Accelerating the divest-invest movement
The divestment movement continues to accelerate. Organizations, universities and churches are experiencing increasing pressure from stakeholders to divest. Just one year ago, no Canadian companies reported divestments over $250m and only 19% reported those exceeding $100M, compared to 46% of Canadian companies’ recent divestments exceeding $250M. This dramatic shift to larger divestments indicates that Canadian companies are beginning to challenge the definition of what’s “core” to their businesses. Globally, the movement is also gaining traction with divestments from fossil fuels recently surpassing $8 trillion.
In an economy heavily concentrated in oil and gas, many Canadians want to do something about the climate crisis. Genus Capital, a pioneering wealth management firm, called on Yulu to promote Canada’s first suite of fossil-free mutual funds, and to educate investors on how to divest their money away from greenhouse gas polluters and into investments that align with their personal values.
The Challenge
Yulu has worked with Genus Capital to raise public awareness of Genus Fossil Free. This suite of fossil-free mutual funds has become a game-changing product because for the first time, it allowed people to invest in a 100 per cent fossil free fund. Yulu wanted to ensure the Genus Fossil Free offering would stand on its own merit and meaningfully coexist with the Genus Capital brand. To develop positioning that was built to last, we knew we’d need to take a step back from the whiteboard and hear from the people on the frontline who spoke to investors every day.
The Strategy
Our process began with stakeholder interviews, talking to the portfolio managers and Genus’ leadership team to learn what was resonating with clients. Next, we benchmarked Genus against its peers. Rather than only looking at direct competitors, we analyzed one of the country’s most successful robo-advisors and one of North America’s largest investment firms, both of which had a carbon-conscious offering.
From there, we developed a strategic communications plan that has been our guiding force since we began working together in 2016. One of the main pillars of our strategy was to build the reputations of Wayne Wachell, the CEO of Genus Capital, as the “Father of Fossil Free,” and Mike Thiessen, Partner and Director of sustainable investments, to raise awareness of Genus’ impactful portfolio offering across all external communications channels, including marketing, media relations and social media.
Impact Consultancy
Yulu has also proudly supported Genus in becoming certified as a B Corporation. With our guidance, Genus became Canada’s first wealth management firm to join the B Corp community, with a rating of 87 out of 200 (compared with an industry median of 50 out of 200). Yulu provided extensive consultancy on the B Corp certification process from end to end.
Since becoming a B Corporation, Genus’ clout as an environmentally impactful company has grown. We’ve submitted and won awards on behalf of Genus including; Stephen Au as CFO of the year, Wayne Wachell as an Outstanding Contributor to Clean Capitalism, and co-founder Leslie Cliff as one of B.Cs most influential women in finance. This year, Genus was also a finalist and runner up for BC Business’ Business of Good Award in its Environmental sustainability category.
The Results & Impact
In our time working with the Genus team, Yulu has garnered more than 175 pieces of media coverage, with tangible increases in quality each quarter as we continually develop existing, and new media relationships.
Wayne is now a sought after expert, known as the “Father of Fossil Free,” and has featured in The Guardian, Vice Motherboard, Financial Post, Canadian Press and Star Vancouver, while Mike has featured a number of times in the Globe and Mail, Business in Vancouver and Wealth Professional.
In support of growing Wayne and Mike’s thought leadership, we helped the team elevate its research by packaging insights into a “Fossil Fuel Divestment Report,” which we’ve launched annually to prove that fossil free investing has the same, if not better, returns than traditional investing. Each year, this report continues to feature heavily in the media, and arm investors with compelling quantitative evidence for going fossil free. In 2020, we also supported the team in launching the findings of their Dividend report which further proved that a fossil free strategy pays, and returns don’t need to be compromised when aligning investments with personal values.