How to Crack Climate Conversations

Earlier this year, when Sir David Attenborough’s film “A Life on Our Planet” was released, I happened to read an interview with him in the Straits Times and one of his quotes really struck me: “Today, climate change is a communications challenge”.

The climate crisis has already been solved on paper many times over – it really isn’t so much of a scientific or technological challenge but rather, a question of political, financial and social will to bring about radical change. And this is where the communications and media industry comes in.

Communication – especially marketing communication – helps shape behaviours, culture and lifestyles, and therefore plays a crucial role in this epic challenge of our generation.

Fighting climate change and bringing about societal change is a noble cause, and leagues of the greatest industry professionals have already joined this quest. Yet, for years and years they’ve tried to ‘sell’ climate change, but a lot of people still aren’t buying. Why is that so? What is it that we are getting wrong? I’ve been grappling with this question for a long time, and yet I still couldn’t put my finger on it.

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Let me do a quick pivot to our family dinner table. I am speaking at my 11-year old daughter, educating her about the reality of climate change. My expression is serious, my messages are strong for this is an important topic – if not the most important topic of all. My generation may not be able to solve this, I am telling her, we need all of you to join the fight. I continue to speak about the problems with plastics, packaging, meat. My daughter is smart and precious, surely she will understand, and I am doing my part as a responsible parent to instill the right values in her. Right?

Instead, she stares at me blankly. I do not understand, and then I look closer, and I see a tear rolling down her cheek. Pause. “What you’re saying sounds terrible,” she says softly. “Isn’t there any hope?”

The challenges of communicating about climate change

Mike Freedman, a founding partner of South Africa-based research and strategy firm Freedthinkers, offers some insights into the challenges around communicating sustainability-related messages:

1.    If you want to be understood, first seek to understand

So often in sustainability, people feel spoken ‘at them’. Instead, we should move to speak ‘to them’, and eventually, to speak ‘with them’.

• Ask, don’t tell
• Listen, don’t counter – and don’t say BUT
• Collect information, don’t dissect

2.    Avoid moral superiority

• ‘Sustainability’ is not even a very friendly word. As per the definition, it is “a resource or an activity that is able to be maintained at a certain rate or level”. In the words of Mike Freedman: If you’re going to use heavy words like this, you’re going to sound either like an academic, a police woman or a preacher, and nobody will want to listen to you. Not even your kids.
• Practice empathy – change is difficult and uncomfortable, and this needs to be acknowledged.

3.    Don’t swamp the listener

• Don’t say too many things, don’t say them too fast and don’t assume that if you’ve said them once everyone will immediately get it.
• Instead focus on a few big things and make those systemic connections.
• Keep it simple.

4.    Include the ‘why’ and the ‘how’

And here I am adding: Inspire hope.

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Despite my BA and MSc degrees in Marketing and Communications, I got all of these 4 points wrong when speaking to my own daughter. I was eager to learn more.

Futerra, in their authoritative and evidence-based climate change communications guide, offer a thought-provoking summary: “The most common message on climate change is that we’re all going to hell. That’s what climate change looks like when you get right down to it; rising seas, scorched earth, failing food supplies, billions of starving refugees tormented by wild weather (..) (But) hell doesn’t sell.”

Why not? Because there are powerful biases and heuristics at play, rooted in human psychology.

Seeing is believing

To give a few examples, there is the Status-quo Bias: People prefer things to stay the same by doing nothing or by sticking with a decision made previously. This may happen even when only small transition costs are involved and the importance of the decision is great.

Sunk-cost Fallacy: We tend to continue with a course of action despite evidence showing it to be incorrect, simply because we have invested resources, money or time in to the endeavour already.

A third bias, which I would argue is the most relevant for communications and media professionals, is the ‘Availability Bias’: The human tendency to think that examples of things that come readily to mind are more representative than is actually the case. Or in other words, we are much more inclined to believe those things we can imagine most vividly.

Climate change sounds like hell, so where is heaven?

This is where Futerra identified the biggest gap in current climate change communications. Via an impressive global research effort, they have identified a story arch that has the capacity to change hearts, minds and even behaviours. The starting point is to build a visual and compelling vision of ‘low carbon heaven’.

1.   Vision

Start out with painting a desirable and descriptive mental picture of a low carbon future. This has enormous potential to capture the imagination of your audience and taps into those starved and withered emotions: hope, a sense of progress and excitement about tomorrow.

2.   Choice

Now, give your audience a choice between a desirable future and hell: People can actually listen to this now, because they are sitting in the life raft of the positive vision you have offered them at the beginning. If you start with hell, you will have lost them already by this point.

3.   Plan

Offer a strong and simple 5-year plan. The audience is much more likely to stay with you if you can offer a few memorable yet significant achievements. Let’s be real: Do you know what you’ll be doing in 2030? Nor do most of us. According to Futerra, a 5-year focus is much more effective than the usual 20 or 30-year targets.

4.   Action

Finally, propose a set of 2-3 specific personal actions so everyone can help steer us away from danger and towards progress. Make it clear how it will help to reach the vision, and build in an immediate payback if you can.

 ‘I want you to panic’ vs. ‘I have a dream’

One of the most impactful climate communications so far has been Greta Thunberg’s 2019 speech at Davos. Her words “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic!” were directed at some of the world’s most powerful people in politics and business, and rightly so. The clock is ticking, and we need action, now.

But what if the audience is someone else? How do you communicate effectively at the family dinner table, amongst your friends and colleagues, or indeed, as a brand to consumers?

In these scenarios, perhaps we should rather be inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic ‘I have a dream’, capturing both the necessity for change and the potential for boundless hope to inspire action.

Meet hope: Imagine your audience eager and opinionated about what needs to be done. Imagine their enthusiasm for change, and pride in their own actions. Imagine promoting big policy changes and big lifestyle changes to an audience excited to hear it. (Source: Futerra)

Indeed, communicating effectively about climate change is the next frontier in enlightened marketing communications.