“Beyond confusion, inspiring actions”: how communication can contribute to change behaviors and reshape representations about a desirable future.

It has been a great honor to be invited as a speaker to the panel organized by the Citizen’s platform on climate change and a sustainable world, virtually hosted by the UNESCO. The topic “Beyond confusion, inspiring actions” has been the occasion to develop how as communications specialists we have a role to play. Here after is an overview of what I shared with the virtual audience.

When talking about climate change and ecological transition, it can be counter-intuitive to consult people working in advertising, as critics against advertising (that would be the best ally of hyper-consumption) have been skyrocketing over the past months. Yet, I do believe that we are all concerned by the climate change issue. We will need all the energies, wills and skills to contribute solving this structural and crucial problem. 

Before sharing with you my point of view on how advertising agencies and communications specialists can contribute to the fight for a more sustainable world, I would like to acknowledge a fact: yes, advertising can be part of the problem. Advertising stimulates consumers desires and it has contributed to shape the belief that consumption equal happiness…

But all the reasons that make advertising part of the problem are the same reasons that can make it part of the solution. How? There’s at a few levels of positive actions linked to advertising.  

The first one is that advertising has a strong role of interface between people and corporations. Indeed, advertising is about making information about brands and companies available and public. People need to have information before making a choice. In that respect, advertising challenges advertisers. It helps them to ask themselves in what they are useful, what is their functional and emotional purpose. The question is: would it be synonymous with progress to stop communicating about products, services and values? A few companies have chosen to remain constantly silent… Personally, companies which don’t communicate at all worry me much more than companies which communicate. Because when you say something you expect to have an answer. It’s much riskier that it looks like. When people do not believe what you say, they become very vocal and let you know. 

Actually, it is very complicated to address the good message. This difficulty is what makes advertising interesting and valuable. Indeed, to catch people’s attention you have to listen to them carefully. Advertising is a great source of listenning. You have to understand what people aspire to, what are their beliefs, their hopes, their doubts. In order to translate these aspirations into powerful messages. To do so, we conduct surveys, research, social listenning. We monitor how people’s values evolve. What they believe in, what they declare they want to do and the gap between what they declare and what they actually do. For instance, regarding the climate change topic, we have a few very interesting figures from our proprietary research. For instance, 66% of French people believe that the Covid-19 crisis would not have happened if we had taken a better care of the planet. 67% of them believe the COVID-19 crisis will allow the world to start again with a clean slate. And it becomes very concrete and pragmatic when we ask them how to proceed to change things. They have a few ideas. They want more local and more durability. They want to adopt new usages like recycling, repairing and reusing. 

These figures are only a few examples of what we are exposed to everyday. And it is great because as our role is to convince people to do things, we have to start from where they stand. We have to echo their aspirations. We have to take these aspirations into account in order to convince brands and companies to meet these aspirations. And I am positive about the fact that it can a driver for change, a virtuous and powerful tool. 

Advertising has also a part to do in order to inspire actions. Actually, it is what our daily job is made of: finding the right driver to leverage, pulling the right “insight” to trigger action. If I go back to the figures I quoted, we could ask ourselves: “these figures are amazing so how do we explain people want to reduce their carbon footprint but keep buying SUV?”. The answer is probably because people aspirations are often contradictory and paradoxical.“It’s better for the planet to drive hybrid or electric but I love the comfort of driving a SUV”. People are full of contradictions and tensions that sometimes prevent them to take action and change. But we can help to close the gap between their values and their behaviors by finding the right insight. It is sad but it is a universal truth: being right is often not enough. There’s an expression I love – even if it can sound quite cynical – that is the following: “Do you want to be right or to be President?” Of course, the best thing is to be President while being right. But the truth is that the journey is much more complex. Our role is to find how – leveraging both rational and emotional drivers – to change people. For instance, advertising has been key to raise awareness among road safety: to convince people to fasten their seat belts. To convince people to slow down. Etc. I am convinced that our responsibility in advertising today is to do the same type of work to help people adopting more sustainable behaviors. Our job is to make electric cars as desirable and even more desirable than SUV… Our challenge is to make people “buy” a more frugal and durable world. 

To do so, I think we have to adopt uplifting and positive tone of voice and shape new desirable imaginaries. By shaping a desirable future, we can inspire actions. I do believe that our responsibility today is to spread the idea that a more frugal and sustainable word can be synonymous with happiness. To do so, we will have to tell new stories, to help shaping new myths and imaginaries.