Polar Bears and vanishing rain forests – enough already!

15th Jun 11

Ok I think whether you are on the climate change bus or not you have probably aware that the more you use polar bears and vanishing rain forests in an effort to get people’s attention the less engaged your audience seems to be. Well according to two witty smart Californians the time has come to move on from these euphemisms if you really want to make a difference in the debate about the future of the planet. While coming from two different perspectives Tom Bowman and John Marshall Roberts coalesce on an important point - you have to go back to basic communication principles and ask yourself - who is your target audience and what are they asking?

John Marshall Roberts has an approach that uses behavioural science to divide an audience into colourful quadrants - the navy (absolute cynics), the copper (individualistic cynics), the Jade (humanistic cynics) and the gold (systemic cynics). Much like the Myers Briggs or DISC profiles each of these quadrants has a different hot button that you can leverage in your communication. For example, to have a Navy person change behaviour towards helping the environment you need to appeal to their sense of loyalty and higher purpose whereas those who fall in the gold quadrant would be more likely to change their behaviour where you appeal to them through a sound well researched business case.

Now not all of us have the resources to conduct an assessment of our audience to know who falls into which quadrant – so the advice from these experts is to make sure that your communication creates personal relevance and urgency in its message. As there will be few in your workplace that have contact with a polar bear, rain forest or a melting ice cap these stories will find little resonance. Instead provide real emotive success stories about local parks, gardens, waste removal or energy efficiency. These are stories that people can see themselves playing a role in and as a result can move people to act.

So while we all love a good polar bear story- these are best kept to those who live a little closer to the North Pole.

Katherine O'Regan