bright green

So, I'm sitting at home trying to work out what I'm going to say at the D&AD thing tomorrow. And I'm not getting very far. So I thought I'd see if I can work it out as a blog post instead.

I think most of the evening will be a panel/debatey thing, which doesn't require much preparation of stuff, but does need me to work out what I think about things, which I always find hard in the absence of conversation, so this is maybe part of that conversation.

The actual presentation bit is supposed to be about 5 minutes and this is the brief:

Brief introduction – who/what/where

What is the biggest hurdle your country has to overcome to turn the tide of climate change

Show 3 examples, from within your country/region, of creative branding that demonstrates good  practice (preferably work by other agencies/companies rather than your own)

What lessons can others take from your country/region

I'll be very surprised if anyone sticks to 5 minutes.

Introduction

Here's what I've been thinking following the conversation starter here.

At the moment we're caught between the need to do something serious and drastic about climate change and the realities of what a consumer capitalist system will allow. ie people will only vote for, and pay for, so much right now. It's possible that it's not enough (it's entirely likely in fact) but until the threats are even more palpable we have to operate within the limits of popular support.

Therefore I think we have to accept that people will continue to want to 'consume'. They still have a need for novelty, they still have a need for new experiences (which often involves travel), and they (they? - who am I kidding? I mean 'we') still have a need to display something of who we are through the things that we own. Meaning status, style, tribe, etc. The trick now is to bend that urge to consume into behaviours with minimal impact on the planet.

So, you start to ask questions like -

Can you deliver novelty without delivering more stuff?

Can you deliver new experiences of the world without burning tons of fuel?

Can we transform ideas of status so they're about reduced impact on the world, sensible consumption, and thoughtfulness?

And, can we create a minimal-impact version of consumer society that's attractive enough that the developing world will want to adopt it as a vision for their future (assuming they don't come up with something better)?

I guess a truncated version of that might serve as introduction.

Biggest hurdle we have to overcome - complexity

Apart from all the obvious ones; greed, apathy, entropy, I think the biggest issue we have to face is complexity. There are very few known knowns and lots of unknown unkowns. Every positive step someone takes is condemned by someone else as either hysterical panic, green-washing or insufficient incrementalism.  It's very hard for anyone to 'win' because there seem to be very few completely unalloyed actions that anyone can take.

We Are What We Do's Anya Hindmarch bag project seemed like a good thing to me. It's fun and maybe a little superficial but that's exactly the kind of thing that might infect the popular imagination and create different behaviour, and certainly debate about the wasteful stupidity of plastic bags. Yet, it's easy to condemn the project too - the bags aren't organic cotton etc, so they're not that green, and that seems like an own goal. But then I bet they couldn't have done them for £5 if they'd made them organic. And the low price point seems part of the point to me. Equally, some people have said that all this fashion bag stuff is nonsense and the government should just ban plastic bags (and personally I'd go along with that) but is that politically realistic? Maybe it is now.

See what I mean about complexity?

I think we should applaud initiatives like M&S's Plan A partly because they're doing it in the face of all this doubt about exactly what the right thing is. They must have known that they'd be slagged off by many for greenwashing hysteria and by others for not going far enough yet they decided to do it anyway. And that's probably the thing that give me hope. Brands like M&S are reasonably in tune with mainstream opinion in this country and if they're doing something then I suspect the country is ready to do this and more.

Show three examples of good practice in creative branding from your region

I'm struggling with this bit, because I don't think it's really about branding, it's about action.  The important bit about the Plan A stuff is that they're doing it, not how they brand it.

Things I'm talking about covering are:

Walkit, because I like the way it uses information to motivate you to do something positive. And that seems to me the big contribution can make. Branding is about adding information, ideas and emotions to generic services and things, to make them more desirable. If it can be done with walking, what other positive things might it be done to?

Innocent's Carbon Footprint project because I like it's relative modesty and realistic, practical approach (as opposed to the Virgin thing John cites in the comments) (and I know everyone always talks about Innocent at conferences, but this seems to be an appropriate time to do it).

