Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

War On Weather.

While browsing through various Ted Talks recently, I noted that Al Gore was raising that old chestnut about global warming being too nice a name to excite public action. He seemed to favour Climate Crisis, though to my ears that seems equally lukewarm. If the predictions are correct, then surely Climate Catastrophe is closer to the mark?

From a marketing perspective, I would argue that shock tactics are necessary since there is a need to engender behaviour change now, but this brings with it the question of how far you can safely go? The War on Terror is a well known soundbite, so why not admit that we're doing more damage than Al Qaeda could do in their wildest dreams simply because we have declared a daily War On Weather? If accompanied by visual representations of the doomsday scenarios, namely images of famous locations under water, then there is a good chance of stimulating awareness. But converting that awareness into changed behaviour seems unlikely to me, especially as the benefit will be greater for future generations

No, you have to communicate on your audience's current passion plane. Engage their worldview in a way that actually causes inertia to be against their interest. One provocative answer would be to appeal to people's moral conscience in order to instil guilt and promote action. How do you do that in middle America? Just ask people "Who Said You Could Play God?"

2 Comments:

Blogger The Green Skeptic said...

"Global Warming" is just one of many misnomers used by progressives, shooting their cause in the foot or putting their foot in their mouth.

I feature another one in the following post:
http://greenskeptic.blogspot.com/2006/03/global-warming-other-misnomers.html

6:16 PM, July 05, 2006  
Blogger john dodds said...

Ecosystem services is dire. Reminds me of Gilliam's Brazil where central services serviced you centrally!

Natural Capital is clearly better. It conveys the idea of something that can be positively enhanced but can also be denuded in a way that is clearly a bad thing. However it is still wishy washy.

I think you have to look at a name that conveys the concept in terms of the fuel that powers the planet. Peopel get upset about gas prices and shortages - if you can feed into that mindset you'll find it easier to get the message across.

6:31 AM, July 09, 2006  

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