SUSTAINABILITY IS BRAND-CHALLENGED

Think about the attributes that great brands share—passion, purpose and clarity.  They’re distinctive, interesting and engaging. Then think of sustainability. Ugh.  Even the word rings wrong. It’s leaden, virtuous, earnest, wonky, dense, dorky. A literary liability—in the US, anyway.  In the UK and in other places, sustainability is bouncier, younger and actually speaks to people, not at them.

The question is how to sex up sustainability so the “s” word sounds less stale.

AVOID IT:  The word, that is. Because the concept is so squishy, few people are entirely sure what sustainability actually means. For the most part, you’re better to talk about the issues that fall under this awkward and ungainly category— climate change or biodiversity loss or worker rights. Then, get granular. Or—depending on your audience—you may want to wear it loud and proud because there’s no simple, single-word substitute. It’s a lumpy concept, which is why talking about it is so tricky.

SPIT IT OUT:  Because it’s so complex, the very word sustainability seems to give people a license to be grammatically challenged if not entirely incoherent. Here, at random, are a couple of sentences pulled from the websites of leading sustainability organizations. No wonder the public can’t get its head—much less heart— around sustainability.

[OUR ORGANIZATION] enables the success of better brands by providing direction to key trends and emerging best practices, as well delivers tools and resources to support the implementation of transformational programs within companies.

 [OUR ORGANIZATION’S ROLE] is to catalyze change within business by integrating sustainability into strategy and operations, and to promote collaboration among companies and their stakeholders for systemic progress toward a just and sustainable world.

Say what? When you’re talking about sustainability or climate change, or pollution or economic inequity, knotty language doesn’t sound smart—it’s just bad for the brand.

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD: The right side of it, anyway. Even the most creative innovators go cerebral when it comes to describing how they’re making their mark and improving the [FILL IN THE BLANK]. The trick is to change hearts. If you’re doing something good—like working to remove micro-plastics from fish gills—make it feel good to your audience—give them something to celebrate and aspire to by creating emotional resonance.

SOUNDING TOO GOOD IS BAD. Nobody likes a brown nose. I’m not suggesting you lighten up the topic of sustainability to trivialize it but to liven it up. The idea is not to make good work sound bad, but edgy can be good and in the case of sustainability, refreshing. While ads promoting diversity and gun control tug at the heartstrings, as a rule, copy that talks about sustainability sounds hopped on virtue and piousness. That’s because organizations still seem to think they need to tediously sustainability-explain, which like mansplaining, is so not good that it’s bad.

Bottom line, when it comes to sustainability branding, as Bob Marley sang, liven up yourself and don’t be no drag.

WHY MAKE CLIMATE CHANGE A LAUGHING MATTER?

In 1896 the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius theorizes that as people burned coal and other fossil fuels, they’ll add carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere, which will raise the planet’s average temperature. 

Flash-forward to the early 1970’s and the dawn of the environmental movement: discussions of aerosol spray cans and the demise of the ozone layer. Scientific investigation and public concern builds steam.

Flash-forward another 50 or so years and here we are. Scott Pruitt, collective handwringing, and the birth of the Good Grief group, a nine step program that is the AA for climate-concerned.

And Stephen Hawking, shortly before his death, warned us that the planet is doomed. Clearly, climate change has been communications-challenged. The message has not gotten through. Just a few months ago, the NY Times published the interactive guide Climate Change is Complex. We’ve Got Answers to Your Questions. We’re still at Climate Change 101 for the masses? Time to get a move on.

Millennials care about climate change. According to the Global Shapers Annual Survey 2017 on technology, economy, values, career and governance, which surveyed more than 31,000 Millennials from over 180 countries, climate change remains their biggest global concern for the third year in a row.

So what’s not been working? This stuff is just about as scary as it gets. (If you’re really like to go for the guts, check out the Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells New York Magazine’s most widely read piece ever.

It’s a question of framing. While psychologists, journalists and behaviorists posit theories around fear or hope as the greatest motivator for action around climate change or other tough topics, I’d promote satire as a viable alternative—particularly if your organization or brand is targeting Millennials.

As John Oliver quipped in response to a poll that found 1 in 4 Americans deny the existence of climate change: “Who gives a shit? You don’t need public opinion on fact.” He then hosted what he characterized as “a mathematically representative debate on climate change” featuring a climate denier, Bill Nye the Science Guy and 95 climate scientists. Oliver’s schtick got attention: nearly 8 million You Tube views.

