Environmental strategies implemented today are strongly influenced by the ideologies capitalism, neoliberalism and ecomodernism. As such, they should promote global economic expansion while mitigating environmental impact. This is in line with the prevailing environmental political discourse of sustainable development, in which economic, ecological and social dimensions are considered compatible and dependent on each other. However, this essay challenges the normative assumption regarding the win-win-win narrative by examining the economic, ecological and social consequences of Max Burgers’ environmental strategies through three critical scientific theories. By posing an ideology critique and through the lens of our theoretical framework, we find that Max Burgers mystifies the apparent relation between local economic growth, global ecological impact and divided social progress, thus reinforcing unequal power dynamics and patterns of uneven development.

The demand for sustainability initiatives is increasing by both consumers and organizations (Gittell, et al. 2013). It changes the way businesses are operating and communicating, hence the interest for sustainable marketing has increased. Sustainable marketing should not only be about initiatives to appear more environmental friendly or socially conscious, but rather about a more substantive and meaningful levels of commitments (ibid). Alongside these practical ideas of sustainable marketing, consumers’ requirements for sustainability have sometimes been used as a strategy to create sustainable communication, although companies are lacking initiatives of sustainability. The idea of marketing as a strategy to create desire and needless spending along with sustainability goals has been criticized as being in direct contradictories (Meller & Magaš 2014, Pettie 2001, Pettie & Belz 2010). Thus, the problematics compose of the discussed oxymoron between sustainability and marketing together with the difference between sustainable communication and communicating sustainability.   This qualitative study has been done with a starting position from the idea of addressing how sustainable marketing is practiced, why it is practiced and how the future outlook of the concept is perceived from a company perspective. The chosen theories for this study compose mainly of basic marketing theories and models with a sustainability adaption. A qualitative study addressing this issue from a company perspective has not been discovered in previous researches, which resulted in the idea of highlighting different companies’ opinions and practices of sustainable marketing. The findings have discovered the usage of sustainable marketing today and potentially in the future, together with reasons for why it is practiced. Sustainability has become a well-known concept with a lot of business scandals associated to it, which has been mentioned in this study as one of the reasons for the predictions of a future demand of real sustainable marketing practices.

This study aims to investigate how companies perceived as sustainable by consumers engage in sustainability communication on social media. An abundance of information is common in today's digitized society - how do you as a company push through the noise - especially, with a serious message that does not belong on social media? The basis for determining which companies succeed in their sustainability communication is based on the Sustainable Brand Index Report from 2022. The selection and criteria resulted in three companies from three different industries for our analysis: Naturkompaniet, Systembolaget and MAX Burgers. We have reviewed all companies' Instagram and after the selection, 5 Instagram posts from each company are analyzed. The analysis is based on theories about sustainable communication, emotions and cognitive load on the part of the recipient. Models that are explained and intended to be the basis for results and analysis are the Affect–reason–involvement model (ARI model) and the Communication via Syncretic and Analytic Cognition Scale (CASC scale) as well as the Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP). To answer the research question "How do Systembolaget, Naturkompaniet and MAX Burgers present their sustainability communication on Instagram?" and the sub-question "How do Systembolaget, Naturkompaniet and MAX Burgers use emotional aspects and how do they take into account the recipients' cognitive load in their sustainability communication on Instagram?" in relation to the theories, we use a thematic content analysis. The analysis resulted in four overarching themes found: Behavior Change, Memorable, Encouraging and Serious Undertone. The conclusion is that companies that carry out successful sustainability communication present their messages in a simple way which is easy to understand, often with humorous elements and relatable factors.