Line charts won’t save the planet.
11 tips for creating communication which motivates and inspires people towards climate action.
A world on fire. The hottest July on record. The climate emergency is changing the world. And yet the collective response is far from urgent.
We require a huge cultural and societal change. Action on a mass scale. Marketeers and communicators can and should help the message from our frustrated scientists to cut through and resonate far more effectively than it is doing.
So here are 11 suggestions for creating communication that resonates and motivates people to change their behaviour to make more positive choices for the planet.
1. Don’t tell people off. It’s very easy to become angry and frustrated at our governments and collective stasis, but humans don’t respond well to being ‘shouted’ at. Stop berating people for inaction. It’s counter-productive and entrenches the reader further into their own biases.
2. Sell the benefits. Marketing 101. We need to sell an optimistic vision of a life where we all thrive on a cleaner, more beautiful planet.
3. Humanise the benefits. What are the fantastic things, at an individual level, that going green can achieve? Be specific. What’s in it for them?
4. Be careful with the language of reduction. No one likes to think they are getting less. So be cautious using words like ‘cut’ ‘reduce’ ‘decrease’ ‘degrowth’. These words arm climate deniers and demotivate individuals.
5. Make clear and sharp economic arguments. It’s always about the money.
6. Urgency of opportunity, not urgency of threat. We’d love to see the green rush be adopted with as much gusto as the gold rush. This can be an exciting time. There are fortunes to be made in green technologies. Early adopters will benefit the most. Sell opportunity. Make it clear that people, investors and businesses will lose out to their competitors if they are slow to adopt green technology.
7. Make it easy. Most people do actually want to have less impact - but they are also busy, stressed and tired. How can your product or service make switching to green easier?
8. Stop using charts. A chart needs more than 2 seconds to understand. They are just incomprehensible wiggly lines on people’s feeds. A bar chart never changed the world.
9. Remember that the scale of the problem is terrifying and incomprehensible. Start with small relatable pieces of information. Localise and contextualise in a relevant way.
10. Resist the temptation to fight the culture war. It’s a fire that has been started deliberately for clicks, distraction and profit. Climate arguments are reduced when conflated with partisan political ones.
11. Be resilient, calm and good humored. Don’t feed the trolls.
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