Blue Marine Foundation reposted this
Chief Executive Officer, Freuds Group | Chairman, Blue Marine Foundation | Co-Chair, S30 Group of Chief Sustainability Officers | Trustee, Sustainable Food Trust | Goals House Co-founder | Father of twin boys
Great to be at the Blue Earth Summit this morning following John Elkington and Douglas Lamont on stage and playing the warm up act for my Blue Marine Foundation colleague Dan Crockett and his panel on oceans. I talked about the role of communications in sustainability. I highlighted the importance of getting out of the echo chamber and pitching a bigger tent and gave five tips on how to think about that👇 1️⃣ Regularly step out of your own shoes and into someone else’s. Build interventions that are based on audience insights. Perhaps obvious, but most communications activity in the sustainability space is just not tested. Hence its regular failure. 2️⃣ Keep an eye on the overall objective and if it’s urgent, as many of these issues are, don’t be afraid of not putting sustainability front and centre. For a lot of people a direct approach won’t be relevant or engaging. 3️⃣ Ditch the jargon. This space is overwhelmed by nonsensical acronyms and weasel words. 4️⃣ Throw open the windows (metaphorically clearly!). Most organisations operate in a silo. And it’s easy to overestimate knowledge in this area. Bringing the outside in, especially in a complex world, will empower people and educate at the same time. 5️⃣ The power of the social influencer in todays world is often underestimated by sustainability communicators. They, and the content they produce, provide one of the few ways to break into people’s algorithms and get attention - provided of course that it’s an authentic intervention. Finally, I empathised the golden rule of communications which, in my opinion, is that good communications is about dialogue not monologue. If you don’t listen, and have empathy, then you won’t be capable of capturing attention and driving change. Thanks Will Hayler and team. Great event.