The Green Media Summit, presented by Sharethrough highlighted the powerful intersection of advertising, sustainability, and the urgent need for systemic change to combat climate issues. There’s no doubt that addressing the climate crisis requires bold, ambitious action from the advertising industry.
In order to take that action, we must first agree with Seth Godin 🌔 point: "We are all hypocrites. We have to embrace that because if we don't, we'll remain quiet."
Once we bring ourselves to accept this, we must accept that we don’t need to be doing everything all at once to make a difference. The place to start, as Solitaire Townsend stressed, is not necessarily with your footprint, but with your brain print. A critical shift in mindset is needed to bring change in our industry, and in every industry.
That’s where the power of storytelling plays a major role. Seth Godin said, “What we [as marketers] do for a living is tell stories, and those stories have transformed the world over the last 100 years." There’s real truth in this. If we tell ourselves there’s no hope, or that we cannot make a difference, or that it’s just too late, we will never come close to a transformation.
As Solitaire said, we’ve been doing a lot of “ego marketing” when we should be investing in “eco marketing.” She explained “eco marketing isn’t about what you’ve done but why you’ve done it. It’s about enabling your consumer to be the hero rather than you.”
Artealia Gilliard echoed, urging the audience to think beyond "advertising for the sake of advertising." Dave Winslow said we need to move beyond clicks and conversions and think about people.
Can you see the common theme?
When we think about people, when we care about people instead of focusing solely on the products, we inherently make things about sustainability. We make every job a sustainability job. Molly Voss Fannon and Natalia Vega-Berry beautifully expanded on this, talking about the values that connect us to sustainability: care, empowerment, openness, self fulfillment, and resourcefulness.
When we understand we can all care about and connect to sustainability, we learn to tell better stories that resonate, relate, and empower.
And how do we tell better stories? Josh 'Bones' Murphy said it perfectly: don’t be boring, and tell REAL stories!
Thank you to all the wonderful speakers who made the Green Media Summit a huge learning experience. This year is about action, so let’s connect, let’s collaborate, and let’s make a difference!
#gms2024
