In this final episode of season 2 of the Sobriéte et Marketing podcast, we welcome Céline Réveillacpresident of the association Communication et Démocratie. Céline is also creator of the Instagram account Greenwashing Lovers and co-founder of Reboot. She explains how she manages her multiple activities, and what led her to take on this new role. specializing in responsible communicationsIn particular, his business school career, where questions of ethics and deontology were absent.
Céline recalls her feeling of loneliness as a student interested in the ethical issues of marketing, a feeling mitigated by the support of her family environment. She points out that critical reflection on marketing and communication was rare in her business school, a situation that prompted her to delve deeper into these subjects through her dissertation.
The Communication et Démocratie association aims to control the communications practices of major corporations and redistribute communications resources in favor of civil society. The association works for a more responsible and committed communications sector, and campaigns to reduce the media's dependence on advertising, in order to promote more independent information.
The discussion also touched on the role of activism in responsible communication. Céline stresses the importance of critical thinking and transparency, and the need for communications professionals to be ready to renounce certain practices if they are not in line with planetary limits.
"For me, this idea of militancy means going against established orders and what is considered normal in an economic world subject to capitalism."
The challenges of greenwashing are also discussed. Céline defines greenwashing as a deceptive business practice that slows down ecological transformation. She stresses the importance of training and whistleblowing to combat this practice, as well as the need for independent regulation of advertising content.
"Training is really an extremely important aspect. Now, training must not also be greenwashing. The training has to be at a level that will allow communications professionals to really realize when they're getting into greenwashing and when they're not."
Finally, Céline shares examples of brands she finds inspiring for their responsible communications, such as Loom and Label Emmaüs. She concludes by advising young communications professionals not to be afraid to deconstruct what they've learned, and to always question trends and usages, especially when it comes to algorithms and artificial intelligence.
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Brands and organizations mentioned in this interview with Céline Réveillac
- Greenwashing Lovers: https://www.instagram.com/greenwashing_lovers/
- Reboot : https://www.rebootcommunication.org/
- Communication and Democracy: https://www.communication-democratie.org/fr/
- Loom : https://www.loom.fr/
- Vinted : https://www.vinted.fr/
- Label Emmaüs : https://www.label-emmaus.co/fr/
- Telecoop : https://telecoop.fr/
- Commown : https://commown.coop/
People mentioned in the podcast
- Yonnel Poivre Le Lohé : https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonnel-poivre-le-lohe/
- Mathieu Jahnich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieujahnich/
- Julia Faure : https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-faure-1a228343/
Text transcript of the episode with Céline Réveillac
Jonathan Loriaux
Hello Céline.
Céline Réveillac
Hello Jonathan.
Jonathan Loriaux
You're president of the association Communication et démocratie, creator of the Instagram account Greenwashing Lovers, active on LinkedIn, co-founder of Reboot, a student event that aims to hack communication. You're a lecturer in higher education and to earn a living, you do responsible communications consulting. How are things going? Are you keeping up with all these activities? I'd like you to tell us a little about what led you to specialize in responsible communication.
Céline Réveillac
Yes, it's a lot, but it's all very exciting. In fact, all these subjects feed off each other, and there are links between them. That's what allows me to work on all this and make progress on each of these subjects. I became interested in these issues during my studies. I went to business school, and at no point did we tackle the question of ethics, deontology or, for example, the saturation of advertising for the public. There was also the question of manipulation. I had taken marketing courses and learned about marketing techniques, and for me, that was a lot like manipulation. So I had a lot of questions, and at no time did we take a critical look at this in our courses. So I decided to devote a dissertation to it, followed by a blog and social networks. I became completely passionate about these subjects.
Jonathan Loriaux
Did you feel a bit alone in this situation, or were there other students with you who were asking these same questions? What nurtured you? Because when you're on your own in this kind of setting, it's not always easy to think in the right way and move forward in the direction that suits you.
