Written by Sophie Ozoux Syrigos and Kwame Taylor-Hayford
Climate change rhetoric has led people to fatalism, apathy, paralysis, despair or worse, indifference. For decades the story of the climate crisis has been told primarily through statistics, charts and graphs or through the prism of its dramatic consequences: hurricanes, floods, endangered species, houses on fires... This approach, oscillating between quantitative and alarming, has certainly created awareness of the problem, but it has failed to inspire the urgent and significant action needed to build a better future. In that regard, the climate crisis is also a crisis of imagination and storytelling.
Entertainment, advertising, journalism, music and art have proven some of our most powerful tools. They have the ability to deeply move people and change minds and behaviors. It’s past time that storytellers across media apply our skill to the pressing issue of climate change. But why is it so hard? How can we use our boundless imagination and creativity to dream up new stories that will move us forward in this fight? How can we make people feel the problem and work to be part of the solution? How can we appeal to what inspires and excites? How can we motivate people to believe in their potential and drive them to act in their own self-interest, and in the interests of people they care about?
Making this pivot requires a deliberate shift in our approach. We need to change “the brief” for the stories we make and share. In the paragraphs below, we will explore essential elements that we believe will lead to compelling stories that drive action and real change on climate today.
A continuous stream of catastrophic climate news has left us feeling fatigued and paralyzed. Hopelessness is already widespread among those who care most, and hope will only become harder to maintain as the crisis worsens and the impact of our best efforts remain invisible. The hope needed to fuel change will not be inspired by more stories that stoke fear. What we need instead is a radically hopeful vision for the future that taps into people’s dreams and desires and that inspires us to make changes.
Albert Einstein famously said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” We need to lean into our imaginations and what seems “impossible.” If we move on from merely dramatizing the problem to celebrating our progress through innovative solutions, we will fill ourselves with a sense of possibility and excitement that a better future is on the horizon.
It starts with focusing on solutions. We need to flip the script and tell a story of hope, possibility and human agency. Show that not only is change needed, but that it is possible and exciting. Our unrelenting spirit and our boundless creativity to craft the solutions will make the difference. In order to overcome climate change, we need to believe that we can.
Innovative solutions are all around us and developing fast. Change is happening, but it has not been widely communicated and in a way that captures our imaginations. From green cities,1 to air proteins,2 plastic from seaweed,3 leather from pineapple leaves,4 stones that capture CO2,5 salt water turned into electricity,6 fish waste turned into biofuel,7 giant nets cleaning up rivers and oceans8 or drones planting forests,9 these solutions are not science fiction, they are science fact and showing very promising results. Let's celebrate the audacious pioneers behind them, and inspire their "first followers" to fuel movements of the future.10
Joel Bach
Using Storytelling to Increase Voting Turnout
Our approach to communicating the climate crisis has evolved dramatically over time. With Season One of our TV series Years of Living Dangerously, which aired in 2014, our goal was to leverage the power and reach of Hollywood A-listers to show that the climate crisis was here and now, not some distant problem for future generations. One of our goals was to convey that solutions to the crisis were being outpaced by climate impacts — in other words, technology alone wasn’t going to save us. We succeeded in reaching tens of millions of people with these messages — and we know, from rigorous social science testing, that 3 out of 4 people who watched the program came to recognize climate change as “relevant to their daily lives.” We also saw that one out of every two viewers took some sort of action — whether it be talking to friends and neighbors about the issue, seeking more information, sharing insights online, or even voting on climate.
In the wake of the TV series, we pivoted to social media. We saw an opportunity to reach far more people, and with greater speed. We also felt that working in short-form would allow us to better respond to the many needs of the climate movement. We produced hundreds of social-first climate videos, optimizing content for each of the social media channels. We created playlists to deliver specific content — the science, the solutions, the politics, the impacts — to specific audiences. We became the go-to digital media organization for reporting on the crisis and worked closely with the world’s leading climate organizations, climate scientists, youth and frontline activists, business and political leaders. We garnered more than a billion views of our content online and saw massive engagement by our viewers.
An ancillary goal was to see if we could convey the urgency of the crisis beyond the political spectrum. Working with a variety of partners, we broke down American voters into nine categories. Utilizing Facebook’s Ad Manager, we employed ad buys to guarantee our content would be delivered to those nine audiences. Throughout the process we closely monitored message and video performance — specifically focusing on visible engagement (such as shares, likes and comments) and silent engagement (like average watch time and cost per view). The results were a pleasant surprise. We learned that ‘Red America’ watched our videos 10% longer than ‘Purple America’ and 20% longer than ‘Blue America’, with similar trends seen in content sharing behavior. We found that climate change messaging can elicit high engagement across political groups, and those messages do not have to be limited to those echoing people’s existing views.
We also wanted to know if short-form video content delivered to specific audiences on social media could create change in attitudes as well as behavior. That is, could a 90-second Instagram video make someone act differently? In 2018, we teamed up with the Environmental Voter Project to create a series of Get-Out-The-Vote videos designed to increase voter turnout in US midterm elections in six states. Leveraging our storytelling expertise, behavioral science research and latest voter targeting techniques, we delivered content to over two million self-described environmentalists who had a history of not voting — resulting in over 40,000 new voters on November 6, 2018.
Next, we need to reimagine the role we all play and build confidence in our ability to change, adapt and innovate. We have heard the “inconvenient truth” about our human nature and how our lifestyles contribute to the problem. The only things that can save us from our worst inclinations are our greatest superpowers. We need reminders of the power of the human spirit and what we are capable of if we come together. Stories that capture our interconnectedness and restore faith in our ingenuity, resilience and unity. We need to highlight our ability to evolve and overcome even this existential challenge. Arrival is a great example of a narrative that shows what we’re capable of when we work together11. It also imagines a better future for humanity through that connection. The television series Class of 09 explores how a group comes together to address the dramatic counter-effects of AI and its threat to privacy and freedom, an issue that they created in the first place12. Disney’s Strange World follows a family of explorers who must set aside their differences as they embark on a journey to a mysterious subterranean land in order to save the miracle plant that is their society's source of energy13.
