Author: Moh Al-Haifi
Co-Author: Isabelle Drury
Marketing isn’t working anymore. Not for people, not for the planet, and if we’re really honest, not even for most businesses. While your LinkedIn feed might be full of “growth hacks” and “foolproof scaling strategies,” there’s an uncomfortable truth lurking beneath the surface: conventional marketing often takes more than it gives back.
“But wait,” you might be thinking, “isn’t marketing just about connecting products with people who need them?” That’s what we’d all like to believe. The reality is more complex. Today’s marketing practices are deeply rooted in systems that prioritise rapid profits and scaling at all costs, while viewing competitors as enemies to be dominated rather than potential collaborators in solving real problems.
At Zebra Growth, our team and clients have witnessed firsthand how conventional marketing can drain not just our collective energy, but our hope for a better future. We’ve seen how chasing quarterly targets and aggressive growth metrics can disconnect us from the very people we’re trying to serve.
But what if there was a different way?
Understanding Regeneration and Marketing
Before we dive into regenerative marketing, let’s talk about regeneration itself. Think about the most resilient natural systems you know: perhaps a forest recovering after a fire, or a coastal ecosystem adapting to changing tides. These systems don’t just survive; they continuously renew and evolve.
From the soil beneath our feet to the communities we build, regeneration is the constant process of birth, growth, maturity, death, and rebirth. It’s not just a nice metaphor, it’s the operating system of life itself.
“That’s lovely, but what does this have to do with my marketing strategy?” The connection runs deeper than you might expect. Just as natural ecosystems thrive through cycles of renewal and interconnected relationships, our businesses and marketing efforts can follow the same patterns.
The Evolution of Marketing
To understand where we’re going, we need to understand where we’ve been. Marketing didn’t start as the data-driven, conversion-obsessed machine we know today. Its earliest forms were simply about human exchange: farmers trading goods at local markets, artisans sharing their crafts with neighbouring communities.
But something shifted during the Industrial Revolution. As mass production became possible, businesses needed ways to sell more products to more people. Marketing transformed from a tool for community connection into a mechanism for mass consumption.
Over time, marketing became increasingly extractive and mechanistic, shaped by colonial mindsets that prioritised efficiency and competition over resilience and ecosystem health. Today’s conventional marketing practices aren’t just accidents of history, they’re direct products of systems designed to maximise short-term profits at the expense of long-term wellbeing.
(We’ve written a full piece on marketing’s history if you’d like to learn more: “Marketing’s Origin Story: The Good, The Bad, And The Colonial“.)
“But that’s just how business works, right?” Yes, that’s how business has worked. But as we face novel social and environmental challenges, more and more marketers are asking: Is this how business needs to work?.
A New Marketing Paradigm
“So if conventional marketing is part of the problem, what’s the alternative?” You might be wondering this as you look at your current marketing metrics, your team’s KPIs, your quarterly targets. The answer lies in understanding how living systems actually work.
Regenerative marketing isn’t just a set of new tactics or a different way to write social media posts. It represents a fundamental shift in how we approach the entire function of marketing, moving from a mechanical, extractive system to one that mirrors the patterns of life itself.
At its core, regenerative marketing operates through three essential patterns that we observe in all living systems:
Holism: Seeing the whole picture
Conventional marketing often breaks everything down into isolated metrics–conversion rates, click-through percentages, cost per acquisition. But just as you can’t understand a forest by only counting trees, you can’t create meaningful change by focusing solely on metrics.
Holism means recognising that every marketing decision exists within a complex web of relationships. Consider a decision to launch a major social media campaign. Through a conventional lens, you might only measure engagement rates and follower growth. But through a holistic view, you see how that campaign affects your customer service team’s workload, influences your brand’s environmental impact through digital energy consumption, shapes community discussions, impacts your team’s creative wellbeing, and either strengthens or weakens trust with your audience. Each decision creates ripples throughout your entire ecosystem. This interconnected view leads us naturally to the next pattern.
Evolution: Learning through change
This is where we introduce the Theory of Emergence, an adaptation of the conventional Theory of Change framework. Instead of trying to control outcomes through rigid planning, the Theory of Emergence helps teams map out how their actions can catalyse positive systemic change.
In practice, this means:
- Deeply connecting with your team’s foundational beliefs
- Questioning assumptions about growth and success
- Mapping the systemic problems you’re trying to solve
- Identifying leverage points for positive change
- Creating conditions for natural evolution rather than forced growth
Interdependence: The web of relationships
An ecosystem isn’t just a collection of separate entities–it’s the relationships between them that create life. In marketing terms, this means understanding that your business exists within an interconnected web of stakeholders, relationships, and environments.
