The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table — along with a colleague or client — and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

Scientists and climate activists have been warning people that the world is ending since the 80s. The U.N. recently upped the stakes in the climate report. How do you make people care when they’ve been hearing the house is on fire for 40 years? Is this the issue that cried wolf? In this latest episode of HearSay, Will Howard and Director of Ad Net Zero John Osborn share their insights on the message fatigue surrounding climate change, creating credibility, and choosing the right words to drive change. Whether you discuss climate change in your personal life or about sustainability topics in your company, there’s something in it for you.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lee Carter:

They said what? Welcome to Hear, Say, a podcast for the language strategists at Miss Lansky and Partners where we give our take on a strategy behind the smartest, savviest, and stupidest messages in the market today and what you can learn from them. Our philosophy is it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. And that’s why we call this HearSay. I’m Lee Carter, president at Maslansky and Partners and author of a book called Persuasion. And today we’re here to talk about the topic of climate change and how do we communicate about it. Our firm is the firm that changed the language originally from global warming to climate change for a whole variety of reasons that we’ll discuss. And I’m joined today by two great guests, my colleague Will Howard and John Osborne. John Osborne and I have a long history of working together. He is a former CEO of VBO, an OMD in the US. And now he has been appointed to lead Ad Net Zero and help grow its supporter base. He’s been involved in the American Red Cross, New York for a long time, which has a lot of vested interests. So I know you have experience in discussing the impacts of climate change through your role there. And we’re really excited to have you here today.

John Osborn:

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Lee Carter:

Thanks for joining. So let’s just dig right into it. John, now you’re working at Ad Net Zero. Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing there, what you’re trying to accomplish, and why it’s so important right now.

John Osborn:

Well, thanks, Lee. I think, like many industries that are trying to get their arms around trying to measure carbon and create different reporting frameworks, the advertising industry is doing the same thing. However, the advertising industry, looking back in the rearview mirror, has always served the greater good of the clients and the corporations that it works with. And so now we have an opportunity to put to work the advertising industry in service of a better world. And so it’s go-time for a lot of different reasons. But in the advertising industry, there is a tremendous amount of carbon emissions being generated. Now, at first glance, your mind immediately jumps to things like outdoor boards or travel on airplanes to go film content or things along those lines. What oftentimes people fail to realize is that as the world has become more digitized, fueled by technology, servers, and talking to servers, all of that has a tremendous amount of carbon emissions associated with it. So the advertising industry is actually fairly complex. And it’s going to be difficult to diagnose and measure and figure out all the various carbon emissions that are associated with the different apertures that are part of the advertising ecosystem. And that challenge is essentially why Ad Net Zero now today exists. There are a lot of great trade organizations around the world, and certainly in the US, that are up and running right now, which is great because they really power the industry. But they’re all focused on different apertures of the industry. So the ANA in the US is really focused on corporations and clients. The IAB and the associated IAB Tech Lab, they’re more focused on the digital domain and technology and technical innovation. And then, of course, there’s the 4As, and they’re very focused on the agency world. And all that various types of agencies and specialties agencies do from a capability standpoint creating the right governance and the right best practices. So if one organization was to stand up and said, hey, we own this thing, we’re on point for climate action, it really wouldn’t work because you really need to kind of coordinate evenly and in concert all of the interests of the various. existing trade association. So Ad Net Zero in short form exists because we’re trying to unify the advertising industry and the advertising ecosystem around a more consistent set of standards of measuring carbon through a more consistent set of tools like calculators so that we can create a more consistent set of reporting metrics that will enable us to ultimately drive towards mitigating carbon emissions towards net zero within a time frame. And we have not yet published the exact time journey yet in the time frame because in order to figure out where we’re going and within what time frame, you kind of need to understand exactly what the precise carbon emissions load is today. And that is what we’re up to. We’re unifying the industry around operations so that we can better serve our clients in a way that minimizes carbon as much as possible.

Lee Carter:

So that context is super helpful. And I know that a lot of folks who are listening to our podcast might be in a similar challenge where you’re dealing with talking about sustainability in a way that there’s not a direct line. Like when an energy company talks about their impact on the environment, we’re like, oh, it makes sense. You need to talk about that. When you’re in advertising or pharmaceuticals or other industries where it’s not obvious at first glance, it’s really helpful to have that context. but it also makes it harder sometimes to tell your story for different reasons, not because it’s controversial, but because it’s like, why are you even focused on this?

Lee Carter:

Where do you find the biggest challenges with people understanding why your job is and why this matters? Like, is there a specific area when you’re talking about this that light bulbs go off for people, and like, ah, that’s why it makes sense?