Case study: COVID-19 collaborative
In 2020, the US Ad Council and COVID-19 Collaborative launched the “It’s Up To You” campaign, including more than 300 major brands, media companies, community-based organizations, faith leaders, medical experts and other trusted messengers to promote a Vaccine Education initiative, with a focus on Black and Hispanic communities who were hit the hardest by the pandemic and also tend to have lower vaccine confidence.
The initiative raised $52 million for a national communications effort raising confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. The Collaborative’s outreach was carried out through community partnerships, involving influencers and trusted messengers, as well as diverse community outreach.14
Other lessons from the successful COVID-19 Collaborative effort include respecting people’s independence and choice, appreciating concerns, radical information transparency, and welcoming questions. The campaign avoided the use of guilt and shame, striking a positive yet realistic tone.14 Its success can also partly be attributed through their involvement of unlikely partners which allowed the initiative to maximize its reach - from media companies, retail chains, on-demand ride services, news outlets and online retailers.15
This model could and should be applied to climate communications — building a broad coalition of stakeholders which can reach into all corners of the public, conveying messages in a way that is relevant to people’s identities and lived experience. Many organizations, NGOs and campaign groups find themselves in a communications bubble — but in order to supercharge decarbonization efforts, we will have to break the echo chamber.
Ann-Christine Duhaime
How the Pandemic Response Drove Behavior Change
A general principle of behavior change is that “positive works better than negative”. However, this must be balanced with another core value of communication — honesty. With regards to climate change, most experts predict with a high degree of certainty that even if all carbon emissions were stopped suddenly, due to physical laws and delays in global warming cascades the consequences of climate change will get worse before they get better. For this reason, as in any difficult conversation, climate communicators need to set realistic expectations without discouraging people so that they “tune out” or give up rather than taking needed action.
In the field of medicine/public health, such a nuance was communicated quite effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the emphasis was on “flattening the curve”. Not all deaths could be avoided, but with appropriate actions, extreme peaks could be blunted, allowing a better match of resources to need, and an overall major reduction in mortality. A similar message in the climate context could help decision-makers avoid a sense of futility. This is especially relevant since, as noted above, reinforcement of a pro-environmental decision by an immediately perceived positive consequence already is compromised by the prolonged time frame and global magnitude of the climate change crisis.
Finally, we need to illustrate, in a tangible way, how we exist and evolve in the future we create together. It’s not enough to show that we can survive, it’s important to represent how we thrive and continue to endure through the existential threats that will invariably present themselves. "Creativity is at the heart of sustainability. It can mean anything from humanity's ability to transform itself to tackling specific problems. Creativity is a special kind of renewable resource and human talent" (d’Orville, 2019). This idea is at the heart of the solarpunk movement, captured in the short film Dear Alice16 from yogurt brand Chobani. It communicates beautifully the idea that nature and technology can grow in harmony, creating a wonderful new, sustainable world for future generations.
An overwhelming amount of evidence has helped us understand the long term threats we are facing. It’s useful, but it doesn't help us feel, on a visceral level, what it will mean for us because it appears too removed from our lives. To turn awareness into action, we must shift from data-driven messaging to emotive, human-focused narratives. To move people from sympathy to true, deep empathy and care, it’s not enough to tell stories, we need to make people feel them.
To get there, we need to carefully consider every aspect of storytelling; every single ingredient matters:
- The point of view we adopt: personal stories, shared through a first-person perspective and relatable scenarios, with local relevance, allow us to connect on a much deeper level.
- The narrative we shape: the underdog story, the resilience story, the transformation or rebirth story. These powerful narratives and plot types pull people in. We become truly invested in the journey and the outcomes, motivated to act because of the lives, families and communities depicted and the parallels or stark differences to our context and lived experience. They make you feel you have skin in the game and build a sense of confidence and hope.
- The media we use: let’s tell these stories using the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal: video with sound, because it is highly immersive; with our senses engaged we’re drawn in and intuitively connect with the topic.
- The craft we apply: the level of craft of climate communications has to rise to meet our expectations of the entertainment we consume regularly to fully immerse our audiences.
Take for example Netflix’s breakout hit My Octopus Teacher17 — a powerful, first-person rebirth narrative told as an immersive and gorgeously crafted feature-length documentary. It single-handedly deepened our understanding and relationship with an extraordinarily intelligent animal. Being immersed in this relatable story and their first-hand connection (protagonist, octopus, environment) was impactful. We knew octopuses were smart, but it took a proxy relationship with them for many of us to see that and commit to stop eating them.
The Breathing Tree18, a subtle but powerful film we created for the Nature Conservancy, highlights how interconnected nature's health is with the health of every individual on the planet and our communities. By anchoring ourselves in the true story of an asthmatic little boy living in a polluted urban environment, we create an immediate personal connection.
There aren’t enough other examples in climate communications, but we can take inspiration from other sectors. Toward the cause of pediatric health, SickKids VS: Undeniable19 from the Hospital for Sick Children transformed the story of children and families dealing with illness into an underdog story that emphasized their grit and toughness. Procter & Gamble’s The Look20 powerfully condensed the issue of racial microaggressions experienced by Black men in America to a single stare. The film challenged you to question your own behavior, your own bias, and provided resources to lean in and learn more about. 8:46 Films21 took the collective pain felt around the globe after George Floyd’s murder and turned it into progress by re-imagining, through the lens of hope and joy, Black stories and life in America. Dopesick22 or Painkiller23 immerse you in the opioid crisis from the boardrooms of Big Pharma to the victims’ broken lives.
Keeping climate communication separated as its own “genre” only reinforces perceptions of it as complicated, daunting and polarizing, and encourages people to distance themselves from the topic. It’s easy to tune out when you see the issue as separate from your daily existence. Ubiquity is essential to awareness, and to creating new social norms that drive engagement.
