maybe, we can take a recent, concrete example that you have, if you don't want to name the client, that's fine, but I'd like to understand a little bit, what's your process, because when you're doing digital marketing.

Sustainability in traditional companies is more of an afterthought, right? So what's your process?

[00:04:36] **Dario Berrebi:** Yeah, but we always start with, you know,the value proposition, what's their USP, what's their target audience, or at least what they think their target audience is. Um,and obviously reviewing the, the business goals to see, are we aligning, whether we're doing SEO or a marketing campaign. Or these days, an advocacy campaign. Does it make sense with, with the overall organizational goals? and do they have a clear understanding of what's working and what's not working? So quite often these days,where we tend to do more and more, social media work, or at least the work that we do ends up on social media. it's quite interesting to see that. A lot of people don't necessarily have that understanding. and a common sort of point of resistance is around brand, for example.and that's where our approach is a lot more. I don't know, it sounds maybe classic to say,but we're just data driven. We focus on what works, right? We're the creative so we'll put all the emotional stuff behind it and try and deliver the emotional content, But we're also quite analytical in that If it doesn't work, it doesn't work We'll move on and you know There's we're trying as much as we can to remove the ego from what we produce and just focus on the resultsan interesting trend these days is yeah resistance on brand.

What do you mean?

it seems

[00:06:05] **Michel Gagnon:** Wait, what do you mean by resistance on brand

[00:06:07] **Dario Berrebi:** So what I mean is that most companies and non profits as well Have this set idea of what their brand should look like should feel and we try to say in a somewhat, um, you know

[00:06:22] **Michel Gagnon:** gentle way?

[00:06:24] **Dario Berrebi:** People don't care about your brand like they just don't they care about what you can do for them, right? Are you informing them or are you entertaining them like at the end of the day? It's, either or both ideally Which isn't to say that, we're like breaking the brand style but to give you an idea, one clienthad sort of set in their brand guide that they were going to be, photo driven maybe for everything that they do, that they post, it's all about that kind of imagery.and we tried it for six months in very different ways and nothing was really working. until one month we tried graphics boom, that was it. Just everything shot up. engagement went three, four times higher consistently for the whole month. and the client, Refused it was like, no, we're going to go back to pictures, even if it doesn't work. 

[00:07:15] **Michel Gagnon:** and

[00:07:15] **Dario Berrebi:** but gradually, after having those conversations,I guess people have an emotional attachment to their brand and it takes a lot of conversations to get there. And I had,a similar chat yesterday with another, startup that we've,started working with where they said, I'm now finally starting to see that.

It doesn't matter. We just need to give people what they want,and what resonates with them. And sometimes the brand approach is just too heavy and too marketing y, too sales y.at the end of the day, you want your brand to contribute to a conversation, to create those conversations, and not to be too much about you.I think if you wanted to talk about storytelling at some point, interesting thing here is that in brand storytelling, which incredibly, very few people know about the brand is never the hero, the brand is the guide. And that's, it's consistent with what we're seeing in that. If you position yourself as the hero, then you're front and center and it's all about you and your brand. And that's quite a big mistake because you want to make it about people.so yeah,

[00:08:25] **Michel Gagnon:** and how?

[00:08:26] **Dario Berrebi:** things in a very,

[00:08:28] **Michel Gagnon:** Yeah, that's fine. I mean that's the purpose of this discussion. I'd like to dig deeper on this one Because 


## The Power of Storytelling in MarketingThe Power of Storytelling in MarketingThe Power of Storytelling in MarketingThe Power of Storytelling in MarketingThe Power of Storytelling in MarketingThe Power of Storytelling in Marketing

[00:08:37] **Michel Gagnon:** let's talk about storytelling. Everybody's talking about, you need to do storytelling about your business, about yourself. And,a couple of years ago and still up to today, people were saying, you just need to share, value, content,value, and, it's easy to say, not always clear and are easy to actually deliver when we talk about storytelling.

What's,what's the best way to actually get there. If you want to expand on that brand story, that you just mentioned. 

[00:09:05] **Dario Berrebi:** yeah, sothe easiest framework to work with, maybe not the easiest, but the best way to start, which you can implement across your website, across, your digital strategies,going to be the hero's journey, which says that, your, customer starts with a problem it's a formula that's used in most Pixar films, Disney films, Hollywood, and so on.