John Osborn:

I think to understand the answer to that question, you have to kind of take a step back and realize that we exist in the business world in the roles that we are in service of that particular business. But we’re all human beings at the end of the day as well. And we all have feelings and we all have innate desires and opinions and so on and so forth. And one of the challenges with climate action and climate change is Well, there are a couple of different challenges. One is, you know, we exist in the United States, which is a fairly polarized world right now. So you have to take that in consideration. The other consideration is that you know, the changing climate, it is not a clear and present danger. In other words, what I’m saying is we as a human species, we sort of are hardwired to be able to react to potential challenges and dangers that face us square. This is a less visible, a less sort of in-your-face kind of a thing. You know, if I’m walking down a dark street and someone stepped out of an alley in my path, I’m like, warning bells go off. I’m like, this could be a problem. I can see it. It’s right there in front of me. Climate change is sort of like happening in little tiny increments over a period of time. So I don’t necessarily feel it in the moment as much. And that’s why I think this is a bit of a challenge because people are used to seeing like in pictures and hearing it in words as to why I should care today. And the challenge here is that we need to care about it today because it’s going to be a big-dot deal down the road. And it’s going to be too late. And that’s what the UN climate report, the one that was just published, really pointed out.

Lee Carter:

Yeah, so let’s talk about that UN climate report because I was reading the headlines from it, reading through a lot of the reporting on it, and it seems like, okay, it’s never been more urgent. We’re at the point of no return. If we don’t act now, we’re going to be underwater. It’s a lot of the message that comes out. There’s a ticking climate time bomb. I forget exactly all the language that they used around it, but it was once again, the report comes out. It’s more urgent than ever. And there’s part of me that listens to all this and thinks, is this the issue that cried wolf? Are we doing ourselves a disservice in the way that we talk about this by saying, this is the biggest crisis of our lifetime? If we don’t act this year, because every year it’s the same thing. It’s never been worse. It’s never been all of these point of no return kind of messages. Does that hurt us more than it helps us when we’re trying to engage folks?

John Osborn:

I’m used to living in, which is the advertising world and the messaging world, and more and more, you have to balance, I think, the content of the message and the context of the message according to not only emotional cues, but also rational cues. And so we look a lot not only on behavior, we look a lot at the data. And so as more and more data becomes more and more available, that gives us more and more evidence that this is a real deal. And that the UN climate report despite the audacious headlines. I’m looking at a report right now that says, humanity is on thin ice. This sort of shock and awe is deliberate. It’s intentional in the messaging because more and more, as data gets put on the table, people are feeling like unless there’s real concrete action today, we’re all on the clock. It is truly gonna be too late. We’ve got to do what we need to do now. And so that is creating a whole host. of different initiatives from an individual basis, a corporate basis, a governmental basis that all has to be kind of balanced together and coordinated if we’re really going to make that leap forward, which is according to the data, is what we need to do.

Lee Carter:

So, Will, I want to bring you in here for a second because we’ve talked about, in general, in the world, there’s a little bit of crisis overload, right? I do a new show once a week on either Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, and behind the anchor, there’s a huge sign that says, alert. And I realized this is my fourth week in a row of doing it, that that same alert sign is behind her every single time she’s on air. And we have a banking crisis, a financial crisis, a climate crisis, a health crisis, obesity crisis. Everything is a crisis. What does this mean or what is your advice? Well, to clients who are dealing with how do you communicate, get people engaged? In many ways, I think we’re overwhelmed by all the crises.

Will Howard:

Yeah. I mean, there’s sort of two layers to that. The first is whether the extent to which crisis framing is ever effective., and, and the very existence of like, buy now because the price is going to change in a month suggests that crisis framing does sometimes work. There is value to creating urgency with your message to drive action. Um, and the threat of consequences can make people do things as you were talking, John, I was thinking a lot about work actually that we’ve done on retirement and like getting people to save for retirement when they’re young. Right. There is a hypothetically massive payoff in the future that could have life-altering consequences for them. And all they have to do is put a couple of dollars away a day, but for some reason, people don’t want to do it because they really struggle to connect the dots between that small sort of intangible action and some sort of tangible consequence later in their life. And it’s not really real to them. Like that there’s something bad is going to happen if they don’t do it. We actually did a survey where we saw some data that suggested we asked people which of these sounds like something you’re more equipped to do from a financial perspective. Imagine your dream retirement or your future retirement and work backwards on how you want to get there versus take your financial situation today and start planning forward incrementally to where you want to be, and it’s much easier for people to do that second one. To kind of start in the moment and think incrementally and work outwards than it is to start at the end and work backwards. So I think the challenge with the climate crisis, and as you start to think about all the airtime it’s competing for with all these other crises is, I always wonder, and I don’t think there’s not an easy way to do it, but I always wonder if there’s a more incremental, like forward look at like starting now and looking forward plan, as opposed to a ticking clock working backwards from the world being on fire.

Lee Hartley Carter:

You know, it’s interesting, Will, because, gosh, more than a decade ago, we worked for a conservation organization trying to get people to care about climate change and biodiversity. And they were insistent that we needed to get people to understand the magnitude of the problem and what we were facing. But we were testing on the messaging. It’s exactly as you say, the magnitude of the problem overwhelmed them in many cases. There’s a whole host of reasons from a psychology perspective that that makes you bury your head in the sand and say, I can’t deal with it. It invokes anxiety, it invokes guilt because you’re part of it, and big shame because you might do whatever. And those are all feelings that make you sort of look the other direction and avoid the topic altogether because we’d much rather be talking about something pleasant than we would be trying to get our arms around something like that. But when we tested messages that said if every person were to take shorter showers and do these three things. We could extend the life of the planet by whatever amount of time. People are really engaged in that. The activists, the people who we were working for were like, that is the greenwashing message. That is totally like unnecessary. That’s not going to do anything. We’re not even close. The thing that it did was it engaged people who wouldn’t have otherwise been engaged. And so there’s this tension between how do you engage people and get people to care in the small behaviors versus trying to get them to understand the problem and what should we be doing? Really, if we want to get everybody dealing with the issue, isn’t it better to have people doing small actions than to not care at all?