Let’s stop discussing climate in a silo and start showing how it’s a part of everything. It’s an interconnected issue that deserves an interconnected story, platform and conversation. We need to make the issue unavoidable and the solutions irresistible by infusing it into content we love. Visions for a new world where we prioritize the well-being of all, respect planetary boundaries and generate sustainable growth can quite literally be infused into almost every show, movie and song—into our cultural fabric.
Stories that are as captivating and influential as the best entertainment out there. Wall-E24 or Don’t Look Up25 are both examples of outstanding but mostly standalone stories that changed the world’s understanding of the crisis and sparked discussions.
We have come together on issues of similar complexity before and successfully accelerated important social change by using the full power of our media ecosystem (brands, entertainment and news, etc.). The racial justice movement is a good example of how one catalyst can galvanize a community to use its cultural influence to drive conversation and action. Black Lives Matter after 2020 became much more than a rallying cry. It was integrated into so many facets of life globally–from influencing narrative arcs on TV shows like Black-ish and Grown-ish to Apple setting up a $100 million fund in support of racial justice–that the impact on the worlds of art, fashion, sports and beyond was undeniable.
We can create ubiquity. Take the work of Pharrell Williams for example and his mission to empower Black and Brown voices. It is a constant red thread in everything he does—from his music in songs like “Freedom”26 from the Despicable Me 3 soundtrack for example, to his production company and label I AM OTHER which elevate diverse voices. He produces movies about underrepresented heroes like Hidden Figures27 and created Human Race with adidas, a line designed to promote a spirit of equality, coexistence, and understanding. He also has Black Ambition,28 a nonprofit investing capital and resources in Black and Brown-owned startups and Mighty Dream Forum,29 a conference promoting minority entrepreneurship. He constantly finds new outlets at the intersection of important issues, pop culture, entertainment, fashion, business and experiential. Just as important, he executes it all with a high degree of style, warmth and freshness that make every project a coveted initiative you want to join — which, in turn, adds to the desired contagion and social reward.
We've seen how prolific and effective cross-collaborations are in art, music, fashion, entertainment, and advertising. We can apply this approach so that climate communications are all pervasive, in all aspects of today's culture and media.
Richard Armstrong
Nature is the climate movement’s forgotten solution. Overlooked and disregarded, it is nonetheless vital that we protect, conserve and manage our natural capital and biodiversity alongside our pursuit of reducing emissions. There is no 1.5 without nature.
Our brief was simple. Use the power of advertising and communications to “mainstream the idea of Nature Positive” - to mainstream the term Nature Positive, and make it as urgent, as compelling and as well-known as Net Zero. Nature needed its own Net Zero moment.
Funded by a coalition of 32 leading NGOs, this campaign managed to put nature at the very heart of the world’s two biggest environmental conventions, COP27 and COP15. Literally at the center of the Blue Zones. How? By creating a campaign idea that lifted everyone who came across it, by offering a vision of optimism, by saying ‘this is possible’ - we CAN change, and we CAN reverse the tragic decline in nature and biodiversity. The Nature Stripes, created by Professor Miles Richardson using the WWF / Living Planet Index, visualize this decline. From green to gray. A bleak picture. But a visually interesting one.
Our idea? Deceptively simple, by inverting the stripes, they no longer represent a metric of decline, but instead provide a lighthouse of optimism and an idea that the diverse and fragmented nature community could collaborate around. We can do this, we can achieve our own ‘Paris Moment’ for nature. Change IS possible. After all, ‘Change is in our Nature’.
Whilst acknowledging the degradation of the planet’s biodiversity, we wanted to provide a vision of a Nature Positive future, and to show that humans have the power to make the change needed. Only by re-establishing a close connection with the natural world can we meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and achieve a net positive outcome by 2030, and a full recovery by 2050.
This is no easy task. Firstly, many aren’t aware of the scale of the nature crisis. Yet, since 1970, there has been a 69% decline in the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, and it is thought that one million animal and plant species - almost a quarter of the global total are threatened with extinction.
Secondly, CO2 emissions dominate modern environmental discourse. Nature needed to fight its way onto the agenda. We needed an idea that could unify and engage investors, business, governments, and the population at large. To mainstream the phrase Nature Positive and create a distinctive visual identity to help explain and showcase the term. And we needed to inspire - to show that we have the power to make the change and meet the Nature Positive goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
With no media budget, it required a simple, distinctive idea to put the topic on people’s agenda, and to provide a springboard for conversation and debate, that would lead to behaviour and policy change. And the idea would need to have stand-out, to cut through the noise at both COPs. Our job was to accompany this with a visual identity that could work as a shorthand for this vision and become readily adopted by a broad range of communities.
Taking data from the WWF / Living Planet Index, Professor Miles Richardson had created the ‘biodiversity stripes’ as a compelling visualization of the decline in nature. Much as the warming stripes have told the story of climate change. Each stripe represents a year since 1970 and shows the decline from green to gray.
From the moment we first saw the biodiversity stripes, we knew this was an important piece of communication – simple, visual, and crucially science based. Could this be an opportunity to collaborate? We reached out to Professor Miles Richardson. But rather than simply utilizing the stripes as a metric of decline, we wanted to use them to be a symbol of optimism to show how a Nature Positive future could be achieved.
We reversed the stripes to create an iconic and memorable identity, that introduced imagery of ‘nature in motion’ under the phrase Change is in our Nature, to set the backdrop for the debate on nature and climate and crucially to show that change is possible. This plays to both the fact that humans are ecological engineers who have the power to change our world, and to the truth that nature is something that can constantly evolve - for worse or better.
