⚡ The waggling finger of impending doom.
⚡ Forceful demands and obligations disguised as advice.
⚡ Streams of scientific theories and mathematical calculations that bamboozle.
Enough to make us want to crawl under the covers.
And that’s just for starters.
It’s all too much. It’s all so negative. Our survival filter goes into overdrive and has to shut out the noise in order to find positive reasons for being.
With everything that is vying for our attention and support these days in an abstract capacity, what seems to have got brushed aside in all this is that people already have a full plate of demands on their attention in their personal spheres. And that comes first.
Because surprise, surprise, that’s what people care about most.
So, anything on top needs to be relevant. It needs to be communicated in a form that connects with people. It needs to be swallowed and digested and felt in the gut.
We relate to stories. We want to feel. Above all, we connect with ideas that make us feel good.
So, could advertising in the sustainability sector do things differently?
I hope so.
The big error seems to be in assuming that people won’t understand the topic and that needs to be explained and broken down into painfully tedious detail. What a way to win fans!
Bombarding with facts and figures and warnings of Armageddon only seems to result in withdrawal, denial: people burying their heads in the sand – And not just to block out reality, but protect themselves from the non-stop noise and demands from those who know better.
You can take a horse to water, right? And then, it just splashes around – especially in 37°C!
More challenging still, people can react really extremely, often adversely, to militant calls-to-action: switching off, turning the page, deleting the information before it adds to their state of information overload.
So, how a message is delivered, using the right kind of story is therefore crucial to how it lands with the public. If it comes out the wrong way, what the audience may arguably be hearing is: I’m stupid. I’m ignorant. I’m a bad person and a failure.
Despite being eager to win support and change behaviours, we might actually achieve the opposite, causing offense and setting people on the defensive – especially if we’re triggering or reinforcing preexisting beliefs.
Organisations might not trust people to think for themselves, but they need to start trusting people to feel. Because even if they don’t, people will feel what they feel regardless!
Destruction of our planet, our country, our local area impacts us all differently – but at any rate, emotionally. It all comes down to good storytelling, noticing what people care about. Noticing the small things that make a difference to people’s lives on a daily basis: the local park where their children play, the lake where they swim. People understand community.
I mean, with 37°C, could London Climate Action Week 2026 have chosen more fitting time? Railways melting. Commercial freezers packing up. No ice cream for the kids.
You might not be able to change what people think: Opinions can be rigid when the need to be right, stand firm and look strong comes into play. But with more creative Jackanory, you can affect how people feel.
