Founders Q+A: Dandelion on holistic branding, sustainability and transatlantic time zones
Dandelion on Holistic branding, sustainability and transatlantic time zones
Co-founder of Dandelion Branding Aubrey Wallace believes that a brand’s marketing should be part of a holistic whole. She works with her fellow founder Courtney Hume across 9 times zones to make this work. Their mission is to embed sustainability ever deeper into mainstream business practice.
Aubrey takes the time to talk us through how Dandelion work towards this mission every day, what holistic branding means to them and why transparency is a fundamental part of their success.
ESGmark®: What inspired you to start Dandelion?
Aubrey Wallace (AW): Dandelion Branding happened pretty organically - like all the best things.
We had been creating holistic marketing strategies for one brand for years, and when I left that company and started freelance marketing management, it was missing a website experience optimization piece, so I called Courtney (Courtney Hume, Aubrey’s Dandelion co-founder).
And we just kept creating. Only now we work with lots of brands with the mission to raise the volume on global sustainability.
ESGmark®: How do your values inform your every day business making decisions?
AW: It would be easy to say, “our values always inform every choice we make” but in the end, we are running a for-profit marketing business. It’s no secret that there aren’t a lot of rules around marketing in our world - it’s both unregulated, so anyone can claim to “be a marketer,” and it’s a job based around word-smithery at its finest.
Because ethical ambiguity is a [perceived] foundation for the industry that we work in, we go above and beyond to show that we make ethical choices. For us, that means being part of ethical communities like ESGmark® and 1% for the Planet.
Connecting with our values as business owners means that we pay well and work with people that we trust. We are extremely transparent with our clients and we urge our clients to be transparent in their own marketing. We are also lucky enough to be able to pick and choose the clients we work with so that we can ensure that the folks we choose to work with want to raise awareness around aspects of global sustainability.
ESGmark®: As co-founders living on different sides of the Atlantic, how do you work across the time zones?
AW: Oh, this piece can certainly be a challenge - but with digital connectivity, it isn’t as difficult as it might seem.
I live and work in the Netherlands while Courtney lives and works in California. We have a 9 hour time difference so the end of my working day is the beginning of Court’s! We deal with it by creating a bit of an overlap for our meetings, where I start my day a bit late and she starts hers a bit early.
Otherwise, we keep GREAT hours for our clients. There’s almost always one of us available to answer emails and deal with anything urgent that might come up
ESGmark®: Do you see a difference in attitudes towards sustainability and responsible business between Europe and the US?
AW: Yes and no. You’re going to get climate deniers and people that don’t want to make changes everywhere.
Europe has a lot higher standards for sustainability than the US. So when we started, it felt like people trusted that European governments and businesses were doing the right things. While Americans generally trust their governments and businesses less.
But in the past couple of years, with information being more available around the Paris Agreement, the COP26 conference, the IPCC reports, etc, we’re seeing that businesses and governments around the world have a lot of work to do. We live in a much more global community now, so the divide is much less Europe vs US than ever before. That’s a good thing!
ESGmark®: You both have slightly different roles in the company, can you talk us through what you both do?
AW: Sure! Though our work is often intertwined, we are indeed focused on very different aspects of our business. Courtney is an absolute whiz at ensuring that an on site user experience is optimized along with making sure that a brand’s image is consistent and clear. While I focus more on the brand’s overall marketing strategy and ensuring that a brand’s voice is speaking to the audiences that they want to call in.
ESGmark®: The word holistic comes up a lot in how you explain your work, can you tell us what 'holistic' means to you?
AW: Oh, this is a great question!
We truly believe that every part of a brand should be treated as part of its interconnected whole - because it is. Most brand owners see their marketing as separate from their day to day operations. Further, they see every piece of their marketing [social media, email, blog, ads, website, events, etc] as separate campaigns.
We view these pieces as part of a singular whole picture - we think about it “holistically”. We make sure that every part of what a brand is creating and how they’re communicating adds to that whole picture.
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ESGmark®: What has been your biggest learning since founding the company?
AW: Pfff. WOW! I’ve learned SO much since Jan 2019. I mean, the whole world is different.
My best learning is that there is value in following your gut and standing up for what you believe - even if you feel like you have to reinvent the wheel.
That said, I have also learned the importance of getting to know people. Not every conversation needs to be transactional. Being a business owner can be really lonely and sometimes it’s nice to talk to people that understand your goals.
ESGmark®: What are the main challenges you see facing ethical businesses in the next couple of years?
AW: Well, every brand is going to face different issues. For us and the folks we work with, a huge struggle is combatting greenwashing. There are several sides to this.
The most obvious is that the brands that actively greenwash to make sales aren’t going to stop. In fact, they’re just going to get better at it. That will increase their brand trust while devaluing real sustainability measures.
A little less obvious, and the more insidious issue, is that greenwashing language is becoming more subtle. Small brands often struggle to communicate their sustainability measures, so as consumers look closer at every brand they work with they may lose trust for the brands doing good things. (This is where we can help!)
ESGmark®: What challenges does Dandelion have to consider that don't affect a 'regular' branding consultancy?
AW: Another great question! Most other branding or marketing agencies have a singular focus. For example, an SEO company will focus on SEO - a good one might match your brand voice with their content, but they certainly don’t think about the quality or experience of the traffic that they drive.
Because our focus is on creating holistically, we consider the whole interconnected network of a piece of content. (Does this speak to the audience? Is it going to bring in qualified traffic? What will their experience be? Is this consistent with who the brand is? How is it part of the larger strategy?)
We also wouldn’t be Dandelion Branding if we didn’t take sustainability into consideration! Both, the sustainability of our content marketing (can we reuse content? Can we accomplish more with less? Can we use a better server or a more ethical platform?) and whether the strategies we’re creating are sustainable for the folks who are running them.
ESGmark®: Where do you see Dandelion in the next 2 years?
AW: In two years, Dandelion Branding will still be creating successful marketing strategies with sustainable brands, but we will also be in a position to teach our method a lot more!
We can’t take on every small sustainable business as a client, but we can make our holistic methods accessible to those small businesses.
Our mission is to embed sustainability deeper and deeper into mainstream conversation. We’re going to keep on keepin’ on!
ESGmark®: What are you most excited about?
AW: Right now, I’m really excited about the connections we’re making through the EnvironMental Podcast.
ESGmark®: What are you reading at the moment?
AW: I’m an avid fiction reader! Right now, I’m smack dab in the middle of the Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan and I just finished the first trilogy of the Brandon Sanderson Mistborn series along with the first book in the novel series, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
For more on Dandelion Branding and their holistic approach to marketing, head over to their website.
Speaking to our founders is central to keeping the ESGmark® community connected - read our other interviews with Spark and Bloom on business’ responsibility to take action, Prosody London on natural fragrance and business karma, or Lofty Box on sell by dates and subscriptions.