By having a unified, visual creative platform to not just tell the story of nature’s decline, but to provide an optimistic vision for nature, we provided a focal point for the promotion of nature in the climate debate before, during, and after COP27 and COP15. We achieved a significant presence in the event pavilions themselves, and in the accompanying media conversations, including on social media. The platform allowed PR to amplify the conversation, to engage key audiences and the media by promoting content through events and media briefings, therefore firmly putting nature and nature-based solutions on the agenda, which could be heard at both COPs and way beyond.
At COP27, Nature Positive was mentioned in over 1,000 pieces of coverage from The Guardian to China Weekly. We put nature on the agenda, with 22.8k pieces covering biodiversity in relation to the conference. Media coverage reached an international audience of over 30 million in more than 60 countries. Across social media, the Nature Positive campaign received an average of 98% positive sentiment, leading to up to 200k engagements (65k mentions of #Nature Positive) on Twitter.
On LinkedIn, engagement rates increased by 70% compared to 2021. Over 250 partners, local leaders and organizations engaged with Nature Positive content across social media channels. This was further amplified at COP15; 5.3k articles mentioned the term Nature Positive, with 170 media highlights from key outlets.
Over 10 days, the pavilion hosted 138 sessions with support from 80 different organizations and 40 heads of state. A product of a collaborative approach from 32 organizations, the Nature Positive campaign facilitated conversations which allowed Nature Positive to become established in the minds of key decision makers and the public, by creating strategic messaging and communications outputs leading up, during and post COP27 and COP15.
Our campaign did so much more than helping a brand look good by going green, it has helped set the planet on the right course towards a Nature Positive future.
Consumer perceptions and behaviors play an important role in shaping a new cultural narrative. This represents an enormous opportunity for marketers, across the private and public sectors. We need to better align sustainability initiatives with our human reward system.
To debunk the false notion that sustainability requires sacrifice (e.g. higher price, lower experience, lower quality), we need to reveal all the direct and indirect benefits of making sustainable choices. Functional benefits are often hidden, either in complexity or in the future. We can make them tangible and immediate in a few ways:
- Firstly, maximize the value perception. We can do this by stressing the co-benefits of sustainable choices, such as cost savings when opting for an electric car. It reinforces that you are doing the right thing for yourself (saving money) and the planet (reducing emissions).
- Secondly, minimize the sacrifice by making it easier to make more sustainable choices. This can be done through comparison websites and services — such as Google’s fuel-efficient routes — and nudges us towards the most sustainable options, often without having to pay more.
- Finally, affirm positive choices through community. We can compensate for the loss of instant gratification by tapping into people’s sense of pride and desire for social reward. To excite people to become part of the solution, we need to build social proof into everything we do. Amplifying the habit change of people we relate to or look up to will create a contagion effect and ultimately help move change from the periphery to the center.
Will Hackman
How to Build a More Unifying Climate Activism
We have decades of best practices when it comes to successfully building public identification to issues of societal concern. We’ve done this with anti-smoking, seatbelts, civil rights and more. No issue ever reaches 100% acceptance, and there will always be some who never identify with them. But virtually everyone accepts that not wearing a seatbelt or smoking may kill you. Not as many see the imminent danger from climate change.
Successful advocacy campaigns provide an optimistic vision of the future. They provide tangible examples of what we can work toward and build together. They transcend polarizing messages and find ways to bring more people into the conversation beyond the “true believers.”
Successful campaigns also humanize an issue by making it as personal and local as possible. If you can see yourself in an issue, you will care more. This builds issue identification. We know the challenge of solving climate change is not scientific or technological at this point but rather political. The messages we create, as activists and advocates, make all the difference in how we build political engagement toward policy solutions.
Rejecting world-on-fire messages and reframing our advocacy messages are critical to create a more unifying climate activism. We can learn to have new conversations about what climate change means to us, in our lives, here and now. Not in the future, not in remote frozen landscapes, not thousands of miles away.
By taking these actions and learning best practices from previous successful movements, we can change beliefs, regain our optimism for a hopeful future, and see our own personal role in the changing world around us while inspiring new conversations and ways of looking at climate solutions.
To be sure, climate scientists and directly impacted communities must have a hand in shaping the narrative-driven, emotional communications we hope to see. Communications without their valuable guidance and input run the risk of drifting into propaganda that misses its intended target or further confuses the facts of the matter. We saw this for example around the issue of drugs in the 80s and 90s with the Just Say No campaign and the Partnership For A Drug-Free America, which sought to end drug use nationally through a campaign of PSAs and other messaging. The result of that often-sensationalized messaging was a degree of fear-mongering that fueled mass incarceration. Collaboration on this is essential to create brave narratives essential to driving the change we hope to see in our world.
The climate crisis is, in part, a crisis of imagination and storytelling. As communicators and creatives, we have a now-or-never opportunity to be bold, irreverent, passionate—to inspire people to close the action gap and accelerate urgent change. Together we can harness one of humanity’s superpowers, imagination, to spur another superpower, collective action.
It is our responsibility to create these new stories that inspire us to build a more sustainable future designed for the well-being of all. To do so, we need to work with human nature, not against it. By tapping into our hope, empathy, desires and pride we can reshape the attitudes and behaviors that become our habits, lifestyles and cultures. We have the knowledge and tools. We have used them before to build radically better futures, and we can do it again.
Conclusions
Climate communication plays a crucial role in driving climate action by raising public awareness and increasing acceptance for ambitious climate policies. The wider climate community, including governments and non-governmental organizations, must recognize the importance of climate communication as a secret weapon in the fight against climate change. By effectively communicating the urgent need for action alongside the benefits of transitioning to a low-carbon economy, we can bridge the gap between scientific research and public understanding, and mobilize individuals, communities and policymakers to take meaningful action.
Keep reading
Figure 149: Campaign to mainstream the idea of Nature Positive.
Figure 148: Don't Look Up, by Adam McKay.
Figure 147: WALL-E, by Andrew Stanton.
Figure 146: My Octopus Teacher, by Pippa Ehrlich.
Figure 145: Dear Alice, Chobani.