You'll find it again and again. Your customer has a problem. finds a guide that guides it through, its journey of finding resolution.and at the end, there's a transformation, right? You have a before and after, and that's why before and after pictures are so effective in advertising, on social media in general, because you show the transformation, the resolution of the conflict. and it's funny because Most brands and organizations really tend to shy away from conflict just show you know the happy outcome Or the issue at the beginning. but there's no story without conflict And so Again to go back to what I was saying before Your brand has to be The guide. So if you think about Star Wars, you're Yoda. You're not Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker is the client. it's a tough one to digest for a lot of organizations that like, but I want to be, holding the lightsaber, like, nope, this is not happening.

[00:10:38] **Michel Gagnon:** I like that one.

[00:10:40] **Dario Berrebi:** And it's funny because you then start looking at, all your favorite movies there's always a conflict and a transformation. and I have tried really hard to find great films that don't do that. And it's nearly impossible to find even those that claim that they don't do it. 

[00:10:55] **Michel Gagnon:** if let's say, we sit down, you and I, we need to do a campaign for our business or, a client, how do you take that framework and, make it work because, conceptually I get it, But if you try to apply this to, let's say a digital campaign.

What could it look like? 

[00:11:12] **Dario Berrebi:** So I'm trying to find an example that could be of interest. an interesting way of thinking about it is if you go back to that original,Apple campaign that everyone talks about.like their biggest TV spot of the, 80s, 90s with Einstein and a lot of, creative geniuses. That campaign essentially said who they're for. So that, this was the think different campaign. So they were like, we support the guys who think out of the box who are, crazy, wild geniuses. That's a really useful framework to think, who are you for? And, who you're serving essentially. And that's going to help you determine that. And it's the same thing with Nike and say, you know, we're all for the athletes and people who overcome their initial, Maybe, a handicap or anything like that, to their initial condition and to go further, bigger, higher, and so on.so that's going to be your step one to understand who you're for. and then it's just a case of, I really like to think of marketing as a contribution to culture because it allows you to have more fun. 

[00:12:27] **Michel Gagnon:** And to think in different terms 

[00:12:30] **Dario Berrebi:** trying to think of different ways that you get people to connect with the campaign you're creating with you know to Recognize themselves in it 

[00:12:39] **Michel Gagnon:** you mentioned that, some of your clients or organizations are, too hung up on their brand,or the branding guidelines. D


## Sustainability Challenges and Greenwashing

[00:12:53] **Michel Gagnon:** o you see other, like in the sustainability space, do you see other big mistakes that they're making because of, like from my point of view, we had the Al Gore.

Campaign in a way, which had a very, intense message, let's say, and I think it served its purpose, right? But then you get to a point where I think, many organizations are just not, great at communicating. And sometimes, if you look at the elections in the US, I don't know where you stand, but, you can say whatever you want about Republicans.

They're pretty good at simplifying a message and appealing to who you're for in a way, right? so when you look at other like sustainability, organization in the space What other types of mistakes do you frequently see them making? 

[00:13:38] **Dario Berrebi:** so To go back to the u. s. ElectionIt's very interesting because I think the Republicans have stopped campaigning just when it's election time and that's been their strength.in that they're instead campaigning all year round. They're by, shaping culture and we go back to interplay between marketing and culture.

they have invested heavily in media that supports their ideology And all year round all they do is frame the culture So that it serves them. And when come election time, they don't really need to you know, they just keep pushing through the same stuff the democrats actually outbid The republicans quite a bit in advertisingoutspent them I mean So,it clearly didn't work.and that's an interesting thing that we tend to push as well with organizations of all kinds that's why we always focus on campaigns, basically, like I'm not interested in making one expensive video because maybe from a digital point of view, from a digital mindset. It's too risky, there's too many things you don't know and you need to keep testing. So I'd rather make 10 cheaper videos that we can test and see what's going to work best. And in that sense, we get so much more out of a single campaign because you get that Long term engagement and no one's stressing if One post or one article didn't do so well or didn't perform because we keep learning and that's the whole point so for me the campaign approach is really important and it's something that Is maybe often still missing in the mindset that we see with our clients And I think with sustainability,it's a bit of a similar thing as well, where people think need to be sustainable just like that tomorrow, right?

they decide to be sustainable and that's it. Whereas it really is a journey and we all need to be very open and honest about the fact that it is a journey and no one's doing it perfectly and it's absolutely fine. it's the biggest change of our lifetimes, of the last, what, two or 300 years, we have to change the entire system, the way we produce, the way we design things. It's massive. it's a huge undertaking and no one's going to get it right from the get go.and people will really appreciate that honesty and transparency, not only that, but it is becoming a legal requirement that you have to be honest and transparent about it. And it's okay to not get it right, First, you need to start with a benchmark and say, this is where we're at. And we agree, we all acknowledge, and we're open that this is where we're at. these are our shortcomings. It's hard to do, no one likes to do that. and every year you show progress, but at least it makes things more manageable.