Céline Réveillac
At the time, clearly, at least in my school, yes, I was indeed the only one. We can talk about it later, but my thesis supervisor wasn't necessarily enthusiastic about the subject. On the other hand, I had the whole family context. Because I come from a family of teachers and maybe it's that family background. My father's side are farmers. And maybe I came with a very different background from the business. And I was the only one in the school to think differently. But on the other hand, when I came back to my family, I was once again perhaps the UFO because I was in business school and they found it hard to understand.
Jonathan Loriaux
Moreover, because communication and marketing, especially communication, can be approached from a business school angle, but maybe if you'd gone to journalism school or something like that, the ethical question would have been much more present. It's not something you've said to yourself at some point: Well, maybe I should have gone down another route?
Céline Réveillac
I went to business school, which I can hardly say was by chance - you never really arrive by chance - but I was interested in journalism, law and sociology. I didn't get an IUT. I wanted to do an IUT Info-com, for example. I just wasn't accepted. I ended up in a marketing technology IUT. Business school was the next logical step, even though I'd never even considered going to business school? It was pure chance that brought me there. I was accepted into this business school. I didn't know the business at all, and I thought it was the royal road to finding a job. I came from a family background with parents in the civil service. And for me, working meant being in a company. So business seemed like a story. A pure value. Yes.
Jonathan Loriaux
So you're very involved in the Communication & Démocratie association, since you're its president. Can you tell us a little about what Communication & Démocratie does and what its aims are?
Céline Réveillac
Communication & Démocratie is a think tank that aims to bring about change in the communications sector. In fact, we believe that communication must play a role in ecological, social and democratic transformation. And in fact, no one is saying otherwise. In fact, communication professionals say so too. But we're not there yet. Despite what industry representatives may say, we're not there at all. We're working on three main areas. The first is to regulate the communication practices of major companies and redistribute communication resources in favor of civil society. The aim here is to rebalance the power of communication and give more power to civil society, to players in the social and solidarity economy, but also to SMEs and small businesses, and to give less power to large corporations and multinationals, who have all the attitude, just because they have the budget, they have a lot of latitude to be able to communicate. So we need to rebalance these forces of power. Then, secondly, rebuild a communications sector made up of responsible and committed communications professionals. In other words, we need to help professionals adopt more responsible practices.
Céline Réveillac
And finally, and this is a big issue that we're only just beginning to tackle, we need to depublicitarize the media and the Internet, the information and culture industry. We've reached a very high level of advertising saturation. And here too, we have very significant forces and powers on the side of the industry, notably the GAFAMs. And here, too, we need to clean things up.
Jonathan Loriaux
But in the end, this last point, depublicitarization, also comes back to the question of balance that you were talking about in the first place, because the idea is that certain big companies, big groups hold the budgets that allow them to invest and that make the others less visible in the public space. Is that the dimension?
Céline Réveillac
For example, today, media editorial lines are built around advertising budgets. Big media owned by millionaires can't express themselves, don't have the attitude to express themselves. And it's this balance of power in particular that we want to review. In fact, it's the question of media independence, that's what it's all about. So yes, there's the question of diversifying the players, the advertisers who can do advertising, but there's also the question of making the media and the Internet less dependent, the whole industry based on advertising.
Jonathan Loriaux
Ultimately, action on these points is more a matter for the public authorities, because without legislation, how much latitude do you have to transform the sector in these areas without going through the legal system?
Céline Réveillac
Indeed, our association is an advocacy association. We do advocacy. In other words, we work to influence legislators and elected representatives. In concrete terms, we produce expertise. We have, for example, a report on commercial communication in the age of sobriety, based on a scientific study. We really want to rely on something very factual and scientific. It is on the basis of this scientific data that we will then draw up our proposals. In this report, based on this scientific study, we produce conclusions and recommendations. These recommendations will be presented to the institutions. We don't do that too much yet, but the idea is also to make them known to the general public, so that they too become aware of the issues. And because to change a law, we need the support of the public.
Jonathan Loriaux
So, the question I'm asking myself is that I can well imagine that the whole world of the social economy could be a stakeholder in what you're doing, that there could be small, committed agencies, freelancers, etc., who could support you in this. But in the end, do you get a sympathetic ear from the major media and advertising groups? Do they follow you? Do you get any feedback from them on their expressions of interest from time to time?