Source: The Years Project
Written by Sophie Ozoux Syrigos and Kwame Taylor-Hayford
Climate change rhetoric has led people to fatalism, apathy, paralysis, despair or worse, indifference. For decades the story of the climate crisis has been told primarily through statistics, charts and graphs or through the prism of its dramatic consequences: hurricanes, floods, endangered species, houses on fires... This approach, oscillating between quantitative and alarming, has certainly created awareness of the problem, but it has failed to inspire the urgent and significant action needed to build a better future. In that regard, the climate crisis is also a crisis of imagination and storytelling.
Entertainment, advertising, journalism, music and art have proven some of our most powerful tools. They have the ability to deeply move people and change minds and behaviors. It’s past time that storytellers across media apply our skill to the pressing issue of climate change. But why is it so hard? How can we use our boundless imagination and creativity to dream up new stories that will move us forward in this fight? How can we make people feel the problem and work to be part of the solution? How can we appeal to what inspires and excites? How can we motivate people to believe in their potential and drive them to act in their own self-interest, and in the interests of people they care about?
Making this pivot requires a deliberate shift in our approach. We need to change “the brief” for the stories we make and share. In the paragraphs below, we will explore essential elements that we believe will lead to compelling stories that drive action and real change on climate today.
A continuous stream of catastrophic climate news has left us feeling fatigued and paralyzed. Hopelessness is already widespread among those who care most, and hope will only become harder to maintain as the crisis worsens and the impact of our best efforts remain invisible. The hope needed to fuel change will not be inspired by more stories that stoke fear. What we need instead is a radically hopeful vision for the future that taps into people’s dreams and desires and that inspires us to make changes.
Albert Einstein famously said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” We need to lean into our imaginations and what seems “impossible.” If we move on from merely dramatizing the problem to celebrating our progress through innovative solutions, we will fill ourselves with a sense of possibility and excitement that a better future is on the horizon.
It starts with focusing on solutions. We need to flip the script and tell a story of hope, possibility and human agency. Show that not only is change needed, but that it is possible and exciting. Our unrelenting spirit and our boundless creativity to craft the solutions will make the difference. In order to overcome climate change, we need to believe that we can.
Innovative solutions are all around us and developing fast. Change is happening, but it has not been widely communicated and in a way that captures our imaginations. From green cities,1 to air proteins,2 plastic from seaweed,3 leather from pineapple leaves,4 stones that capture CO2,5 salt water turned into electricity,6 fish waste turned into biofuel,7 giant nets cleaning up rivers and oceans8 or drones planting forests,9 these solutions are not science fiction, they are science fact and showing very promising results. Let's celebrate the audacious pioneers behind them, and inspire their "first followers" to fuel movements of the future.10
Joel Bach
Using Storytelling to Increase Voting Turnout
Our approach to communicating the climate crisis has evolved dramatically over time. With Season One of our TV series Years of Living Dangerously, which aired in 2014, our goal was to leverage the power and reach of Hollywood A-listers to show that the climate crisis was here and now, not some distant problem for future generations. One of our goals was to convey that solutions to the crisis were being outpaced by climate impacts — in other words, technology alone wasn’t going to save us. We succeeded in reaching tens of millions of people with these messages — and we know, from rigorous social science testing, that 3 out of 4 people who watched the program came to recognize climate change as “relevant to their daily lives.” We also saw that one out of every two viewers took some sort of action — whether it be talking to friends and neighbors about the issue, seeking more information, sharing insights online, or even voting on climate.
In the wake of the TV series, we pivoted to social media. We saw an opportunity to reach far more people, and with greater speed. We also felt that working in short-form would allow us to better respond to the many needs of the climate movement. We produced hundreds of social-first climate videos, optimizing content for each of the social media channels. We created playlists to deliver specific content — the science, the solutions, the politics, the impacts — to specific audiences. We became the go-to digital media organization for reporting on the crisis and worked closely with the world’s leading climate organizations, climate scientists, youth and frontline activists, business and political leaders. We garnered more than a billion views of our content online and saw massive engagement by our viewers.
An ancillary goal was to see if we could convey the urgency of the crisis beyond the political spectrum. Working with a variety of partners, we broke down American voters into nine categories. Utilizing Facebook’s Ad Manager, we employed ad buys to guarantee our content would be delivered to those nine audiences. Throughout the process we closely monitored message and video performance — specifically focusing on visible engagement (such as shares, likes and comments) and silent engagement (like average watch time and cost per view). The results were a pleasant surprise. We learned that ‘Red America’ watched our videos 10% longer than ‘Purple America’ and 20% longer than ‘Blue America’, with similar trends seen in content sharing behavior. We found that climate change messaging can elicit high engagement across political groups, and those messages do not have to be limited to those echoing people’s existing views.
We also wanted to know if short-form video content delivered to specific audiences on social media could create change in attitudes as well as behavior. That is, could a 90-second Instagram video make someone act differently? In 2018, we teamed up with the Environmental Voter Project to create a series of Get-Out-The-Vote videos designed to increase voter turnout in US midterm elections in six states. Leveraging our storytelling expertise, behavioral science research and latest voter targeting techniques, we delivered content to over two million self-described environmentalists who had a history of not voting — resulting in over 40,000 new voters on November 6, 2018.
Next, we need to reimagine the role we all play and build confidence in our ability to change, adapt and innovate. We have heard the “inconvenient truth” about our human nature and how our lifestyles contribute to the problem. The only things that can save us from our worst inclinations are our greatest superpowers. We need reminders of the power of the human spirit and what we are capable of if we come together. Stories that capture our interconnectedness and restore faith in our ingenuity, resilience and unity. We need to highlight our ability to evolve and overcome even this existential challenge. Arrival is a great example of a narrative that shows what we’re capable of when we work together11. It also imagines a better future for humanity through that connection. The television series Class of 09 explores how a group comes together to address the dramatic counter-effects of AI and its threat to privacy and freedom, an issue that they created in the first place12. Disney’s Strange World follows a family of explorers who must set aside their differences as they embark on a journey to a mysterious subterranean land in order to save the miracle plant that is their society's source of energy13.
