Behind the Scenes : The Power of Storytelling

“The most powerful person in the world is the?storyteller. The?storyteller?sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” Steve Jobs

My first ever post on LinkedIn was about the importance of communicating the climate crisis in simple, but effective ways, to engage the hearts and minds of a global audience. It featured the iconic and visually striking Climate Stripes created by Professor Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading, and stressed the importance of not just highlighting the issues clearly, but engaging those who are in a position to make a difference in the potential solutions.

When last April, it was announced that COP26 would be rescheduled, I was tasked to come up with a concept and strategy for a green finance conference which would be hosted by the City of London Corporation and the Green Finance Institute to take place when the COP conference would have been in November 2020. The focus to be on the pivotal role of finance in supporting a green recovery and an economy-wide transition to net zero.

As virtual webinars and seemingly never-ending zoom calls became the norm, it was really important to us to find new and different ways of delivering content. And indeed the Green Horizon Summit turned out to be a significant marker event with two days of incredible content and a stellar line-up bringing together thought leaders from the public and private sectors including Mark Carney, Antonio Gutierrez and Kristalina Georgieva, Larry Fink, Bill Winters, Jes Staley to name just a few. You can see selected keynote speeches from the event here.

And for me a personal highlight was Day 3 of the summit, where we took the idea of delivering content and engaging discussion in a different way a little further, using a format which came to me one Sunday night in the hectic run-up to the summit, of including shorter panels, fireside chats and pre-recorded video stories all packed into a 90-minute show. The event 'Realising the Transition' was beautifully brought to life straight from the World Economic Forum's studio in Geneva.

Thrilled to see that this different format could work led to the idea of the Green Horizon Perspectives series which we launched in April 2021 : a series of digital magazine-style shows creating a drumbeat towards COP26 in November, and hopefully beyond.

For me it’s a great privilege to be able to provide a platform to showcase inspiring and innovative ideas to the climate change challenges and to work with great content creators to unlock new and interesting ways to share important messages. And so it was with a short film which premiered at the launch Green Horizon Perspectives event in April entitled' How Impact Data creates Hope'.

In less than one week, collaborating with the creative team at rewired.earth (namely @Matt Percival and @Rupert Pearce) we created a short engaging film about about the potential benefits of a global data platform that reports on the ESG impact of the entire supply chain of companies across the financial markets, and which really brought the issues to life.?Featuring David Marriage, Global Disruption and Innovation Lead at PwC, and Ruby, his daughter the piece was filmed at the Natural History Museum in London.

The story follows David and Ruby through the museum, while they explored the potential opportunity for investors and consumers to understand their true impact and, in doing so, help solve our climate crisis. And as they engaged with Sophie the Stegosaurus, Charles Darwin and Hope the Blue Whale we heard why a new global data platform that has verified impact data for the whole supply chain could be the missing piece of the jigsaw.

For me it illustrated perfectly the power of story-telling as a strategic and impactful way of delivering important messages, and indeed, as importantly, in a short space of time to a professional audience already overloaded with content and online materials. To see the full video, click here

As we now see a whole new genre of documentaries developing like David Attenborough’s ‘A Life on our Planet’ and ‘Seaspiracy’?in bringing uncomfortable truths to the public attention and inspiring a wider audience to take positive action in addressing climate change, I think there is a need for this type of messaging to also be used in the corporate world of climate conferences and online webinars. And although big budget cinematic Netflix-style videos are not a practical option, I do think that in order to get the important challenges across to the right people in a way that lands, we need to be looking carefully at different mediums and exploring new, engaging formats.

And I look forward to continue to explore the boundaries of what we can do to deliver content and messages in the most meaningful way.

Thanks to @David Hofmeyr for the great quote cards and inspiration!