No guarantee that it’s a fail-safe approach to framing the issue, but funny, clever and irreverent are provocative. Funny gets noticed, shared and liked. An irreverent video on the Affordable Care Act increased web traffic by 40 percent in less than a day.

Why funny? Because it’s a conversation-starter. Which is its biggest selling point. Fear and panic lead to dread, which leads to psychological paralysis. Funny opens us up to new ideas. That’s because when we laugh, we release endorphins and dopamine—the feel-good neurotransmitters.

Funny helps us process difficult information. Scott Weems, a cognitive neuroscientist and author. In his book, Ha! The Science of When we Laugh and Why, Weems writes that humor is a “response to conflict and confusion in our brain”.

In Personality and Sense of Humor, Avner Ziv says that “comedy and satire possess a common denominator in that both try to change or reform society by means of humor. The two forms together constitute the best illustration there is of the social function of humor.”

So while you’re debating the pros and cons of framing the conversation using fear, facts or funny, check out a few of the go-to sources of Millennial information and inspiration:

 John Oliver’s roundtable with Bill Nye the Science Guy;

Funny or Die’s PSA on climate change denial disorder;

The group 350 Australia fake coal ad;

And Too Hot to Handle, a farcical multi-media series “taking a lighter look at the dark problem of climate change” supported by Ben & Jerry’s.

And if you decide that funny is too risky or doesn’t resonate for you or your brand, you could try taking a different tack: up close and personal. Next blog.

WHY SUSTAINABILITY MESSAGING IS IN NEED OF REFORMATION

Grim doesn’t begin to describe First Reformed, Paul Schrader’s new movie about Reverend Ernst Toller’s awakening to the tyranny of corporate polluters. The desperately deflated, alcoholic Toller, played by Ethan Hawke, takes a job in a 250 year-old church in the bleak bowels of upstate New York. Among his very few congregants is a young environmental activist, whose despair over the state of the world catapults the psychologically vulnerable pastor into a state of even more dire desperation.

As Toller leaves his monastically furnished bedroom, enters the spartan bathroom, where a single, blazingly bare bulb sheds light on his stream of bloody urine, my husband whispers, “Great SNL material.”

Maybe it’s us—the movie did earn rave reviews— but enough already. Unrelenting, unforgiving and unapologetically bleak messaging around climate change and other apocalyptic scenarios is a stifling turn-off.

From a communications POV, it’s exactly what’s been wrong and stays wrong—with enviro messaging. IT’S TOO EARNEST.

I’m not suggesting that Schrader should have made a comedy or that the New York Times lighten up articles on efforts to open the Arctic National Refuge to oil and gas exploration with a few one-liners.  

But does it always have to be so serious, especially when you’re selling stuff? Unless we lighten up the tone, stash away the Birkenstocks (okay, they’re ugly chic now), and start to laugh once in a while, we continue to preach to the converted and fail to give our audience good reasons to like, share, tweet, buy or donate.

A recent study conducted by Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and the Environmental Defense Fund demonstrates that humor is effective in motivating audiences to take action around climate change. For Pathways of Influence in Emotional Appeals: Benefits and Tradeoffs of Using Fear or Humor to Promote Climate Change-Related Intentions and Risk Perceptions, researchers partnered with Second City Works, a marketing offshoot of the improvisational theater troupe to produce a series of online videos featuring a weatherman forecasting weather patterns caused by climate change. The three videos, each with a different tone, ended with the same call to action: “Find out what your local officials and the presidential candidates think about climate change. Have your voice heard on Nov. 8.” The conclusion: the video that made people laugh more motivated to action.

To be fair, although the study shows that humor can be an effective means to inspire young people to pursue climate change activism, fear proved to be an equally effective motivator.

The point, though, is that there is room for laughter, particularly if you’re targeting Millenials. I understand that rising sea levels and extreme weather events are not laugh-your-guts-out funny. But light-heartedness makes issues—even doomsday scenarios—accessible. It breaks taboos. It lightens the mood. It doesn’t need to imply that your organization or company is making a mockery of melting ice caps.

According Jeff Niederdeppe, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, who oversaw the study: "Young people buy green products, they believe in climate change, they're worried about it, but they're not as politically active on the issue as older generations are. And if you look at where Millennials get news information, it's from John Oliver and Trevor Noah.”

So what can organizations and businesses do to inspire social change through satire? Stay tuned for Blog Post Number 2.