Céline Réveillac
We were created in 2021, but more or less existed via another project, Système publicitaire et influence des multinationales. It was an inter-associative program, with several associations behind it, notably Résistance à l'agression publicitaire, which had produced political analyses of the issues involved in regulating advertising. This dates back to a little before the Citizens' Climate Convention. When a symposium was held and a fairly substantial report published, I imagine that the major players in the advertising industry took an interest in the report. We haven't had any specific feedback. On the other hand, La Convention citoyenne pour le Climat has taken up some of the recommendations, or in any case, their recommendations are in line with those of this program. It was following this conference and the production of this report that we realized there was a need to create an association dedicated to these issues. Today, no, we're not buddies with the major representatives of the communications industry.
Jonathan Loriaux
It's still the alternative communication players who have a militant role to play in relation to communication in the broadest sense, but the demands are still relatively compartmentalized.
Céline Réveillac
Yes, what's interesting is that one third of Communication Démocratie's members are communication professionals. This clearly shows that these issues are also supported within the industry by communications professionals who share the same goals as communication and democracy. The thing is, the interests aren't necessarily the same. When it comes to communication and democracy, the interest is for society, for democracy, for the communication sector. It's in the interests of the communications agencies behind it. Of course, we're going to hear the argument about jobs, in particular, and about growth and economic growth too. We don't have the same interests.
Jonathan Loriaux
That's for sure. I'm taking away some of the questions. We'll come back to it in the thread I'd planned, but it brings me to the question of the role activism plays. Where do you stand on this subject? Because when it comes to ecological and social issues, activism traditionally plays a very strong role. And it's true that on the communication side, it's not necessarily something we see so often. You're part of it with communication and democracy, I think. What's the militant dimension for you in your day-to-day work on responsible communication issues?
Céline Réveillac
First of all, you'd have to define what it means to be a militant. For me, the idea of militancy means going against established orders and what is considered normal in an economic world subject to capitalism.
Jonathan Loriaux
What I find interesting to ask is whether the role of an activist for responsible communication is not, in particular, to let nothing pass, to denounce, to show examples of paths not to follow. Like certain environmental activists, we know in advance that they're going to be there, whatever the project they're targeting. And so, even by the decision-makers of these anti-ecological projects, there's an apprehension, in the end, of finding militants in the path of their project because they know it's going to happen. Is there a need for responsible communication to go that far? In other words, when there's a communication project, we need to systematically and systematically criticize and deconstruct what's being proposed, not just let it pass by, because producing communication isn't like building freeways - there are dozens of them every day, so it's a little more complex. So it's a little more complex. The question isn't to say: "Anyone who works in communications in the future must be able to expect criticism, and so anticipate this criticism and already integrate certain mechanisms that are in your various pleas?
Céline Réveillac
Yes, it's an integral part of CSR, of integrating stakeholders. I don't know if you know Yonnel Poivre Le Lohé, who recently wrote a book on greenwashing and how to avoid it. Her book gives a very good description of how to deal with any criticism that may be levelled? For me, in responsible communication, militancy, perhaps compared to other people who claim to be doing responsible communication, because today, everyone is doing responsible communication, responsible means actually going a step further, always keeping this critical spirit and always decentering what we're doing to put it into perspective with the current world, which is subject to planetary limits and so we can't accept to communicate, I'll give you an example, to communicate on an advantage that is real in relation to the company. There may have been R&D to achieve an ecological advantage. But in fact, if we're lucid, if we look at this advantage in the light of the challenges of ecological transformation of planetary limits, in fact, this advantage is nothing to worry about. And we don't have to...
Céline Réveillac
It's just the bare minimum. The people I work with, I have to make them understand that they have to be ready, at least when we're working together, they have to be ready to give up communicating if they have to, if it's not in line with... It's not in line with planetary limits.
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Jonathan Loriaux
Knowing that not only should they be prepared to give up communicating, but perhaps to produce new products that are purely marketing products, like most products today, but which don't address a real issue. There are real ecological objectives that are just created to have a small advantage in a long list of disadvantages, just to be able to communicate on this advantage and highlight it in a big way. So we were talking about greenwashing. What's your definition of greenwashing and how do you fight it?