It makes things more step by stepand every year you can show, where you're going with this. I think. What I kind of wish, you know, I'd see more organizations do is do that initial benchmark but also invest in some very basic carbon literacy training for themselves, for their employees. So they have an understanding of where we're at of how bad things are, because until we started working on UN reports, we knew it was bad, which was three, four years ago. We knew it was bad, but we didn't realize how sort of cliff edge we were.


## Challenges in Sustainability and Greenwashing

[00:17:23] **Michel Gagnon:** I think it's a good segue into green washing green hushing and just the annual report. i've done The sustainability reports at least four or five of them for Bombardier,company that back in the days was making trains and planes that was not 3 years ago.

That was,I was young and,it was the beginning of,reporting. There was the Dow Jones Sustainability Index that came up, the Carbon Disclosure Project, et cetera. And,we put a lot of effort. That was a lot of time. And it was a multinational with, 70, 000 employees and I don't know how many markets it was a big effort to come up with that benchmark and, when you're in it day in day out,you see what's happening.

I'm a bit surprised to hear What you're saying that, a couple of years ago, we were in a bad place because I've been in the space for a while, and I think a lot of companies the big ones have set up their benchmarks. But then we got into the green washing in a way, right?

Where you basically saying, oh, I'm, I've reached, I can't remember what the rankings are in, in DGSI, but I know you're platinum. and your name is BP, right? and then, you take a step back and say,does that make sense, right? to be ranked like that? Or is that there's a big disconnect between the real world and, whatever that ranking is trying to achieve.

I'd like to get your views a little bit On greenwashing, greenhushing, and maybe explain a little bit the terms, and I'd like you to share maybe what else, companies could do, to get better on that front. 

[00:18:55] **Dario Berrebi:** so greenwashing, is when you make claims,sustainability. are completely wrong.and these days it's it is becoming increasingly a dangerous thing to do you can get snapped with a huge fine in the UK, in the EU I don't know about the US market, but i'm sure it's gonna happen.

Well these days maybe less 

[00:19:17] **Michel Gagnon:** Eventually, eventually.

[00:19:18] **Dario Berrebi:** It's it's basically false advertising However, it does happen in at least one of two ways. Quite often in, in SMEs, small and medium enterprises, it's the marketing team that does these sustainability claims, and they're not trained, and they don't understand what they're saying. So saying things, saying that your product is good for the planet, 99 percent of the time is wrong.it's incredibly hard to prove to begin with. Also, as long as you're producing something, that means there's a good chance you're extracting resources from the planet. So it cannot be good.green, it just is incredibly vagueand things like that.

So there's,lists of words, that, from now on, you're not allowed to use, simply because they're misleading. Yeah, it's regulation that's caught up with, years off of this kind of misuse of language. this side of greenwashing is, is somewhat unintentional and due to ignorance. and then there's another aspect that's a lot more, intentional.where, people will make claims and, knowing that their product is not up to scratch, or knowing that they're using things likecarbon offsets, but they're not actually helping the planet in any real way.

it's just preventing further harm, which is a whole different thing. and then you've got green hushing. where Companies get scared of saying anything about their green efforts About their sustainability effortsBecause they're scared of being criticized Online and so they decide not to say anything, but it turns out that there's a good chance.

They're actually doing something good Like we said it's just about being on a journey and taking some positive steps in the right direction And if you are doing that and you understand the ins and outs and you're communicating it correctly, you should absolutely talk about it and not worry about, backlash of 

[00:21:21] **Michel Gagnon:** earlier you were mentioning that, you've worked on annual reports, and you've realized that we were not where we should be. What are the key things that you've seen that, these companies should be doing better or, where you see opportunities to actually, get to the place we should be.