Case study: COVID-19 collaborative
In 2020, the US Ad Council and COVID-19 Collaborative launched the “It’s Up To You” campaign, including more than 300 major brands, media companies, community-based organizations, faith leaders, medical experts and other trusted messengers to promote a Vaccine Education initiative, with a focus on Black and Hispanic communities who were hit the hardest by the pandemic and also tend to have lower vaccine confidence.
The initiative raised $52 million for a national communications effort raising confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. The Collaborative’s outreach was carried out through community partnerships, involving influencers and trusted messengers, as well as diverse community outreach.14
Other lessons from the successful COVID-19 Collaborative effort include respecting people’s independence and choice, appreciating concerns, radical information transparency, and welcoming questions. The campaign avoided the use of guilt and shame, striking a positive yet realistic tone.14 Its success can also partly be attributed through their involvement of unlikely partners which allowed the initiative to maximize its reach - from media companies, retail chains, on-demand ride services, news outlets and online retailers.15
This model could and should be applied to climate communications — building a broad coalition of stakeholders which can reach into all corners of the public, conveying messages in a way that is relevant to people’s identities and lived experience. Many organizations, NGOs and campaign groups find themselves in a communications bubble — but in order to supercharge decarbonization efforts, we will have to break the echo chamber.
Ann-Christine Duhaime
How the Pandemic Response Drove Behavior Change
A general principle of behavior change is that “positive works better than negative”. However, this must be balanced with another core value of communication — honesty. With regards to climate change, most experts predict with a high degree of certainty that even if all carbon emissions were stopped suddenly, due to physical laws and delays in global warming cascades the consequences of climate change will get worse before they get better. For this reason, as in any difficult conversation, climate communicators need to set realistic expectations without discouraging people so that they “tune out” or give up rather than taking needed action.
In the field of medicine/public health, such a nuance was communicated quite effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the emphasis was on “flattening the curve”. Not all deaths could be avoided, but with appropriate actions, extreme peaks could be blunted, allowing a better match of resources to need, and an overall major reduction in mortality. A similar message in the climate context could help decision-makers avoid a sense of futility. This is especially relevant since, as noted above, reinforcement of a pro-environmental decision by an immediately perceived positive consequence already is compromised by the prolonged time frame and global magnitude of the climate change crisis.
Finally, we need to illustrate, in a tangible way, how we exist and evolve in the future we create together. It’s not enough to show that we can survive, it’s important to represent how we thrive and continue to endure through the existential threats that will invariably present themselves. "Creativity is at the heart of sustainability. It can mean anything from humanity's ability to transform itself to tackling specific problems. Creativity is a special kind of renewable resource and human talent" (d’Orville, 2019). This idea is at the heart of the solarpunk movement, captured in the short film Dear Alice16 from yogurt brand Chobani. It communicates beautifully the idea that nature and technology can grow in harmony, creating a wonderful new, sustainable world for future generations.
An overwhelming amount of evidence has helped us understand the long term threats we are facing. It’s useful, but it doesn't help us feel, on a visceral level, what it will mean for us because it appears too removed from our lives. To turn awareness into action, we must shift from data-driven messaging to emotive, human-focused narratives. To move people from sympathy to true, deep empathy and care, it’s not enough to tell stories, we need to make people feel them.
To get there, we need to carefully consider every aspect of storytelling; every single ingredient matters:
- The point of view we adopt: personal stories, shared through a first-person perspective and relatable scenarios, with local relevance, allow us to connect on a much deeper level.
- The narrative we shape: the underdog story, the resilience story, the transformation or rebirth story. These powerful narratives and plot types pull people in. We become truly invested in the journey and the outcomes, motivated to act because of the lives, families and communities depicted and the parallels or stark differences to our context and lived experience. They make you feel you have skin in the game and build a sense of confidence and hope.
- The media we use: let’s tell these stories using the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal: video with sound, because it is highly immersive; with our senses engaged we’re drawn in and intuitively connect with the topic.
- The craft we apply: the level of craft of climate communications has to rise to meet our expectations of the entertainment we consume regularly to fully immerse our audiences.
Take for example Netflix’s breakout hit My Octopus Teacher17 — a powerful, first-person rebirth narrative told as an immersive and gorgeously crafted feature-length documentary. It single-handedly deepened our understanding and relationship with an extraordinarily intelligent animal. Being immersed in this relatable story and their first-hand connection (protagonist, octopus, environment) was impactful. We knew octopuses were smart, but it took a proxy relationship with them for many of us to see that and commit to stop eating them.
The Breathing Tree18, a subtle but powerful film we created for the Nature Conservancy, highlights how interconnected nature's health is with the health of every individual on the planet and our communities. By anchoring ourselves in the true story of an asthmatic little boy living in a polluted urban environment, we create an immediate personal connection.
There aren’t enough other examples in climate communications, but we can take inspiration from other sectors. Toward the cause of pediatric health, SickKids VS: Undeniable19 from the Hospital for Sick Children transformed the story of children and families dealing with illness into an underdog story that emphasized their grit and toughness. Procter & Gamble’s The Look20 powerfully condensed the issue of racial microaggressions experienced by Black men in America to a single stare. The film challenged you to question your own behavior, your own bias, and provided resources to lean in and learn more about. 8:46 Films21 took the collective pain felt around the globe after George Floyd’s murder and turned it into progress by re-imagining, through the lens of hope and joy, Black stories and life in America. Dopesick22 or Painkiller23 immerse you in the opioid crisis from the boardrooms of Big Pharma to the victims’ broken lives.
Keeping climate communication separated as its own “genre” only reinforces perceptions of it as complicated, daunting and polarizing, and encourages people to distance themselves from the topic. It’s easy to tune out when you see the issue as separate from your daily existence. Ubiquity is essential to awareness, and to creating new social norms that drive engagement.