Céline Réveillac
On the definition, I'm not going to be very original.
Jonathan Loriaux
It doesn't have to be original.
Céline Réveillac
Greenwashing is a message designed to make people believe that ecological or sustainable benefits are superior to those of reality. In fact, it's a misuse of an ecological argument. I should point out that greenwashing, even though we're beginning to know it, is still considered a deceptive commercial practice. The Climate and Resilience Act really does make it a deceptive commercial practice in black and white, but even before the Climate and Resilience Act, greenwashing was considered a deceptive commercial practice. So you can be sued for greenwashing. And then, beyond the legal aspect, for me, greenwashing poses problems for ecological transformation. It slows down the ecological transformation we need to make in the sense that it blurs, I find, we don't say it like that. It blurs the message, it confuses the messages and the efforts to be made. If I buy sneakers made from recycled plastic, how do I know that my act as a committed consumer-citizen is really contributing to this ecological transformation? Today, I find that corporate communications don't really make us aware of the impact of our consumer actions.
Céline Réveillac
It also makes certain companies and products that do the right thing more transparent. Because between a pair of eco-friendly sneakers and another pair of eco-friendly sneakers, how can the citizen tell the difference?
Jonathan Loriaux
And so, how do we go about trying to combat it? The two means that are often mentioned are training, so that stakeholders can see what greenwashing really is, when it starts, when it ends, and so on. There's also whistle-blowing. So, I guess that's what you've been doing for a while on your Instagram account, Greenwashinglovers. Are these still the two main ways of improving the greenwashing situation?
Céline Réveillac
These are very important areas. Training is really a very important area. Now, training must not also be greenwashing. Training needs to be at a level that will enable communications professionals to realize when they're getting into greenwashing and when they're not. Denouncing greenwashing is one way of combating it. Now, I think that first of all, we stay in our own bubbles and so I'm not sure that denunciations go beyond our own bubbles. And then, in terms of reputation, in reality, when we denounce greenwashing, it has absolutely no consequences, despite what we hear, and I don't believe that it has any consequences for the brand. Because, in any case, the people who hear this denunciation of greenwashing, a priori, are people who, in any case, would not have bought the product de facto. So I don't really believe in the reputation issue. There's one last area we've talked about, and that's legislation. Today, communication is self-regulated through the ARPP.
Céline Réveillac
It's the communications professionals themselves who make their own rules. And for many years now, we've been calling for a truly independent regulatory authority to oversee both content and the amount of advertising we absorb.
Jonathan Loriaux
Okay, so now we're back to denunciation, because already, people like Mathieu Jahnich, for example, are going to be filing complaints galore with the ARPP. And so, even if there were an independent authority, it would still be the best way to act, which is to create fear and make brands pay more attention to what they produce in terms of environmental communication.
Céline Réveillac
It's unfortunate to say. I think we should do things because we want to grow up in a world that's habitable. We shouldn't do things because we're afraid of sanctions. We should do things for the good of society as a whole. Personally, I find this very hard to understand. Communication professionals are being encouraged to do responsible comm' to telecommunication. So, either from the angle of reputational risk or the fact that it's going to boost sales. Personally, I hate to go down this road, but you have to.
Jonathan Loriaux
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any other way either, at least not at first. When we spoke before this interview, you told me about your dissertation on responsible marketing and communication, which you've already mentioned very briefly. What were the main lessons and discoveries you were able to extract from this work?
Céline Réveillac
My thesis dates back to 2009. It's been a while now.
Jonathan Loriaux
It's interesting to see how things have evolved and changed.