And this Greenpeace ad (thanks Rory).  I'm including this because it points to something interesting. I think we're only a few years away from casual air travel being as socially acceptable as wearing fur. (Which I think is a line stolen from John Grant.) This is a little like some of the early anti-fur work and it feels like it's starting to have a similar effect. Every social moment needs a leading edge and a trailing edge and this ad seems them working in tandem, Greenpeace at the lead, Virgin being the corporate follower. Or something.

I've got more to add, but I have to go to a meeting. At least I'm going on my bike....

...I'm back. Thanks Matt (see comments), perfect stuff. And just the reminder I needed to try and shoe-horn some extra things in:

I think I might open with this quote: "contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive,         glamorous and seductive". It's from the Viridian Green manifesto and has been stuck on my wall since it first showed up on the Viridian Green mailing list.  And I think that's where our little branding world might be able to do our part for climate change. In making green-ness seem sexy, cool and interesting. Not worthy or necessary.

I want to fit this in there somewhere:

Because I think one of the ways that people are rethinking their relationship with brands, products and services is to do with what ownership really means. (Partly prompted by DRM concerns.) And I bet we'd be pushing against an open door if we tried to make long-life and repairability high status values for a product (to Ben's Porsche point - see comments). And the ability to fix stuff and tinker will clearly be high-status things in a post-conspicuous consumption Maslow heirachy. (Sorry, lapsed into bollocks there for a second.)

And, I'd like to talk about the responsibility of 'our industry' (whatever that is) to try and play its part in a chain of influence about how businesses conduct themselves. Advertising agencies are some of those most environmentally profligate organisations in the world (for their size), I sometimes think they're put on earth solely to have large quantities of polyboard driven around in the taxis. So we should examine our own consciences in these matters. Because if we don't do it, we'll be made to. As more and more clients adopt environmental pledges how long before carbon-neutrality becomes a pitch requirement? And how many agencies are ready to meet that. (A good start might be to read Marcus's piece on printing.)

And, given that I'm only supposed to be doing 5 minutes maybe I should stop there.

Matt's comments have really made me want to dive into a conversation about 'maximum idea, minimum stuff'. Or rather the notion that an idea can substitute for stuff, and that people's desire to consume could be satisfied without the creation of new stuff. I don't know what that looks like yet, but I suspect  getting there will involve some consilient thinking -  we'll need to collide  brains that currently live in boxes labeled Industrial Design, UI, Software, Brand and probably Some Other Things. I don't know.

I really am rambling now. Better start trying to cram all that into 5 powerpoint slides.

 

Comments

[Ben]

The topic / question is quite tricky and possibly the wrong question but...

The M&S example is very good because of who they are and what they mean to the UK consumer. I think it's even more important because they're not some trendy brand for whom green stuff is part of their USP and ultimately part of the positioning. It's also important that they're doing something when really no one knows what the right thing to do is.

If it was me I'd use this quote I found from Porsche on the sustainability section of their website, "more than 60% of all Porsche vehicles ever produced are still on the road today". It's not that I necessarily agree with that, but I think that highlights the complexity of the problem. The fact that 60% of the vehicles are still on the road today, is that a good thing? Would it be better if they didn't make the cars in the first place? How many of the world's laptops are still in use today? iPods anyone?

The country is definitely ready to do something, or at least appear to be doing something. You can't deny that politicians have pushed the issue further up the agenda and you can expect brands to be doing a lot more and soon.

[gemma]

Relevant post from Seth Godin yesterday on how Zero is the New Black http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/03/noimpactman_mak.html

[John Dodds]

It's not much of a thought but watching a Virgin Trains ad espousing the relative greeness of going by train rather than other transport, I was gripped by the notion of bandwagons being jumped on for commercial purposes.

The fact that's everyones branding themselves green runs the danger of engendering indifference amongst some consumers - and worse, when somebody's green credentials are shown to be overstated, the cynicism will ripple.

So I'm with you, less branding, more quiet action becasue quiet action will resonate and lead to changed behaviours. Or is that too idealistic?

[Matt]

WARNING: this is a bit of ramble, and I realise this is not really about brands, but...

