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On the 20th of May, The Future Economy Network (FEN) and Future Leap hosted its second hybrid event since the pandemic. It was sponsored by Enviral, an ethical brand and digital marketing agency. The event was titled “Creativity, Marketing and Our Climate Crisis”. Before the event began, the attendees enjoyed some pre-sessional networking both online in breakout rooms, and in person over coffee and pastries.
Lauren Fields, Business Community Coordinator at Future Leap, welcomed attendees online and in person from the FEN events space. Lauren highlighted the benefits of joining the network and ran through plans for the Festival of Sustainable Business, in light of new Government guidance towards COVID-19. Lauren then handed the event over to Tay Aziz, Science Communicator and Researcher. The speakers included:
Joss Ford Founder, Enviral
Chris Johnson Founder, Shambala Festival
Kendra Futcher Brand Writer
Joss Ford Founder, Enviral
Joss invited the audience to realise that marketing is shifting from being a leading cause of the climate crisis, to one of its most key solutions as it has the power to influence consumer behavior.
He emblazoned the necessity of creative thinkers as they are capable of the vision needed to propel humans into new ways of living. His advice to companies was to question themselves scrupulously in order to avoid greenwashing and uphold authenticity. He left by saying that “creativity holds the power to connect the dots”.
Chris Johnson Founder, Shambala Festival, Powerful Thinking, Chair of Vision 2025
Chris drew from his experience with Shambala to deliver numerous nuggets of pertinent wisdom. He explained the success of marketing the festival by creating a sense of belonging and community. “We can feel authenticity, kindness, generosity.” He then related how Shambala boldly went meat and fish free in 2016, challenging its audience but ultimately provoking radical dietary changes.
He talked about the potency of creating moments of silence and intention, left open for people to experience in their own way, another idea trialled successfully at the festival. He asserted the importance of having the right frame for your message and gave his 6 tips for pulling this off. His key message was: “Be bold, be real, be honest”.
Kendra Futcher, Brand Writer
Kendra specialises in tone of voice within brand writing and gave an insight into why this is essential to effective marketing in regards to the climate crisis. She began by drawing attention to the shift in climate change language from ‘global warming’ and ‘the greenhouse effect’ to ‘climate crisis/ breakdown’ and explaining how this progression reflects the increase in urgency over the past 20 years.
She demonstrated how to adapt language in response to people’s emotional state, using the example of a UN campaign that had to be re-written after the Coronavirus outbreak in order to be more sensitive to how ‘broken’ the population was.
Lastly, she instilled the importance of using a rhetoric of hope and optimism, rather than fear and panic. Choosing the right words is fundamental in being able to galvanise people and essential in creating optimism for the future and therefore a reality.
The audience then had the opportunity to ask questions, one of which was “How do you use marketing to avoid desensitisation to your message?”, to which each speaker had a different yet vital response:
Joss: Use art and creative form to connect with people.
Kendra: Suggest one thing at a time and keep it small.
Chris: Avoid guilt and never fail to embody social justice.
Close
Tay closed the event after another opportunity for networking, thanking the events sponsor Enviral and all the speakers and attendees, which without our events calendar would not be possible.
Event Notes by Jessica Thomlinson-Blount, BA(Hons) Geography, University of Manchester