[00:21:38] **Dario Berrebi:** Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was talking about, United Nations report, actually. the, but it's okay. yeah. It's a bit of a tough one on the annual reports because it's more about understanding where you're at as a company in terms of,your in house and skill set around And,So later today, for example, I'll be talking to Adam Bastok, who, from small 99, who helps, small and medium enterprises get a plan to, reduce the carbon emissions. in a lot of countries,the SMEs represent a huge portion of the workforce of the companies, registered, are harder to get on board because they have fewer resources. it's easier to regulate the 400 plus employee type of companies. but we need to provide a lot of support for the SMEs as well. and that's where, for me, it's a journey. Like you, if you're really starting from scratch, Because you're, a local business,big, or, we're not so big. Then, you start at carbon literacy, then you get into B Corp and so on. but it's that journey aspect for me is essential. And that's something that I'm really still trying to crack in terms of,maybe we need to provide a platform for clients that builds,this journey so that, there's always someone to take them by the hand and say, this is where you start.and we'll, guide you along the way to improve things. But you're not sure where to start, then it's really important to get an external consultant who is specialized in, in impact reporting and sustainability reporting. because they'll understand all the jargon,all the technicalities.

and it's definitely something that you can't do on your own. 


## Carbon Literacy and Employee Engagement

[00:23:31] **Michel Gagnon:** l


## Carbon Literacy and B Corp Certification

[00:23:42] **Michel Gagnon:** et's get into carbon literacy, because I think that's something that you know that you care a lot about. I think you've done quite a few trainings yourself. What is carbon literacy from your point of view, but also let's say, I'm an SMB leader and I want to get on that journey. If I offer carbon literacy training to my employees, how can that help me? 

[00:23:56] **Dario Berrebi:** carbon literacy essentially is a one and a half day, training that helps you understand everything around CO2 emissions. I think there's a lot of terms that are really confusing for everyone,reaching net zero by 2050. CO2 equivalent emissions. What's the difference with methane?

What's the difference with, what are greenhouse gases? How is that different from CO2 and so on?so this helps you clarify everything, in a really important way, because it's having a massive impact on the world. and concretely it helps you as a company in many different ways.

it helps with employee retention. which a few studies have shown. It also empowers your employees to help, decide how to help your business reduce its CO2 emissions, and quite often make savings as well in the same process. at the end of the day, the biggest sort of, desirable outcome from taking carbon literacy training is that you understand which actions are going to have the biggest impact for your company, for your employees, in terms of reducing emissions. So, I came out of my training with a very clear understanding that I needed to replace my boiler at home as soon as I could with a heat pump, because that's about a ton of CO2 per year that I produce, between one and one and a half, I think.I have a small car that basically we drive only on weekends because the rest of the time we walk and recycle. but if we drove it more, it would be about a ton of CO2 per year. And we need to eat less meat and cheese because again, that's close to a ton of CO2 per year. So if you think about it. I've got a top three biggest actions,that generate three tons of CO2 equivalent emissions per year. And that's true for everyone. So if all of us take these steps, then we can reduce our emissions by, millions and millions of tons of CO2, which is amazing. There was also greening your money, but I had already done that. So happy days. greening your money being, the bank that you use because banks invest heavily in fossil fuels and your pension also tends to invest heavily in fossil fuels. and that's a massive one because there's a lot of money in there everyone. having an understanding of These things, and some of these are really easy to implement. switching banks is dead easy. Switching pensions is pretty easy as well. and by that alone, you're saving,in the thousands of tons of CO2.So yeah, it's essentially empowering you to understand what are the best decisions I can make. we're all overwhelmed with information, with what's actually going to work, what's actually going to make the most difference. and that's what it does. as soon as I completed the training, I also started talking to,my coworking space at the time and saying, are you using a renewable energy supplier? Are trying to use heating in an efficient way to, reduce your billsand CO2 emissions. So this kind of stuff,



[00:27:17] **Michel Gagnon:** I really like this because of the last part where we said it helps, obviously helps you understand the lay of the land as the terminology and Make sure that you,you can differentiate different terms, which is critical. And then, the other part where you say it is going to help you find the actions that will have the greatest impact.

And I've discussed that in previous podcast episodes where, there's been a multiplication of measurement tools and companies, help you measure your emissions. And this thing started,Because it was the right thing to do, but then it got to a point where that's what I've said to Julia, Joe, in a previous episode, I said, I think, some companies are just using this to stall, right?

