When it comes to the climate, you don’t need to look very hard for depressing statistics. Just open a newspaper for the latest status report on the melting Iceberg du Jour.
At the EcoTuesday event I attended last night, Sustainable Industries columnist Kevin Sweeney talked about how to take action in the face of such depressing data on climate change.
He cited the statistic that if we don’t do everything we can in the next 10 years to stop climate change, 50% of the species on the planet will be gone by the year 2100. If we do everything we can, we’ll still lose 10% of all species.
With numbers like these, how can anyone be inspired to recycle a single soda can?
Sweeney pointed out that we need to bring back that loving feeling to our messages. “We can’t tell these unbelievably depressing stories,” he said, “without offering hope.”
Hope & climate change–together? Well, a bad prognosis worked for Lance Armstrong, Sweeney noted. Instead of making him quit, Lance’s cancer diagnosis just made him stronger. He later said he could not have won the Tour de France without having faced down cancer.
Lance Armstrong & Will Smith overcoming impossible odds are one thing.
But in business, we tend to shy away from emotions–particularly terrifying emotions. We also shy away from the good stuff. Warm, fuzzy feelings make us uncomfortable. In business-to-business marketing, we don’t want to talk about feelings. We want to talk about data, statistics, results.
But data, statistics, and results can be misleading.
They don’t address potential. They don’t address the amazing things that happen when people are inspired to take massive action. If we embrace the responsibility of doing something about climate change, Sweeney says, we’ll become more spiritual, thoughtful, and more engaged with each other.
Sweeney incorporated into his presentation pictures of places and people with deep significance for him–the exact spot on a river where he and his wife got engaged, a waterfall at Yosemite, his daughter. He said he does this with a lot of presentations, sometimes–and most effectively– with attendees’ own personal photos, which he asks them to send in beforehand.
It may make us uncomfortable to talk about people and places that matter to us. But to overcome a message of destruction, we need an equally powerful message of hope, he says.
Could it be time to bring fuzzy emotions into the business world? Sweeney persuasively argues Yes.
I hope it catches on.
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2 Comments
I love what you wrote here. It’s absolutely true. Hope is needed desperately- hope is a medicine. As I teach marketing for people who are wanting to make the world a better place, I try to make people aware of what the ego really needs: – empathy- being seen in their struggle – identity…
Thanks Mark!