Issue #10 | December 2025
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Why sustainability marketing fails (and how to fix it)
Nobody likes running out of hot water... nobody talks about their water heater until they run out of hot water, and then it's the most important thing in the world..
In our newest podcast episode, I sat down with Luke Winston-Almanzar, CEO + Co-founder of Reservoir, a Boston-based company rebuilding the most ignored appliance in your home: the water heater.
But the real story isn’t the tank. It’s the positioning.
Because this isn’t a niche problem. Luke points out that there are over 120 million homes in the U.S. with standard water heaters, many of them electric resistance systems that quietly cost homeowners hundreds of extra dollars per year. For a huge portion of the market, switching isn’t about being “green”, it’s about stopping an unnecessary monthly expense.
Most climate tech founders treat marketing like a megaphone problem: “If people understood the impact, they’d buy.” Reservoir treats it like a value-chain problem: “If the product wins on the metrics people already care about, they don’t need to be convinced.”
That shift is everything.
The sacrifice syndrome (aka: the fastest way to kill demand)
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: most buyers won’t trade comfort, convenience, or reliability for sustainability. Not because they’re selfish—because they’re busy.
When Luke renovated his home, a plumber nudged him toward gas because it’s “tried and true” and delivers hot water fast. That’s the moment where the majority of climate products lose, not to a competitor, but to a default.
Climate positioning fails when it sounds like a downgrade.
The second you lead with “eco-friendly alternative,” customers hear: less powerful, more hassle, more risk.
Reservoir flips it:
Performance: 150 gallons of hot water from a 50-gallon footprint + instant hot water at the tap
Economics: meaningful annual savings (especially in high-cost energy regions)
Convenience: installation engineered to feel routine—not experimental
The takeaway: Don’t ask the customer to be a hero. Make them feel smart.
From the archives: when the promise becomes the brand
In the late 70s/early 80s, FedEx didn’t market “shipping.” They marketed certainty. The line “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight” wasn’t just clever copy, it was a stake in the ground.
What made it work? They didn’t try to educate the market on logistics. They made a single, high-stakes promise people could instantly understand: reliability under pressure.
The climate marketing lesson: If you’re selling new infrastructure (heat pumps, batteries, grid tools, industrial retrofits), you’re not selling “innovation.” You’re selling peace of mind. Lead with the promise the buyer is actually hiring you for: uptime, comfort, speed, risk reduction, payback.
Case study: when the buyer isn’t the customer
Luke shared the blocker most founders underestimate: the person installing your product is the real customer gatekeeper.
When contractors hear “new tech,” they don’t picture emissions reduction. They picture callbacks.
If a competitor in your category had reliability issues, installers don’t just dislike them, they distrust the entire category. That creates a brutal loop:
Reservoir’s move: own the channel early.
They built their own installation capability (and hired their own plumbers) so they could:
Control the experience end-to-end
Reduce friction + increase speed to install
Capture real-world performance feedback fast
Build evidence that installers actually trust
The principle: If the channel is risk-averse, your marketing job is to de-risk the channel, not “raise awareness” with the end customer.
Three practical takeaways from Reservoir’s playbook
1. Market to the buyer and the blocker: Most climate brands sell to the homeowner or procurement team, and ignore the person who can quietly veto the deal. Build messaging for installers (time to install, warranty, service burden), partners (utilities/insurers/property managers), and finance (payback + total cost). If your funnel depends on a gatekeeper, your go-to-market depends on their incentives.
2. Sell the “boring” KPI first: People don’t wake up wanting sustainability, they want hot water that doesn’t run out, projects that don’t turn into headaches, equipment that doesn’t fail, and bills that don’t spike. Lead with the KPI already on their dashboard. Sustainability is the supporting actor.
3. Turn secondary benefits into distribution: Reservoir found value-adds that unlock partnerships: pipe-freeze prevention (insurance), grid demand management (utilities), and smart home intelligence (upgrade story). That’s where climate brands win: distribution through aligned partners, not just consumer persuasion.
What's working now: “intelligence” as the new luxury
Luke said something that stuck with me: We can talk to our watches… but the thing in our house using a huge share of our energy has zero intelligence.
That’s the wedge, because “smart” isn’t an environmental promise. It’s a performance + control promise.
The best sustainability brands right now aren’t positioning as “eco.” They’re positioning as modern: adaptive, automated, and visibly in control. When your product learns patterns and prevents problems, the incumbent doesn’t feel “standard.” It feels outdated.
How to translate that into marketing:
Lead with control: “Always hot when you need it” beats “uses less energy.”
Make savings feel engineered: “Optimizes automatically” beats “do the right thing.”
Sell prevention: fewer failures, fewer emergencies, fewer callbacks.
The strategy: Position your product as a software upgrade to an old category, where sustainability is the outcome, not the pitch.
Listen to the full conversation
For more insights on building climate tech that sells itself, check out my full interview with Luke on The Capitalist Hippie podcast.
In the episode, we also get into:
Why water heaters might become the backbone of home energy management
The distribution lesson most climate startups learn too late
How to turn “unsexy” hardware into a premium story