Climate tech's battle for differentiation
Why it matters, and why it's getting harder
In previous years, Meg and I urged climate tech marketers not to obsess over USPs and differentiation in their marketing. Most climate tech verticals were so new to buyers that differentiation didn’t matter too much. What mattered instead was boosting the category as a whole, building trust in the market, and educating buyers so they were coming to sales conversations better prepared.
This was also all in the spirit of the voluntary climate action that was taking the corporate world by storm, with a sense of “we’re all in this together.” Climate tech companies referred to their competitors as frenemies. It was all very civilised and earnest.
After interviewing thirteen climate tech marketers for our upcoming report, that feeling has changed. Climate tech marketers are still a special breed. They’re collaborative, responsible, optimistic. But there is now widespread acknowledgement that the market has changed, and marketers must change with it.
By ‘changed’, we mean that the market for climate tech products has matured. It has matured because the buyer has matured.
Although not every company is taking a sophisticated approach to climate action or ESG tech procurement, things are different from what they were even a few years ago. New sustainability grads have now had multiple years to get better and more strategic at their jobs. And more people are coming into the buying decision, from risk, procurement, finance, and beyond, adding a new layer of business-oriented sophistication to buying questions and journeys.
All this has pushed climate tech marketers to approach their messaging and content in new and more nuanced ways.
They have also realised that there are simply too many of them (offering variations on the same theme) for all to survive. I can’t help but think of Professor Trelawney’s prophecy about Harry Potter and Voldemort: Neither could live while the other survived. Sorry, bit dramatic. What we have now is a buyer’s market, and those buyers are more cautious and selective than ever.
Consolidation was the buzzword for the climate tech sector last year. We saw acquisitions, bankruptcies, and 404s where homepages used to exist.
Against this backdrop, climate tech marketers started to think more than ever about differentiation. Indeed, we have never heard climate tech marketers talk about it with the same intensity they did this year.
Although we cautioned against it in previous years, differentiation feels like the right focus for climate tech companies heading into 2026.
What makes the marketer’s job difficult is the pressure to create differentiation through messaging when it does not meaningfully exist at the product level. This is the crux of that matter. In a textbook world, the marketer’s job shouldn’t be all that difficult. If every product were truly unique, marketers would simply need to put words and pictures to this story. Instead, what many climate tech marketers are now finding themselves faced with is the challenge of articulating a uniqueness that does not actually exist. They are attempting to use words to differentiate, rather than features. It’s really hard.
Unfortunately, it’s only going to get harder, for two reasons.
The first is AI. Climate tech companies have been told that they will disappear if they do not immediately and loudly adopt AI within their products. So now we have every company seeking to become an “AI” solution, as if this itself was enough to differentiate. It is not.
There is also the secondary effect of marketers using AI for their messaging and content. When all companies have access to the same tools, it’s no wonder everything starts to sound like the same, like the mushy slop dished up in orphanages.
Even if AI didn’t exist (give me that world, just for a minute), climate tech marketers would still have a big differentiation problem on their hands, because every single marketer we spoke to, and every person we speak to in the course of our jobs, has told us that they are pursuing some variation on the same core value statement in 2026.
The consensus is that, in place of voluntary/ambitious climate action language, and in the wake of regulatory pullbacks and a toxic political climate, the new message for climate tech goes something like: it’s good for business. You’ll see immediate ROI, get better efficiency, protect against and adapt to physical risk, and fortify your supply chains.
It’s a good thing that we can now talk credibly about the business benefits of sustainability. This is a healthy shift for the industry as a whole, even if we still mourn the loss of the voluntary climate action days.
But climate tech marketers probably won’t have as easy a time with this as they imagine, because, as they’ll soon see — everyone else is doing it too. Updating your messaging to the business case will not offer the competitive advantage many marketers might assume it will. It must be done, but it’s a survival tactic. Everyone else is doing the same.
Marketers will have to get more creative about what truly differentiates them in years to come, presuming the company goal is to live long and prosper rather than be swallowed up by a bigger competitor. And of course, to be effective, this differentiation must be grounded in what buyers say or demonstrate that they are looking for. Yes, Steve Jobs gave us the personal computer before most people knew they wanted it, but this is a different market and a different era.
We are in a cautious buyer’s market. Give them what they want.
What we’re curious about this week
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how everything is television, so in the spirit of what I think is a genuine social tragedy, here are a few good videos I’ve watched recently:
→ This video about a British man’s last cabbage harvest of the season. Truly one of the best algorithmic recommendations I’ve had in years.
→ This video about the end of literacy. (For what it’s worth, I think a lot of this is hyperbolic, but it’s an interesting conversation nonetheless. What really stunned me was Ed West’s idea of a ‘hierarchy of attention’ — specifically that literacy and the ability to concentrate for long periods of time may become a trait unique to the upper classes.)
→ The Mark Carney Davos speech, if you haven’t watched it yet (start at 3:50). Clear and eloquent, and his subject (Trump) will surely not understand a word of it. Good to see Carney say what should have been said a long time ago, even if he can somehow claim that cutting capital gains tax is part of Canada’s fight against the big orange bully.
→ This video about how the physical world got so ugly (enshittified, if you will). I don’t think it really answered the question, but it was interesting and beautifully shot.
→ This AMAZING video, in a similar vein, about how modern manufacturing quality is plummeting, while prices are rising. Sorry this is all so bleak, but honestly, it’s so interesting.
→ This conversation between Trevor Noah, John Oliver, and Eugene Khoza, because it’s very random, very funny, and surprisingly deep. (Technically I listened to this as a podcast, but had to keep the video theme going.)
Ways we can help 🫶
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