Modern industrial design has always been about maximum idea, minimum stuff - more maximum benefit, minimum stuff. Inject the quicksilver of software into the stuff, and hopefully it ratchets that up further. Unfortunately, over the last 20 years, software has become big and crufty too, but a lot of the 'new wave' (sounds cooler and punkier than web2.0, imho) is lightweight, beneficial small-pieces-loosely-joined. It's not green though in itself - in fact technology typically has a godzilla-like eco-footprint what with the rare-earth metals, extensive refinement, potentially environmentally damaging manufacturing processes and embodied-energy necessary to make most things that involve microprocessors - that's before you even get to switch them on... and leave them on... always-on...

but- like most Promethean gifts, i believe information technology is the best way to bootstrap our way out of ecogeddon.

Read Bruce Sterling's "Shaping Things" for a wonderful vision of how 'things that think' - what he calls 'Spimes' could think about how to euthanise themselves responsible or report for re-use duty to those who need them. He says that spimes are 'Data first and foremost, and objects now and again...' - maximum idea, minimum stuff indeed...

Read "mirrorworlds" for David Gelertner's prescient vision of how tools like google earth teamed with data from our environment could give us simulations that help us to reflexively do the right thing - EcoCognoExoSkeletons...

(plug: i wrote a bit on this a while back: http://web.archive.org/web/20051219144628/http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/?p=9)

read Alice's transcript from Will Wright's demo of Spore at SxSW: he wants to give kids a toy planet, to learn how to run the only real one we have... Just as his Sim City gave us all model cities to play with (and ended up being used by town-planning students and professionals for learning and community outreach activities)

The trail of data that we're generating about ourselves as we live our lives part-digitally is creating a model of ourselves that we can reflect upon, and change our behaviour if we feel it's not sustainable for us (or the planet)

The work done by RED and the Design Council is a great example of neat ways that products, design and service can combine to make us reflect on our behaviours in playful non-orwellian ways.

Don't worry - it's coming back to brands. maybe. i think.

In my post about 'Practical Mirrorworlds' I've used a picture I took years ago in the sydney opera house: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbeltjones/1346008/ which is a caption saying "sometimes we draw pictures or make models to help us understand things" - isn't a brand a model that is created by people to understand the promise that a company is making? And don't the guardians of that brand on the company and its proxies inject politics, dreams and values into that model which they believe will be appealing and increasingly sustainable - in both the sense of that appeal over time, which more and more comes to be the same as sustainable in the environmental sense.

And, in Sterling's Spimeworld, couldn't that promise be all that was necessary to understand until you needed the thing?

In the future, Brands should be interactive market-scale toys - models that we can all play with as individuals or communities to understand what we want in terms of things, services, dreams, outcomes before we get them. Spimes will be brands, invoked, instantiated.

Maximum idea, minimum stuff...

[James]

Sun mocrosystems took major steps to reduce the energy requirements of their servers years ago. This is now a major point of difference compared with their competitors.

I don't know how they made the decision to invest their R&D in this but it has looked smarter and smarter over the last few years.

I like the idea of betting on the direction of the market - this provides a reason for companies to do more than consumers say they want right now.

[Ben]

By the way - we have two spare tickets for this at The Design Conspiracy HQ. Email ben at thedesignconspiracy dot com. They're free.

[Nicola]

I just read that Google offered every single one of their 2000 European employees a new bike (Google-branded of course) so they could cyle to work, instead of travelling by car. They're taking action as well as getting their brand message out there on the streets (literally). I like this because it's a simple and helpful approach, which actually brings the issue home. Maybe by making your employees 'think green' you'll have a greener company?

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-03-27-n56.html

[collyn]

Why not also shift focus onto the design of experiences? This already happens in a sense - but why not a bit more literally? 'Product as experience' has great potential to offer a different but equally emotional bond to a brand, but without the 'stuff'. The emotional experience is often what matters anyway. Okay - not to forget our rational selves, the experience must have a purpose, a function, but need there be a 'thing' attached to function? There is nothing new here, but as it wasn't flagged up in the comments, thought it might be worth the reminder.