Let’s stop discussing climate in a silo and start showing how it’s a part of everything. It’s an interconnected issue that deserves an interconnected story, platform and conversation. We need to make the issue unavoidable and the solutions irresistible by infusing it into content we love. Visions for a new world where we prioritize the well-being of all, respect planetary boundaries and generate sustainable growth can quite literally be infused into almost every show, movie and song—into our cultural fabric.
Stories that are as captivating and influential as the best entertainment out there. Wall-E24 or Don’t Look Up25 are both examples of outstanding but mostly standalone stories that changed the world’s understanding of the crisis and sparked discussions.
We have come together on issues of similar complexity before and successfully accelerated important social change by using the full power of our media ecosystem (brands, entertainment and news, etc.). The racial justice movement is a good example of how one catalyst can galvanize a community to use its cultural influence to drive conversation and action. Black Lives Matter after 2020 became much more than a rallying cry. It was integrated into so many facets of life globally–from influencing narrative arcs on TV shows like Black-ish and Grown-ish to Apple setting up a $100 million fund in support of racial justice–that the impact on the worlds of art, fashion, sports and beyond was undeniable.
We can create ubiquity. Take the work of Pharrell Williams for example and his mission to empower Black and Brown voices. It is a constant red thread in everything he does—from his music in songs like “Freedom”26 from the Despicable Me 3 soundtrack for example, to his production company and label I AM OTHER which elevate diverse voices. He produces movies about underrepresented heroes like Hidden Figures27 and created Human Race with adidas, a line designed to promote a spirit of equality, coexistence, and understanding. He also has Black Ambition,28 a nonprofit investing capital and resources in Black and Brown-owned startups and Mighty Dream Forum,29 a conference promoting minority entrepreneurship. He constantly finds new outlets at the intersection of important issues, pop culture, entertainment, fashion, business and experiential. Just as important, he executes it all with a high degree of style, warmth and freshness that make every project a coveted initiative you want to join — which, in turn, adds to the desired contagion and social reward.
We've seen how prolific and effective cross-collaborations are in art, music, fashion, entertainment, and advertising. We can apply this approach so that climate communications are all pervasive, in all aspects of today's culture and media.
Richard Armstrong
Nature is the climate movement’s forgotten solution. Overlooked and disregarded, it is nonetheless vital that we protect, conserve and manage our natural capital and biodiversity alongside our pursuit of reducing emissions. There is no 1.5 without nature.
Our brief was simple. Use the power of advertising and communications to “mainstream the idea of Nature Positive” - to mainstream the term Nature Positive, and make it as urgent, as compelling and as well-known as Net Zero. Nature needed its own Net Zero moment.
Funded by a coalition of 32 leading NGOs, this campaign managed to put nature at the very heart of the world’s two biggest environmental conventions, COP27 and COP15. Literally at the center of the Blue Zones. How? By creating a campaign idea that lifted everyone who came across it, by offering a vision of optimism, by saying ‘this is possible’ - we CAN change, and we CAN reverse the tragic decline in nature and biodiversity. The Nature Stripes, created by Professor Miles Richardson using the WWF / Living Planet Index, visualize this decline. From green to gray. A bleak picture. But a visually interesting one.
Our idea? Deceptively simple, by inverting the stripes, they no longer represent a metric of decline, but instead provide a lighthouse of optimism and an idea that the diverse and fragmented nature community could collaborate around. We can do this, we can achieve our own ‘Paris Moment’ for nature. Change IS possible. After all, ‘Change is in our Nature’.
Whilst acknowledging the degradation of the planet’s biodiversity, we wanted to provide a vision of a Nature Positive future, and to show that humans have the power to make the change needed. Only by re-establishing a close connection with the natural world can we meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and achieve a net positive outcome by 2030, and a full recovery by 2050.
This is no easy task. Firstly, many aren’t aware of the scale of the nature crisis. Yet, since 1970, there has been a 69% decline in the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, and it is thought that one million animal and plant species - almost a quarter of the global total are threatened with extinction.
Secondly, CO2 emissions dominate modern environmental discourse. Nature needed to fight its way onto the agenda. We needed an idea that could unify and engage investors, business, governments, and the population at large. To mainstream the phrase Nature Positive and create a distinctive visual identity to help explain and showcase the term. And we needed to inspire - to show that we have the power to make the change and meet the Nature Positive goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
With no media budget, it required a simple, distinctive idea to put the topic on people’s agenda, and to provide a springboard for conversation and debate, that would lead to behaviour and policy change. And the idea would need to have stand-out, to cut through the noise at both COPs. Our job was to accompany this with a visual identity that could work as a shorthand for this vision and become readily adopted by a broad range of communities.
Taking data from the WWF / Living Planet Index, Professor Miles Richardson had created the ‘biodiversity stripes’ as a compelling visualization of the decline in nature. Much as the warming stripes have told the story of climate change. Each stripe represents a year since 1970 and shows the decline from green to gray.
From the moment we first saw the biodiversity stripes, we knew this was an important piece of communication – simple, visual, and crucially science based. Could this be an opportunity to collaborate? We reached out to Professor Miles Richardson. But rather than simply utilizing the stripes as a metric of decline, we wanted to use them to be a symbol of optimism to show how a Nature Positive future could be achieved.
We reversed the stripes to create an iconic and memorable identity, that introduced imagery of ‘nature in motion’ under the phrase Change is in our Nature, to set the backdrop for the debate on nature and climate and crucially to show that change is possible. This plays to both the fact that humans are ecological engineers who have the power to change our world, and to the truth that nature is something that can constantly evolve - for worse or better.