Céline Réveillac
I immersed myself in it. It's really interesting. First of all, you need to know that my dissertation topic was initially what I called green marketing. But then I discovered that green marketing was just about the environment, and that sustainable development isn't just about the environment. So I called it... I don't remember the exact title, but in any case, the subject was responsible marketing. It's a dissertation that enabled me to talk to professionals who, back in 2009, were already questioning their practices and there were already responsible communications agencies or freelancers who practiced a different kind of communication, who had implemented tools. It makes me laugh out loud. Today, it seems as if there's a big boom in the middle, in the sphere of communicators, on the subject of responsible communication. Everyone's interested, it's great. But in fact, we're not inventing anything. The tools already existed. In fact, I could have rewritten the conclusions of my memoir almost word for word, here in 2024. What I was saying at the time was that, in a few years' time, sustainable development will no longer be a trend, but a requirement.
Céline Réveillac
You should know that my thesis director, I may have already said it. No, I haven't. For my thesis supervisor, who wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the subject, sustainable development is a fad. In a few years' time, it'll be a thing of the past. In my conclusions, I stuck to that. Sustainable development is not a fad, and it will become a requirement in the years to come. Secondly, I said that it shouldn't just be a communications policy, but a real commitment on the part of companies. I said that the problem was that we were focusing on communication and not on a real policy of transformation. I was also talking about the saturation of responsible messages, which would end up no longer being differentiating if all brands were communicating in this field. Here we are. We were there in 2009. We're still there, and the situation has largely worsened. And that's something I don't remember asking myself about, because I have the impression that it's something I'm learning as I go along.
Céline Réveillac
For years, I really focused on the issue of greenwashing. But then I began to think more about the place of advertising in society and all its other consequences. And at the time, I was also pointing out the contradiction of brands pushing for consumption when we're in a world subject to limits and our consumer society also needs to slow down, if not reduce. I was saying that brands and sustainable development are two contradictory notions that need to be reconciled. That's a question I haven't really answered yet. How do you keep growing? When you're a brand, you encourage people to consume your product. How do you do that in a world with limits?
Céline Réveillac
Fifteen years on, work still in progress.
Jonathan Loriaux
So, you were talking about the saturation of responsible messages. It's a point I'd like to explore further, because it's true that today, many brands are focusing on the responsible aspect of responsiveness, whether it's legitimate or not. But in fact, as long as we don't have a corporate world that has become 100% virtuous, everyone will continue to say that they are the most virtuous. It's only in a world where everyone applies very high standards to social and environmental issues, that we'll finally be able to say to ourselves: Now that it's become natural and everyone's on board, we can go back to messages that are perhaps a little different. But then, aren't we condemned to this saturation until - and we can dream - we've tipped over into a world where everyone's doing their job properly?
Céline Réveillac
Unfortunately, it depends on the citizen, but it's the critical spirit of the consumer and the citizen. Today, the consumer is only part of the consumer. A small proportion of consumers are very alert and aware that advertising tells us what it wants. In reality, we're all influenced by advertising, even unconsciously. But educating people, making them aware, questioning them, really helps them to have this critical mind. I think that's something that could change things a bit. And then, if the consumer is warned, if he no longer believes what he's being told, which is already the case to a large extent, perhaps the communications professional will be able to say to himself: OK, I'll stop talking bullshit and I'll change my tune a little. As far as communications professionals are concerned, the difficulty is that we've been taught to communicate. We've been taught that it's all about embellishing things, that it's a beautiful thing. Yes, influenced and then really embellished. We weren't taught that we could communicate about difficulties, maybe even flaws, or just provide factual information.
Céline Réveillac
I think there's a whole new way of communicating to be imagined here. It's no longer daddy-style communication or advertising. We have professionals who know how to do that, but it's still a very small part.
Jonathan Loriaux
In the end, responsible communication has become a kind of tactic, in some cases, to show that you're more virtuous than your neighbor. Perhaps the way to transcend this is to be truly transparent, but completely transparent in your communications, which is not always the case, and some companies have absolutely no interest in doing so. And it's also about educating consumers and teaching them the right reflexes to sort out the real promises from the false promises, the orders of magnitude, which is an ultra classic subject, and that's where we'll see those who are capable of going naked in their communications and showing everything they've got, while others just try to add a little more green over and over again. With that in mind, do you have any brands or organizations that particularly inspire you in the way they communicate, and that you find virtuous in their communication, but also necessarily in what lies behind the communication?