Will there not, one day, (perhaps there already are) experience specialists in every design/comms/ad agency who focus specifically on sensorial, community, one-to-one, engaging, participative experiences? This is not about 'viral' this would possibly become the standard?

Nothing terribly new, sorry if I've managed to just repeat too much of what is already done and dusted.

[Matt]

One more book on the poss. darkseid of maxidea/minstuff tip: 'age of access' by jeremy rifkin
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Age-Access-Hypercapitalism-Paid-Experience/dp/1585420824

stuff in some ways gives you more possibility and licence to hack than idea/experience...

[Dylan Trees]

When I worked at TWBA\London, we were approached by the Guardian to create a pretend campaign to change people's minds about the environment. I think we cracked the idea that asking people to do too much or worry about too much creates inertia, but we didn't get the aspiration/status bit (which I love).

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1829432,00.html

But the mistake in the first place was thinking that a print ad can make a difference. If company's want to change behaviour, they have to change the way they behave (not just communicate). That has to happen everywhere from product design to distribution to manufacture. I agree with Nicola that Google are probably the best current example of a holistically 'green' brand.

But it's not, you know, easy being green.

[Sandoz]

Bit late perhaps, but adding 3 simple points that may fit in somewhere:

1. Arguably brands become green because they want to be liked. However this does activate mass consumer change, whereas guerilla or government messaging often causes paralysis. A brand is more tangible. It's positive from negative perhaps.

2. Demand for novelty may be ecologically balanced. Enforced obsolescence of technology should come with a forced donation to the environment. Every time my beloved Apple upgrade the Core2Duo chip or whatever, they should perhaps balance against planting a lot of trees, or something more intelligent. Although hits into your points about complexity big time here. Perhaps share the cost with the consumer as i want better stuff too.

3. As we become more collectively clever, alternative fuel sources and materials will emerge to drive positive change. An unlikely source is the Indy 500 where the cars have all switched over to a corn based Ethanol product. http://tinyurl.com/3bk3zd. Also influential designers like Ross Lovegrove, http://tinyurl.com/2sbvl7, who are exploring and championing alternatives to approach novelty and product. Innovation can inform future demand for novelty and brands can champion this too.

[jamesb]

Maximum ideas, minimum stuff seems to be about a move to the functional, utilitarian doesn't it? isn't environmental ethics a utilitarian ethics? and the pros and cons inherent within that [freedom vs future?].

The spime based brand idea mattj mentions is potentially really neat; small concepts that take on a life [from our life data] and then disappear when they're not needed or become redundant.. agile, yet fragile things THAT DO STUFF. but the technology and the data around such spimes are fraught with the same sort of issues around power, access, cost, environmental impact, security and literacy that we have now. grumpy. gloomy. sorry.

[russell]

Actually, to me, Maximum Ideas, Minimum Stuff is almost the opposite of utilitarian. It's massively, splendidly, trivial. Which might be it's merit.

My thought process is this:

Whatever we do, people will want to buy new stuff. This doesn't matter (to the planet) if we can sell them something which satisfies that urge but doesn't consume any energy (ie. doesn't physically exist).

Services might be an example. Something else might be but I don't know what.

I think the minimal spime object enlivened by data is something else. Something interesting, but something else.

You know how people used to say that drinkers of premium lager were just 'drinking the advertising'. That was probably supposed to be a bad thing. But what if you could get people to just 'consume the advertising' now. That might be a good thing. If they didn't consume any stuff.

It's almost transcendentally frivolous. And therefore probably more likely to be wildly popular than something well-thought through and practical.

Does that make sense?

[Lebowski]

Just on the indy 500 example, corn based fuel might not be the way forward - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2043724,00.html

[Mark]

I know this is to late but...

a) San Francisco just became the first US city to ban plastic bags. Which company can sieze the intiative in the rest of the world?

b) Do online services have an advantage because they can (potentially) offer a lower carbon footprint and have more control over how a brand is delivered ?

c) Consumption is one likely source of change. But what if we looked at this from an employee aspect - from the impact on recruitment to the fact small employee changes can make a big impact on a company's carbon footprint.