Someone asked me in a meeting this week which companies I thought were doing a good job at influencing the masses on sustainability.
Of course I mentioned M&S (as everyone does) with their Plan A ads which easily communicate the importance of lots of issues from sustainable fish, palm oil, carrier bags etc etc. What they also do with their Oxfam Clothing Exchange ads is get people to feel good about recycling their old M&S cardies by giving them an M&S voucher in return. Carrot – tick. Feel good – tick. Action – big tick.
But who else is influencing behaviour or making it easy for people to live just a little bit more sustainably? I always think the Co-op does a great job when I go into their stores, even the erm rather less special one near to my house which largely caters for the local student population, is still jam packed full of fairtrade products, including lots of jam - a student staple – and lots of british produce.
But if you don’t shop in the co-op then you don’t see this, so I wouldn’t call them a big influencer at the moment. So who are the other companies leading the charge? Hmm. I turned on the TV for inspiration (and not just to watch The Inbetweeners).
EDF’s ad featuring the waltons style g’night calling is quite nice on first view (although a little tedious on the sixth).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGibFScD1bM
Being able to turn everything off remotely sounds good doesn’t it? Ooh yes please, but actually when I looked into it, I found out that you need a transmitter plug for each appliance you want to turn off. Hmm that’s a lot of plugs for most people (not to mention the manufacture of them, the plastic and metals used and the transport of them to my home), so maybe a little walk around at night would be the better option for the environment and for my husbands (they are his appliances after all) bottom line (pun intended).
So who else? Well the award for company who really went for it and unfortunately scored an own goal goes to Audi for their Green Police super bowl series ad earlier this year (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM).
This ad made me laugh a lot, but not for the right reasons, and the comments posted under the ad really showed that it didn’t work. It clearly annoyed most of the people that watched it because it made them feel as if they couldn’t do anything right or useful at all. So it just reinforced many people’s theory to not do anything, and probably not buy an Audi Diesel TDI either. Mission definitely cocked up.
But there was one ad that did make me and 1m other people sit up and do something, and that was the Greenpeace facebook unfriend coal video which they put up on erm….. facebook!
Even Marc Zuckerberg responded to it, which was wise considering 668,901 people had shown their support for the campaign, and another 343,516 watched it on you tube. Whether he will take action though, only time will tell, but in the meantime it will have educated lots of people on the impacts of IT and “Elektrisity”. Plus of course reinforcing how clever and powerful a tool like Facebook can be. When other companies start to tap into this potential things might start to get more interesting in terms of behaviour change and customers telling companies what they want a lot more loudly.