By having a unified, visual creative platform to not just tell the story of nature’s decline, but to provide an optimistic vision for nature, we provided a focal point for the promotion of nature in the climate debate before, during, and after COP27 and COP15. We achieved a significant presence in the event pavilions themselves, and in the accompanying media conversations, including on social media. The platform allowed PR to amplify the conversation, to engage key audiences and the media by promoting content through events and media briefings, therefore firmly putting nature and nature-based solutions on the agenda, which could be heard at both COPs and way beyond.
At COP27, Nature Positive was mentioned in over 1,000 pieces of coverage from The Guardian to China Weekly. We put nature on the agenda, with 22.8k pieces covering biodiversity in relation to the conference. Media coverage reached an international audience of over 30 million in more than 60 countries. Across social media, the Nature Positive campaign received an average of 98% positive sentiment, leading to up to 200k engagements (65k mentions of #Nature Positive) on Twitter.
On LinkedIn, engagement rates increased by 70% compared to 2021. Over 250 partners, local leaders and organizations engaged with Nature Positive content across social media channels. This was further amplified at COP15; 5.3k articles mentioned the term Nature Positive, with 170 media highlights from key outlets.
Over 10 days, the pavilion hosted 138 sessions with support from 80 different organizations and 40 heads of state. A product of a collaborative approach from 32 organizations, the Nature Positive campaign facilitated conversations which allowed Nature Positive to become established in the minds of key decision makers and the public, by creating strategic messaging and communications outputs leading up, during and post COP27 and COP15.
Our campaign did so much more than helping a brand look good by going green, it has helped set the planet on the right course towards a Nature Positive future.
Consumer perceptions and behaviors play an important role in shaping a new cultural narrative. This represents an enormous opportunity for marketers, across the private and public sectors. We need to better align sustainability initiatives with our human reward system.
To debunk the false notion that sustainability requires sacrifice (e.g. higher price, lower experience, lower quality), we need to reveal all the direct and indirect benefits of making sustainable choices. Functional benefits are often hidden, either in complexity or in the future. We can make them tangible and immediate in a few ways:
- Firstly, maximize the value perception. We can do this by stressing the co-benefits of sustainable choices, such as cost savings when opting for an electric car. It reinforces that you are doing the right thing for yourself (saving money) and the planet (reducing emissions).
- Secondly, minimize the sacrifice by making it easier to make more sustainable choices. This can be done through comparison websites and services — such as Google’s fuel-efficient routes — and nudges us towards the most sustainable options, often without having to pay more.
- Finally, affirm positive choices through community. We can compensate for the loss of instant gratification by tapping into people’s sense of pride and desire for social reward. To excite people to become part of the solution, we need to build social proof into everything we do. Amplifying the habit change of people we relate to or look up to will create a contagion effect and ultimately help move change from the periphery to the center.
Will Hackman
How to Build a More Unifying Climate Activism
We have decades of best practices when it comes to successfully building public identification to issues of societal concern. We’ve done this with anti-smoking, seatbelts, civil rights and more. No issue ever reaches 100% acceptance, and there will always be some who never identify with them. But virtually everyone accepts that not wearing a seatbelt or smoking may kill you. Not as many see the imminent danger from climate change.
Successful advocacy campaigns provide an optimistic vision of the future. They provide tangible examples of what we can work toward and build together. They transcend polarizing messages and find ways to bring more people into the conversation beyond the “true believers.”
Successful campaigns also humanize an issue by making it as personal and local as possible. If you can see yourself in an issue, you will care more. This builds issue identification. We know the challenge of solving climate change is not scientific or technological at this point but rather political. The messages we create, as activists and advocates, make all the difference in how we build political engagement toward policy solutions.
Rejecting world-on-fire messages and reframing our advocacy messages are critical to create a more unifying climate activism. We can learn to have new conversations about what climate change means to us, in our lives, here and now. Not in the future, not in remote frozen landscapes, not thousands of miles away.
By taking these actions and learning best practices from previous successful movements, we can change beliefs, regain our optimism for a hopeful future, and see our own personal role in the changing world around us while inspiring new conversations and ways of looking at climate solutions.
To be sure, climate scientists and directly impacted communities must have a hand in shaping the narrative-driven, emotional communications we hope to see. Communications without their valuable guidance and input run the risk of drifting into propaganda that misses its intended target or further confuses the facts of the matter. We saw this for example around the issue of drugs in the 80s and 90s with the Just Say No campaign and the Partnership For A Drug-Free America, which sought to end drug use nationally through a campaign of PSAs and other messaging. The result of that often-sensationalized messaging was a degree of fear-mongering that fueled mass incarceration. Collaboration on this is essential to create brave narratives essential to driving the change we hope to see in our world.
The climate crisis is, in part, a crisis of imagination and storytelling. As communicators and creatives, we have a now-or-never opportunity to be bold, irreverent, passionate—to inspire people to close the action gap and accelerate urgent change. Together we can harness one of humanity’s superpowers, imagination, to spur another superpower, collective action.
It is our responsibility to create these new stories that inspire us to build a more sustainable future designed for the well-being of all. To do so, we need to work with human nature, not against it. By tapping into our hope, empathy, desires and pride we can reshape the attitudes and behaviors that become our habits, lifestyles and cultures. We have the knowledge and tools. We have used them before to build radically better futures, and we can do it again.
Figure 149: Campaign to mainstream the idea of Nature Positive.
Figure 148: Don't Look Up, by Adam McKay.
Figure 147: WALL-E, by Andrew Stanton.
Figure 146: My Octopus Teacher, by Pippa Ehrlich.
Figure 145: Dear Alice, Chobani.
Source: The Years Project
Conclusions
Climate communication plays a crucial role in driving climate action by raising public awareness and increasing acceptance for ambitious climate policies. The wider climate community, including governments and non-governmental organizations, must recognize the importance of climate communication as a secret weapon in the fight against climate change. By effectively communicating the urgent need for action alongside the benefits of transitioning to a low-carbon economy, we can bridge the gap between scientific research and public understanding, and mobilize individuals, communities and policymakers to take meaningful action.
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