Because if you are a multinational or an SMB, You should be able to, you know, guess a little bit what's the, the 20 percent that generates the 80%. And if, as you said, everybody fixed the 80 percent by switching banks or, whatever, look at heating, transportation, then, you're so much better than spending three years trying to get,to the perfect benchmark, 

So I really like that. I think not enough people are focus on that front. I agree. 


## B Corp Certification and Ethical Practices

[00:28:30] **Michel Gagnon:** this brings us to be corp, right? This is something that you touched on. Uh, it's, a term that did not exist back in the days. And, a lot more and more companies are trying toget it.

Can you explain a little bit what B Corp is and why it's so important to you?

[00:28:47] **Dario Berrebi:** if you think of the ESG framework in a way,is similar to that. So it tries to assess, how well your business is doing from an environmental, social and governance point of view. So you're looking at KPIs across social environmental accountability, transparency. and that's a really interesting. Process because having worked a lot with non profits are subject to a lot of mandatory transparency regulations,at least in the UK. and I always thought it would be interesting to do that with businesses,to be able to see how they're doing, how are they treating their employees?

Thanks. what's their impact on the environment? what's the gender gap ratio? in terms of pay, the gender, yeah, pay gap ratio, and so on. with B Corp, you get, a score out of 200 points. and you have to achieve a minimum of 80.so there's always, I think again, it's important to take things As a journey and, I know there's a few consultants who are like, there's a lot of B Corp consultants basically who help companies with this, scoring process and achieve their certification. And sometimes they will, or quite often,say no to certain companies because they can see that they just wanted for the marketing value to have the B Corp logo on their website. and so they're doing it for the wrong reasons, but also they won't achieve a great score.

And if they achieve a score of 84, just about passing the, you know, the mark, it doesn't really look good on anyone. but that being said, if you're, genuinely committed to the process, have to recertify after three years. So then you can work on improving your score and communicating that.

And that's also an important, side of things.

[00:30:33] **Michel Gagnon:** Can you share some of the criteria you have to meet,to be able to achieve that score?

[00:30:39] **Dario Berrebi:** Yeah, yeah. so there's things like,employee benefits. Um,I guess it's an aspect of, looking after your employees. So you have to share all kinds of,policies that you have internally to look after your employees. governance, supply chain practices, environmental policies. So,what are you doing to minimize your impact on the environment? And again, we'll go back to, are you using, a renewable energy supplier? Are you trying to get rid of packaging as much as you can? are you trying to find an ethical supply chain, which is a really boring, but also an incredibly important way doing business these days?

more and more we're finding out that. the chocolate industry these days is on fire. everyone's it's using so much child labor or, on your smartphones or using a ton of child labor, conflict areas and so on. so trying to have a ethical supply chain is a headache.

but it's really important tackle that. 

[00:31:44] **Michel Gagnon:** So these are some of the criteria they have to meet on the environmental side, is there anything specific related to emissions? 

[00:31:52] **Dario Berrebi:** I think like with everything you need to have a carbon accounting software because until you start monitoring how you're doing, then you have no idea where you're at, right? So a carbon accounting software will look at everything from What we call like scope one, two, and three emissions. So scope one and two will be things that are directly related to your business. utilities,purchasing, equipment and so on. and then scope three emissions is part of your supply chain. So if you order, what people who deliver stuff to you, all your vendors, essentially. an example of a way of an easy way for small businesses to improve their scope.

Scope three emissions is to have a policy in place to say that by default. We will always buy, secondhand equipment, for example, and that in itself reduces emissions and material use by an insane amount. So you say, your policy will say we will always like exhaust every single, venue, of sourcing. material before we have to buy first hand, new equipment. and that's going to have a huge impact. And that's something that your, your carbon accounting software will look at. It will look at like your expenses. What are you spending things on and then attribute, CO2 equivalent emission to that. So that's a big one. So you've got, energy usage,and then, related greenhouse gas emissions, but then also things like water management, and waste management. you just want to try and, keep things, keep your impact on the planet, your environmental impact, as small as possible. that's the tricky bit around the system that we're in and that you could still be a B Corp and score incredibly well and can talk about some of those and operate within extractive system that is damaging to nature anyway, 

even if you're Patagonia, is like an interesting case study, because everyone thinks they're like the best. The best thing in sustainability When interestingly they still use a ton of plastic in their product plastic that Plastic fibers that is, you know in their clothes that washes away every time You put it in the washing machine it goes straight into the you know

[00:34:22] **Michel Gagnon:** Mode of supply. 