Céline Réveillac
There are plenty of very specific examples of responsible communication for companies that still have a long way to go, because it's clear that transforming business models is a big job. But yes, there aren't many, and I may come across examples we've already given you.
Jonathan Loriaux
It doesn't matter, it just shows how good they are, if you quote the same ones.
Céline Réveillac
I'm a big fan of communications and of the Loom company, which is a fashion brand. Julia Faure, the founder, has a very interesting way of talking about entrepreneurship and the model of success, and this is reflected in her communications. They're all about exchange with the consumer, and transparency. They explain the T-shirt, how long you'll be able to keep it, why, and how to care for it. There are also prevention messages to guarantee durability. I also really like the fact that, when you receive a product, you'll see on the packaging that it's eco-friendly, recycled, recyclable, environmentally friendly and so on. That's what we have in the traditional way. What Loom says on their packaging is that every product, every production process has an impact. So this cardboard, yes, it's recyclable, etc., but it has an impact. So we need to keep it, reuse it. And I think that's being, one, lucid and two, it's raising consumer awareness. I also really like the Emmaüs label, which is a marketplace, but which is part of the social and solidarity economy, and which breaks the codes completely, which is a communication to make a place for itself among the second-hand market, since second-hand is starting to be vilified by the big players.
Céline Réveillac
They are up against Vinted, in particular. They have hyper-differentiating communication actions that are off the beaten track. In particular, they have advertised directly on Vinted, where they have put products on sale. They promoted the Emmaus label via Vinted. They thought it was a pretty ballsy move on their part, but I guess it worked. And then, more recently, at the moment, we have Telecoop and Commown, cooperatives that are planning to install phone booths in France.
Jonathan Loriaux
We received them both, separately, in this podcast.
Céline Réveillac
Very good. I find that the way they make themselves known, So, in fact, they rely on their... Finally, they do advocacy, they have strong demands in their sector of activity. And as a result, they carry out actions that serve their advocacy and enable them to get press coverage, make themselves known and engage in discussion with the public. And here again, I think it's a way of communicating that doesn't use the traditional codes of mass communication. I think this is the kind of thing Label Emmays, Telecoop and Commown are doing, and it's the kind of communication we should be using when we talk about responsible communication. It's really about thinking outside the box, breaking codes and diverting the communication function to serve the citizen and his advocacy.
Jonathan Loriaux
Canon. I'd like to finish off with one last question. Would you have a message to pass on to young communications professionals who would like to get involved in responsible communications? Knowing that, when you come out of business school, it's not easy to know what to do. How do you get involved?
Céline Réveillac
I'd say first of all, and this is perhaps the most important thing, is not to be afraid of deconstructing what you've learned, to keep - I was talking about critical thinking - to have a critical mind, to question those famous: That's the way it is. And not to follow trends without asking why, what is the meaning behind this trend. Two examples: algorithms on social networks. When we communicate, when we learn to communicate, we're told: You've got to communicate, you've got to post three times a week on social networks with video, because that's how the algorithms work and that's how you'll get visibility. What I'd like to say to students and professionals is why you should follow these algorithms. Okay, you can decide to follow them, set your own rules and establish your own rules in relation to the algorithms that are defined at a given moment. In six months' time, the rules won't be the same. So we need to know how to define our own rules, to give meaning to what we're doing. Today, there's a lot of talk about artificial intelligence. It's supposedly something that can't be ignored. It's now part of the curriculum. I hope that when it's integrated into the curriculum, we'll learn to look at it from a certain angle and use it with an awareness of the consequences. And why should we use artificial intelligence? Today, in all our tools, in fact emailing toolsFor example, emailing platforms offer us artificial intelligence. On that point, before jumping in headlong, I think we need to question these uses and find out why we're doing it and what the added value is for us, and put them into perspective with the consequences we may or may not be aware of, but in any case, go and find out about the consequences of these uses.
Jonathan Loriaux
Questioning, again and again. Thank you very much for taking part in this podcast. See you soon.
Céline Réveillac
Many thanks to you.
