Calling all marketing/branding/creative gurus to help saving the planet
by asi
How to change hearts, minds & behaviours? How to communicate urgency? How to move people from positive attitude to positive behaviour? How to make people care enough and change their lifestyle? How to contribute to the formation of a much needed critical mass, or tipping point that will alter the potentially catastrophic course we’re heading to? How to best exploit the emerging opportunities of the social web to ring a warning bell that its echoes will reverberate throughout the UK or even the world?
These are some of the BIG questions that occupy me ever since I’ve started working on one of the UK’s leading authority on tackling climate change.
So I’ve decided to experiment with open-sourcing this communication challenge to the wider on-line marketing community as I believe that here lies great opportunity to test the idea that many minds are better than a few.
I will try, in a few words, to distil the challenge of "environmental markting comms" and to kindly ask all of you marketing/creative/media/digital/branding gurus and social web evangelists to contribute 5 min of your time for a great cause and to share your wisdom and humble opinions on this urgent matter.
You can read more detailed brief here [Download public_behaviour_and_the_environmen.doc], but I think this best epitomise the problem:
When it comes to climate change, the key challenge is bridging the gulf between high levels of public concern on energy/environmental issues, and the low priority accorded to these concerns in personal lifestyle decisions.
To make a very long story short, there are 3 main barriers preventing people from taking some fairly simple measures to adopt a more energy-efficient or environmentally-friendly lifestyle:
1. The power of habit (and the laziness to change)
2. Lack of sense of urgency to act.
3. A sense of invisible/intangible contribution (can’t see my actions really make a difference…)
How would you optimally use digital communications to overcome these barriers and move people to action?
Any kind of input is welcome: marketing, creative, media, branding, strategy, simply ANYTHING, and as I write this post I realise that, if people will indeed contribute, this can become a great common pool of marketing ideas for every ethical/environmental issues/campaigns.
I truly hope that the online marketing community will help me with this challenge and contribute some great ideas, either here or even better by expanding the conversation to their own blogs, and I thank all of you in advance for your contribution.
(update / expanding the conversation):
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/03/the_problem_wit.html
http://the-ad-pit.blogspot.com/2006/06/saving-planet.html
http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2006/06/marketing_global_warming_a_small_child_shall_lead_them.asp
http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/06/world.html
http://splinteredchannels.blogs.com/weblog/2006/06/the_problem_wit.html
http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/global-warming-global-and-warm
http://chromainc.typepad.com/chroma_inc/2006/06/asi_at_no_mans_.html
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/07/blogging_about_.html
http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2006/07/beating-global-warming-focus-on.html
http://www.converstations.com/2006/07/amy_gahran_begi.html
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/marketing_global_warming.html#comments
http://jonhoward.typepad.com/livingbrands/2006/07/economies_vs_ec.html
http://makemarketinghistory.blogspot.com/2006/07/war-on-weather_05.html#links
just got the first contribution from Seth Godin! he kindly sent me this link:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/03/the_problem_wit.html
thanks Seth!
Marketing Global Warming: A Small Child Shall Lead Them
By B.L. Ochman Asi Sharabi of No Man’s Blog sent a bunch of marketing-focused bloggers an email this morning asking us to contribute “marketing, creative, media, branding, strategy, simply ANYTHING” to create a great common pool of marketing ideas for …
The Problem with Global Warming
In a recent post, B.L. Ochman echoes the concerns raised by Asi Sharabi about global warming and why it continues to fail to motivate broad-based social action. Asi issued a challenge on his blog for marketing professionals to step up
World
I am apathetic.I care.I am not involved.I am involved.I am part of the problem.I am part of a solution.I am alone.I am in a community.I love my car.I hate my car.I can’t make a difference.I can.You can too. Wondering what
Global Warming – Global and Warm
I do think Seth has a point about global warming being almost too positive a term for something that we need to galvanize some action around.
Ari Sharabi has been contacting marketers to ask them to try and make a difference by posting something on …
Wow that is vague.
I’m going to assume you are talking about a site you have where people are looking for energy or climate info.
Visuals and sound through a flash animation would be my chosen media.
Linking together habit, urgency and tangability is not difficult.
I would use driving the kids to school in a car as the habit; this would be shown in brief episodes where the smoke is empahsised.
In between these episodes i wold use 3 graphs, drawn together and progressing together. These graphs would be 1. rising sea leves 2. rising co2 levels 3. rising cost of extreme weather events.
Switching between these graphs (which are all progressing from 1900 to 2050) and the car would flicker increasingly quickly.
There would then be a short naration over drought strichen Kenya with an explanation.
Change to more posotive music and animation of kids cycling to school and pictures of wind turbines…there is an alternative.
If you want a lesson in making the message hit home then i`m reliably informed that Al Gores new film will be worth watching.
It has to be about things that everyone can do – so little things – but we need to demonstrate that it can have an effect
The Independent article on how switching to energy saving lightbulbs would have a huge impact was really inspiring
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1155236.ece
Can we turn this into a crusade? People having stickers in their windows saying I’ve switched, car stickers? badges for people to wear? School projects that gets pester power working? Could workers persuade their bosses to switch so it becomes a sign of an ethical business.?
Much as it pains me to advocate an unwieldy, old-media solution, I think the fastest way to make something happen is to convince a billionaire to buy out the four major television networks for a night to air “An Inconvenient Truth.”
http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2006/07/beating-global-warming-focus-on.html
The amount of money involved would be pocket change to George Soros or Bill Gates.
People who rely on social marketing media seek out the undigested, untainted facts. Here is an opportunity for new media to replace traditional media in the dissemination of credible, relevant information. Give us the facts, make the message compelling, and let it spread. I think the audience is intelligent enough for that—if the facts are compelling enough, the facts don’t need massaging.
Economies vs. Ecologies
Just finished listening to a very good talk from Pop! Tech 2004 (yes I know I’m behind the times) by Douglas Rushkoff, entitled Renaissance Prospects. You get a nice hand drawn graphic to go with the talk as well… His
Have you seen the UN Environment Program’s Creative Gallery on Sustainability Communications:
http://www.unep.fr/pc/sustain/advertising/ad/ad_list.asp?cat=all
Also the recent Cannes Awards:
http://www.adforum.com/specialevents/ACT/ACT6/cannesdove2006.asp
http://www.blog.jcl.cl/?p=252
Este aviso refleja muy bien el concepto “menos es másâ€, con una simple simulación de una carta de navegación nos muestra los posibles efectos de un recalentamiento global.
El texto dice “Archipiélago de Himalaya†(al lado de las islas) “T…