This shifts everything about how we approach marketing strategy:
- Every strategy must prioritise partnership development
- Value exchange must be genuinely reciprocal
- The more diverse your relationships, the more resilient your ecosystem
- Growth happens through nurturing relationships, not extracting value
- Success is measured by ecosystem health, not just profit
Now that we’ve explored these fundamental shifts in marketing strategy, the next step is turning them into action. Understanding these principles deeply is crucial, it forms the foundation for everything that follows. Let’s examine how these insights transform into regenerative marketing in practice.
Regenerative Marketing in Practice
After understanding these living systems patterns, the next question becomes obvious: How do we actually apply this in our daily marketing work? The shift begins not with changing tactics, but with transforming our fundamental approach to marketing itself.
Let’s start at the strategic level. Before creating any marketing plan, regenerative marketing requires us to deeply connect with our team’s core beliefs. This is about questioning everything we’ve been taught about growth, success, and impact. What do we actually believe influences how we see the world? How does that shape the way we run our business? What’s our real intention behind every action we take?
This mindset shift manifests in three key areas:
Firstly, authenticity in communication stands at the heart of regenerative marketing, especially when we consider how conventional marketing often creates artificial urgency or manufactured scarcity to drive sales. Regenerative marketing takes a radically different approach by returning to the fundamental truth of human connection. Before writing any piece of content, ask yourself: Would you say this to someone sitting across from you? If it feels inauthentic in a face-to-face conversation, it doesn’t belong in your marketing.
This means embracing new communication principles such as non-violent communication or taking a trauma-informed approach to audience engagement. Every email, social post, or campaign should be created with the full humanity of your audience in mind. Instead of relying on manipulation tactics or false scarcity, focus on creating genuine value and ensuring full consent in all interactions. The goal isn’t just to sell–it’s to build authentic relationships based on trust and mutual benefit.
Secondly, continuous learning over perfection is where regenerative marketing truly diverges from conventional approaches. Instead of seeking perfect campaigns or flawless execution, we embrace a continuous learning mindset. When a campaign doesn’t meet expectations, regenerative marketers don’t see failure–they see an opportunity for evolution. Teams come together with joy and curiosity to analyse results and identify learnings that will inform future strategies.
This shift away from perfectionism is crucial because you can’t be both regenerative and perfect. Perfectionism often stems from colonial and industrial mindsets that no longer serve us. By creating safe spaces for experimentation and adaptation, we allow our marketing efforts to evolve naturally, just like living systems do in nature.
Thirdly, partnership and value exchange form the foundation of growth in living systems, and the same principle applies to regenerative marketing. Every strategy must explicitly consider how we build and nurture partnerships across our ecosystem. This goes beyond conventional networking or transactional relationships, it’s about creating genuine value exchanges that benefit all participants.
The key is diversifying these relationships as much as possible. Just as a healthy ecosystem contains many different species working in harmony, regenerative marketing thrives on connecting with diverse stakeholders. This might mean collaborating with unexpected partners, engaging with community groups, or finding new ways to create value for your entire business ecosystem.
“This sounds all great in theory,” you might be thinking, “but what about metrics? Targets? KPIs?” This is where the Theory of Emergence comes into play. Instead of rigid planning and control, we map out how our actions can catalyse positive change while still achieving business objectives. This means creating marketing strategies that:
- Address systemic problems rather than just symptoms
- Consider impact across multiple time horizons
- Build capacity for long-term resilience
- Create conditions for natural growth
- Measure success through ecosystem health indicators
But here’s where we encounter both a challenge and an opportunity. While transforming our marketing approach is powerful, it can’t exist in isolation. This brings us to perhaps the most crucial understanding in regenerative marketing–the principle of holism.
Beyond Marketing: Incorporating The Whole System
After exploring how to implement regenerative marketing practices, we encounter a crucial truth: marketing cannot function regeneratively in isolation. This brings us back to our first pattern of holism, but at an organisational level.
Consider this: If your marketing team embraces regenerative principles but your business model remains extractive, how authentic can your message really be? When your marketing promises positive impact while your supply chain creates hidden harm, how long can that disconnect survive?
The reality is that regenerative marketing reaches its full potential only when it’s part of a larger organisational transformation. Let’s examine what this means in practice:
Business model integration
At its core, a regenerative business model must actively solve social and environmental challenges as it grows, not create new ones. This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about value creation and distribution. We must design business models that actively regenerate the systems they operate within.
This means taking a hard look at your supply chain relationships and understanding their true impact. How does money flow through your stakeholders? Does your growth model strengthen or weaken ecosystem health? When we examine business through this lens, we see how modern practices have strayed from their roots. While businesses originally formed to help communities thrive and build resilience over generations, today’s focus on quarterly profits often undermines these longer-term goals. The pressure to maximise short-term returns can lead to decisions that compromise future stability and growth.