[00:34:23] **Dario Berrebi:** the into the oceans,

[00:34:24] **Michel Gagnon:** yeah so essentially, Plastic fibers in clothing and car tires are like your main sources of microplastic pollution, and yeah, you, like I was saying,it's hard.

[00:34:34] **Dario Berrebi:** You need to look at everything you're doing and that's why it's going to be a step by step process. That's why you need to start by monitoring what you're doing because that's ground zero, like understanding how much you're putting out there in terms of waste of all sorts, whether it's, emissions, or,things sent to landfill.and then you can start thinking about improving your supply chain, improving your product design. So that you're designing for longevity not for obsolescence. yeah.

[00:35:16] **Michel Gagnon:** Yeah. I think, this is something I've been through as well, when, back in the days I was like fully into sustainability. I think, it felt good to be, to I had the impression I was making the company a bit more human. In a way, but in the end you wake up and you still like work. I remember saying we're still destroying the planet.

We just destroy it a little bit less than, last year. that brings us to like a new model where, we hear a lot about regenerative finance,regenerative businesses. I'd like to talk about restless stories and say, what's next for you, are trying to.

Help these types of businesses, increase their reach, make sure that, we hear more and more about their stories so that we slowly move into a different types of system. what's next for you? What's your plan for the coming 12, 24 months? 


## Advocacy and System Change

[00:36:07] **Dario Berrebi:** what we've started in the last three, four, five months actually, is to work on advocacy. I took a bit of time end of last year to have a slow down and think about what were our most impactful campaigns, both,things that felt impactful personally, but also that I knew, we were getting really excited about,and even thought, It doesn't matter if we have to fly out to Cairo for this, because the impact alone is going to dwarf, the CO2 emissions of a flight.

advocacy was the thing that came out consistently, where we had worked on campaigns or events that essentially put together governments, for example, and house builders, and then if they agree together to build 500, 000 green and affordable homes, we're tackling. Both, social and environmental in one go. and then I don't care about my flight ticket to Cairo because I'm having a massive difference, by enabling, This type of encounter to happen. And that's the stuff that we're focusing on now. So what we are doing is that we've partnered with,Hero Circle, who are a startup that supports,environmental activists, more specifically campaigners and mobilizers who work in parliaments. they're not. Like other activists, because they're specialized in parliamentarian work. So they understand how to draft a bill, how to essentially protect or fight for new legislation that will protect the environment. And in a way, they're also protecting our democracies because they're constantly at risk from big lobbies that are protecting their own interests.

And that's what's been happening for decades. we now know that,ExxonMobil has known since the 70s, that climate change was a thing. They predicted it themselves. their own researchers were like, Oh, yeah. Climate change is real and it's happening and they were like, okay, we're just going to spend lots of money on lobbying governments around the world,and that's what they've all been doing for the last 40 years at least So yeah, there's a problem of system change,which to me is dual one is the is You know democracy's being at risk And that's where advocacy is incredibly important. So it could be that you're trying to protect communities fightingfor their land,because there's a land grab somewhere, or it could be much closer to home. The passing of the, EU nature restoration law last year, the EU said they would protect 30 percent of land. To aim to restore it. and that's something that campaigners at hero circle helped make happen. that's a huge deal. Essentially for me, it goes back to the fact that advocacy has the highest ROIreturn on investment and return on impact. You cannot get better than that. And I'm saying that as someone who's worked with a lot of nonprofits, You can Serve 10,000 meals, you can build 10,000 homes never going to catch up with the need because the need is in the millions.We're in a system that's still very, money driven and not well being driven. And the only way to catch up with the need is by changing the law. And the interesting thing is that we're seeing more and more organizations move into advocacy as well and realize that. They can't catch up with it.

It's stupid game. you can never get there and an interest 

is that advocacy is so much cheaper as well. You only need a team of One two, three four people who know what they're doing who know how to mobilize people To effect change and change millions of lives. to give you an example, There's this, nonprofit that actually I used to work at and now I'm,consulting with them, called Habitat for Humanity. we're American, so you might know them in Canada. I'm not sure. I think it was a team in Bolivia,It's a pretty small office.

I don't even know who was in charge of advocacy. they've, traditionally they build homes as a nonprofit,build and repair homes, and do home improvement type of stuff. They're probably one of the biggest house builders in the world and no one even knows,and they're probably not saying it.

