It’s sometimes said that the biggest threats to a more sustainable world can be difficult for the average person to grasp, and so they’re unlikely to take action.
Climate change is certainly a case in point. The sheer enormity of what’s at stake environmentally — and the scale of the challenge in applying science to track and reduce emissions — can leave most people feeling dizzy.
And as this BBC piece outlined so well, it’s not just the general public, but world leaders, who can get tied up over the words and the communication formats.
This is one of the reasons why a communications expert with a track record of campaigns that spotlight sustainable innovation is now turning her focus to broader communication techniques that both resonate with the public and are easily relatable.
Ray Hopkinson, founder at Swayed Studio, began her career in the charity sector. Having pivoted to take on more communications responsibilities, she became interested in using behaviour change techniques to reach audiences and drive engagement and prompt action.
After spells at different agencies working for big sustainable brand clients, including Patagonia and Greenpeace, and smaller startup businesses with new ideas to bring to market, she recently launched her own agency.
Swayed Studio will concentrate, amongst other things, on helping companies to reach audiences in more targeted and relevant ways, using “culture”.
The approach goes well beyond news and views that drive earned media attention, and looks to tap into channels that aim to sway by setting content in a regular social context, like TV series, films, comedy shows, news sources such as newswires, sports and ambassadors and cultural influencers. Not necessarily mass market, but content, formats and channels that don’t just reach people but enable stories to be told and information to be shared in new ways.
“Sustainable advancements take time, commitment, and are ever-evolving. It is not always an easy sell, so we need to look at new ways to capture imagination and attention, and understand that media consumption habits are changing markedly,” said Hopkinson.
“I find the challenge of adapting traditional media techniques personally rewarding, but it does require both some bravery to pursue what seems like a less serious approach and some lateral thinking to turn an idea into reality.”
An example of this, is Climate Science Translated, a campaign that has seen climate science tackled through the medium of comedy skits, not that environmental catastrophes are laughing matters, but making complex concepts more accessible and breaking down the component parts through humour is certainly an alternative to fear-driven headlines.
Broadcast media can also offer ways to bring a climate issue or fact to the public’s attention through interjecting or incorporating it in a cultural moment. That could be a plot twist, a trend being featured, or a zeitgeist conversation that triggers engagement. Or it could be a relatively simple addition that becomes memorable because of who said it, or how.
There are the obvious mass audience shows. The Archers has reportedly been seeking a younger audience by weaving climate discussion into its scripts, and tapping into farming being cool. Sir David Attenborough’s Ocean series has become iconic.
But there’s an abundance of other media and content formats that can and should be explored, according to Hopkinson.
“Communications people have only made relatively narrow use of the broad media and entertainment spectrum for delivering sustainability campaigns and messages so far.
“It requires a new approach by clients and agencies alike, and is not about just counting news hits, but to really drive change we are going to have to take both a broad approach and be very clearly targeted in who and how we reach,” she said.
Her time on the frontline of some of the biggest sustainability campaigns around has seen her witness first-hand the challenges and opportunities of broader media formats. Now she plans to apply those lessons to making stories more relatable, more compelling and more human.