Regenerative business models reclaim this longer view. By considering impact across generations, not just our children, but their children’s children, we make fundamentally different choices about how to structure our operations, manage our resources, and measure our success.
Governance and investment
Conventional corporate structures often force short-term thinking through their very design.
Quarterly profit pressures and conventional ownership models can make it nearly impossible to prioritise long-term ecosystem health over immediate financial gains. This is why regenerative businesses need to explore alternative models like steward ownership and patient capital.
When your governance considers all stakeholders and your investment vehicles prioritise long-term value creation, your marketing naturally becomes more authentic because it reflects real organisational values, not just aspirational messaging.
(Shout out to Purpose Foundation for accessible learnings on keeping businesses independent and purpose-driven. For an economy that works for people and the planet.)
Leadership and culture
Marketing often acts as a powerful catalyst for organisational change, but this potential can only be realised with full leadership commitment to regenerative principles. This means cultivating a team culture that truly embraces continuous learning and evolution. Your recruitment processes, internal communications, and decision-making practices all need to align with your regenerative values.
A regenerative organisation weaves this thinking into every department and function. The impact extends far beyond dedicated sustainability initiatives, transforming how each team approaches their work within the larger ecosystem.
The challenge here is significant, particularly for larger organisations. The bigger the company, the more complex this transformation becomes. Yet this is precisely where marketing can play a crucial role, helping to shift organisational consciousness from the inside out.
This might all sound overwhelming, which brings us to perhaps the most important part of the regenerative journey…
Authenticity vs. Greenwashing
“Is this just another green marketing trend? How do we even begin to make such big changes?” By now, you might be feeling overwhelmed. The scope of change required can seem daunting, and with it comes a legitimate fear: are we just engaging in another form of greenwashing?
This concern sits at the heart of many organisations’ hesitation to embrace regenerative marketing. And it should–the business landscape is littered with examples of companies whose sustainability claims proved hollow.
The difference between greenwashing and genuine regenerative practice begins with intention. Regenerative transformation starts with an honest recognition of current extractive practices in your organisation. This can be uncomfortable, it means acknowledging where your marketing, and perhaps your entire business model, may have contributed to systemic problems.
This recognition must be shared across your entire team, especially leadership. Without aligned intention at every level, regenerative efforts risk becoming surface-level marketing initiatives rather than genuine transformation. Remember: regeneration is the opposite of perfection. The goal isn’t to present a flawless green image, but to commit to authentic evolution, even when it’s messy.
Real regenerative practice demands radical transparency about both your successes and your struggles. This means being vulnerable with your audience about where you are in your journey. If you make a mistake, and you will, acknowledge it openly. Create clear feedback loops with all stakeholders so they can hold you accountable and help guide your transformation.
Some organisations fear this level of transparency might damage their reputation. However, audiences today are sophisticated enough to recognise and appreciate genuine efforts at change, even when they’re imperfect. What damages reputation isn’t the acknowledgment of challenges–it’s the discovery of hidden contradictions between claims and actions.
Take when Blackrock, a major venture capital firm, purchased Oatly, for example. This serves as a powerful reminder of how business model decisions can impact brand authenticity. When Oatly was sold, it highlighted a crucial question for regenerative businesses: Can a company maintain its regenerative principles when its ownership structure prioritises rapid financial returns? The era of being able to claim regenerative values while maintaining conventional extractive business models is coming to an end.
Finally, remember that you don’t have to figure it out alone. An entire ecosystem of support exists: systems thinking experts, regenerative consultants, and communities of practice are all available to guide your journey. Many have navigated these same challenges and can help you avoid confusion and missteps. The key is recognising that asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a crucial part of regenerative practice. Just as natural ecosystems thrive through interconnection, your regenerative journey will be strengthened by the relationships you build with others on the same path.
Your Regenerative Journey
The shift to regenerative marketing isn’t about political ideologies or pointing fingers. It’s about our collective future and the health of the systems we’re all part of.
Whether you’ve spent years in aggressive growth marketing or you’re just starting to question conventional practices, your perspective and experience are valuable here. In fact, some of our greatest insights come from those who’ve witnessed the limitations of extractive systems firsthand.
This is an invitation to everyone–regardless of your industry, background, or current practices. There’s no perfect starting point, and there’s no blame in recognising where we’ve been. What matters is our willingness to explore, learn, and evolve together.
At Zebra Growth, we’re creating spaces for this exploration through our Regenerative Marketing Playgrounds, informal fireside chats where we explore these ideas together, and our transformative 4-week course in partnership with With Life. But more importantly, we’re part of a growing movement of marketers, business leaders, and change-makers who believe in marketing’s potential to regenerate rather than extract.
The future of marketing isn’t about perfection, it’s about progression. And your voice matters in this conversation.
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