I dunno if that's on purpose or not. but even then, They can't anywhere close to catching up with the housing deficit. That team in Bolivia changed the law so that all women were allowed to own property before that they weren't, and that's still the case in a lot of countries around the world, especially in Africa at the moment, but you, as you can see, Bolivia until I don't know, mid I want to say 2015, 2016, I'm not sure.But that's when they realized, there's only, two or three guys in that team, or three people in that team, changed the lives of half of the country. All women in the country can now own land or property thanks to them.it, it just, it doesn't get better than that in terms of ROI, right? You just can't, you only have to pay three guys and then boom.and so that's why, yeah, that's what's next for us, investing in advocacy, investing in this kind of campaign. So we're talking to Habitat for Humanity. We're talking to the World Food Program, YMCA who are getting into climate. and yeah, we're hoping that we can help more organizations, affect this kind of work. and interestingly, we're also talking to, a few climate tech, startups and VCs because interestingly, one of them told me, we're private sector, we don't do advocacy. And I was like, hang on a minute. I call it advocacy. You call it lobbying.

[00:42:15] **Michel Gagnon:** that's what I wanted to say for the past five minutes.

[00:42:18] **Dario Berrebi:** Lobbying is a private sector thing. 

[00:42:20] **Michel Gagnon:** Yeah.

[00:42:20] **Dario Berrebi:** nothing more private sector than lobbying. and if you're in climate tech today, it's really interesting to get into advocacy because you're actually on the good side and you just want to accelerate an existing trend. You want to accelerate the adoption of say, you know,Heat pumps, at homes, because it's going to save billions of tons of CO2, and maybe you have a solution that allows, heat pumps to be installed in residential blocks, which is a bit of a headache. So if you're in climate tech, or, if you help agriculture, capture more, carbon and be more efficient and so on, then you're on the good side and getting into advocacy and getting governments to help climate tech companies like yours really make sense you're in direct carbon capture and storage and then you're on the wrong side of history, but that's another chat.

[00:43:11] **Michel Gagnon:** But what does that mean? in terms of marketing, when you say we're getting more into advocacy. can you share a little bit of some of the maybe content campaigns,maybe channels that you would be using to push for a specific,advocacy campaign?

[00:43:24] **Dario Berrebi:** so I'll give you an example, with UN habitat, um, which is the UN agency for sustainable urbanization. So they have this thing called the, new urban agenda, which is a framework for a sustainable and inclusive urbanization, that they want all countries to use and submit a national urban plan. So basically they're planning out the, the development of their cities. So it's done the right way. at the moment, there's only, I think, 37 countries that are using the new urban agenda. And it's been around for nearly 10 years. So what we've told them is, look, if we can create a campaign, with mobilizers, campaigners that we have access to through our partnership with Hero Circle,what if we can show you that we can get you to 20 new countries in one year. And it'll be, half of what you've done in 10. So then we can show you that, in the next five years, we can reach the whole of the world and everyone's using the new urban agenda. And, happy days, cities are more sustainable. We're saving millions of tons of CO2.and yeah, so essentially, I guess it's like a way of scaling impact and reaching your goals faster. 

[00:44:45] **Michel Gagnon:** but how do you do this? are you, creating content for social media? You're, running paid ads?

[00:44:52] **Dario Berrebi:** yeah, so essentially it's, it's a creative and campaigning, advocacy partnership. So the way that we're proposing to do this is to have a four week sort of workshop we sit down with the team, with the client team. Our creative team, the team of, of campaigners to come up with a strategy and then execute it for six months. The way that it looks like is that yes, it goes from awareness raising all the way to, getting people to take action. there's different approaches in advocacy and that sometimes it could be a behind closed doors type of campaign. we're more trying to go through back channels and talk directly to government and maybe, organize workshops, training sessions and so on. That's where you hear, in the news sometimes about multilateral or multi party, like cross, cross party working groups and so on. Things like that, that teach members of parliaments, what to do about, specific issues, how to approach specific issues. And then the other side is more the public facing thing.

