MARKETING & SUSTAINABILITY
Talking Sustainability
Unfortunately, sustainability presents us with a range of issues that are near perfect mental mismatches:
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- Climate change is hard to see, yet impossible to deny
- Plastics might be in the oceans and waterways but many of us may never actually see if for ourselves
- Inequality and discrimination are uncomfortable to face and may require facing unearned power and privileges
- Accumulating material comforts has been what has kept the human species alive and yet overconsumption is destroying parts of the world we will never see
In short, talking sustainability is tough. It is a call for a new kind of creative storytelling that empowers people with hope and real solutions while not sugar-coating the hard truths. This is a challenging combination for a marketing profession originally built to build brands, engage customers, and drive sales.
But that’s what makes marketing such a critical contributor to sustainability.
Marketers can equip themselves to “talk sustainability” by knowing the common psychological defenses and what research suggests are effective communication techniques can help. See US Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides to avoid misleading claims (i.e. “greenwashing”).
Tips for Talking Sustainability
Per Espen Stoknes, a psychologist with a PhD in economics, chairs the Center for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. Stoknes’s tips on talking sustainability can help marketers. He has studied and named what he calls the “psychological defenses” people have about climate change and other sustainability challenges.
And he suggests what the research says can work to communicate effectively.
Psychological Defenses:
Common Points of Resistance
- Distance – we have a hard time comprehending and valuing issues not in our personal space or direct proximity…so we don’t
- Doom – we tend to be both fascinated, frozen and repelled by bad news; doomsday scenarios of rising sea levels might be scientifically reasonable projections but aren’t correlated with motivating behavior
- Dissonance – when a tension arises between how we live and what we know we experience dissonance. If we downplay or tune-out the uncomfortable knowledge, we can feel better about how we live.
- Denial – fear and guilt are very painful emotions that most people spend their time trying to avoid; denial is a handy device that allows us to push away these feelings and vilify those who would push them back in our face
- Identity – decades of research has demonstrated our “confirmation bias” and “motivated reasoning” tendencies that make us see things, as the author Anais Nin once said, not as they are but as we are; we will work very hard to reinforce and protect our self-identity (e.g. as being kind, smart, “not a racist/sexist”, etc.)
Going on Offense:
Sustainability Communication Strategies that Work
- Make it social – people are strongly influenced by the behavior of their neighbors, peers and colleagues. Look for ways to provide what Robert Cialdini has calls “social proof” that a particular behavior is preferred by the peer group.
- Supportive framing – rather than scaring the heck out of people with “end of times” scenarios, provide a hopeful message that presents challenges as an opportunity for innovation; don’t sugar coat the truth but emphasize and put more weight on solutions and the positive outcomes from those solutions
- Simple – it is a frustrating paradox that complex socioeconomic and ecological issues must be simplified in our communications. But that’s the case. Marketers can “essentialize” the message, still respecting the science and complexity, without dumbing it down.
- Storytelling – you know the saying, “People decide with their emotions and then rationalize it with their mind.” This is true and we can incorporate stories of people, communities, businesses doing the right thing. Marketers choose specific kinds of stories their audience will connect with.
- Signals – sustainability data is presented at the global scale (e.g. 60% of ecosystems are in decline) but actions must be local (or at least organizational). Global data is important but it must be paired with local data, what Stoknes calls “signals”, that is relevant to our actionable reality. For example, Oracle Utilities OPower’s Home Energy Reports show electricity consumption compared to your neighbors.
ADVANCE YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF SUSTAINABLE MARKETING
Learn what sustainable marketing is all about and its importance
Learn the important things to know in this field
Learn how sustainability fits into your courses
Learn how sustainability relates to your career