So what Heroes specialize in is, yeah, mobilizing of people to support a cause, to change public attitude towards something. And yeah, essentially we're looking at everything from,from social media, video campaigns, paid campaigns for sure, especially since we've had a bit of a breakthrough with LinkedIn advertising recently, which is usually truly, really expensive.

and we're finally getting there. cracked it and found a way to make it a lot cheaper, which was really important for us to be able to target policymakers. but yeah, essentially it's a big,a big multimedia campaign,which for us is mainly digital. So we're looking at, building partnerships and coalitions with other websites to amplify our voices.creating digital toolkits that, all kinds of partners can reuse across their channels and using everything we have, websites, emails, socials, paid,

[00:47:00] **Michel Gagnon:** I don't want to take too much of your time, but I have one last big philosophical question on this specifically because you were talking about advocacy and, made the link that, on the private side, you'd call something similar more. Like lobbying, what's your North star to, make sure that you, because in advocacy, sometimes,we've seen that I studied history, There, you've seen a lot of revolutionaries who became dictators. you've seen a lot of people fighting for a greater good or fighting against an evil and they became ultimately that evil. and I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I'm trying to use that image to say, okay, what.

How do you make sure that the, um, and doesn't justify the means in a way when, how do you make sure that,you're doing what you preach, about the Green Washington, Green Hushing that was discussed earlier, when you're going after, or supporting advocacy campaigns like that?

Just a light question to, to finish. 

[00:48:03] **Dario Berrebi:** how do I try to not end up like the Joker or no Harvey Dent. Anyway, someone like one of those. yeah, it's funny because, at this stage. By and large, we're like the counter power. The structures in place are so powerful and so violent, I would say. And it's funny because I did censor myself earlier when I said you could be a B Corp still be part of an exploitative system. Yes, you can be part of an exploitative and Destructive system.it's a system that's incredibly violent. We don't think of it. I guess it's funny because in Europe, we went straight from being a feudal system to, capitalist one. And I guess we haven't maybe seen other things. everything from the fact that Colonization and capitalism were born more or less at the same time. Because it's incredibly extractive, because it needs to carry on extracting to that growth. I think for me it goes back to the fact that, we're,we're trying to build, to bring more power in the hands of people. And that's our North Star.because everything at the moment saying the opposite. It's incredibly unlucky that governments have given their power away to the market when they switch to a neoliberal system, which is, documented, happened between, when Margaret Thatcher and Reagan discussed together and created the Washington Consensus. we're like, right now the market is best To determine what to do and so on, and it happened just at a time when we needed governments to actually step in to create that system change to not head towards a climate change crisis that we're in now. I think for me, we're trying our best to be on the side of democracy, on the side of giving more power to people and not power to ourselves. the guys at Hero,are doing their best to support individual activists who sometimes are on their own support, against powerful lobbies who will literally spend,it's in the hundreds of millions and sometimes billions every year spent, lobbying governments,So we're the little guys that I'm not that worry about abuses of power because we're so far away from it. but yeah, I would say our North Star is that we're trying to give more, power to people, protect people, to be able to swim in rivers that aren't polluted, to be able to breathe air that's not polluted, to be able to have, these things. I guess we're trying to dilute power and not concentrate it in the hands of a few.

[00:50:53] **Michel Gagnon:** Like that. 


## Final Thoughts and Advice

[00:50:54] **Michel Gagnon:** maybe just one real last question. any advice for audience? who would like to get into advocacy or, a more sustainable marketing space? 

[00:51:04] **Dario Berrebi:** Yeah. I think,There are actually carbon literacy courses for marketers. it's a good place to start. I think it's important to understand,the environment you're working within. I do believe that marketing can help. It can help market the right things. a return to nature. looking after our things and repairing our things and not, constantly buying more and more stuff. It does have a role in repairing a lot of the damage that's been done. damage, which again was very documented and very blatantly, said, the guy who invented consumerism said, we're going to now create a new religion.

We can mass produce things. It's the first time that we can. we're going to make, buying stuff, the new religion. And again, it's destructive and exploitative. So yeah. If you want to get into advocacy, there's lots of really good ways to,so there's the chili app,which allows you to take actions and support specific things. I do love the hero team. I think it's a great way of supporting individuals who have an incredible, return on investment, return on impact, they're all over the world. and they're working really hard to protect us from big powerful lobbies. the Geeky Zero app is also really good to understand where you're at in terms of your consumption and your emissions.and yeah, these are good starting points.

[00:52:26] **Michel Gagnon:** Oh, thank you so much, Dario, for your time. I had, it was a very delightful conversation. Wish you the best with,restless stories. we'll keep following you and, yeah, have a great one.

[00:52:37] **Simon:** Thanks. Have a good one as well. Thanks, Michel. Thanks again for listening, I hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. And as usual you can find the show notes at stunandawecom.