John Osborn:

I think just to chime in here, I mean that’s a problem that we’re used to dealing with on a daily basis in service of the clients that are out there that have different target audiences that have different behavior patterns. Different psychological and emotional cues that you need to kind of take into consideration and so on and so forth. I think you kind of have to do both. I think it’s not an either or. You need to kind of bring into the fold sort of people that haven’t been educated or may even be, dare I say, cynical and put it in terms that they can kind of relate to, to bring them into the fold from an educational perspective. And then what we have to do is take people that are more generally aware of the challenges and opportunities and help them. Understand that, for example, carbon offsets is not the destination in this game. Carbon offsets is simply a mitigating factor that is available today, given all that we know with the rudimentary forms of measurement that don’t really all talk to each other, so it’s apples and pears and oranges. And that’s why an organization like Ad Net Zero exists, because we need to clean it up, no pun intended, to create a nomenclature. you know, to create a more consistent framework so that the parts, the puzzle pieces, fit together to lead to a more macro leap forward in terms of real change. I was at a conference yesterday and someone was talking about, you know, the importance of serving meat versus vegan on a set of a production. And that’s something easy for somebody to get their head around. So that’s great from an educational perspective, but in reality of a 50% decline in carbon that’s associated with a hamburger may sound great. Hey, I achieved 50% reduction of carbon because I don’t serve hamburgers, but in the whole scheme of things, that is not a mosquito on the back of a gnat on the back of, it doesn’t really make any bit of difference in the whole big thing. So I think you have to kind of do both in order for us to kind of make sense of this and that means slightly different forms of messaging to slightly different audiences depending upon where they stack up in this conversation

Lee Carter:

Yeah, I feel like we almost have to look at it as a continuum. It’s sort of like an environmental engagement curve or a climate change engagement curve when you can get people engaged just by knowing the impact that their small actions are having. It might help them get to the other side of it. Now I wanna take for a second though, and pull in the, maybe it is the elephant in the room and there’s a pun behind this, but climate change has been politicized. There was a reason why we changed global warming to climate change because people were debating whether or not, is it really getting warmer? Is it not climate change changed the conversation and it’s been around for a long time? But now the term climate change has become something that people debate. Is it something that is a progressive issue? Republicans are denying it and it gets really, really kind of, the conversations I think are unnecessarily politicized when the issues are right in front of us. And so we’ve been seeing, if you have conversations, for example, about extreme weather or increasing disasters, you’re more likely to get more people engaged. If you’re talking about getting people engaged in climate change, then people are going to start debating whether or not climate change is real and all that goes along with it. So one of the questions I have is, Do you think it’s time to change the term climate change altogether? Is there a better term now given the dynamics around it?

John Osborn:

Well, I think that it’s a consideration. For a long time I’ve served on the American Red Cross and I can honestly tell you that I’ve been personally involved in conversations and I’ve used the words climate change and I’ve seen the sort of reaction that you get. In return but if you put in terms like severe weather events what is undeniable just to take a step back given my journey with the American Red Cross it is undeniable that there has been a sincere uptick in the frequency and the severity of severe weather across the United States right this is the audience for this group we’re talking the United States where it is absolutely undeniable. There are also tremendous amount of data. Storms today apparently are releasing something to the tune of 40% to 50% more rainwater in the context of a storm than storms that existed in the United States 50 years ago. There is a whole host of data that is undeniable. But when you start to paint those pictures, it inevitably, the types of pictures you show, whether it’s gloom and doom, that will appeal to some people but not other people. And if you do more hope and optimism, that will appeal to some people and not other people. And it really kind of depends on where they fall on the political spectrum. So again, I fall back on this notion that it may not be an either or at this stage in the game. We have to see how it all shakes out, but I completely agree with what you just said, Ali. I think that it is absolutely consideration.

Lee Carter:

And so I too am on the board of a disaster recovery organization called SBP. It’s different in nature, but there’s some overlap here. And we are seeing that there’s almost a fatigue in getting people engaged because there’s more storms than there have ever been before. And you’re surprised we might have a huge uptick in fundraising after a storm in Puerto Rico. And then… Two weeks later, there’s a storm in Florida and nobody cares. And they move on in a week because the next one comes along. And it’s harder to get people engaged both in the storm recovery, but then the broader issue is why is this happening more? How can we prevent this? How can we get people shored up so that they don’t suffer in the way that they are? And it becomes a really difficult conversation to have. But I have found that when we’re talking about it in terms of the extreme weather, the increase in disasters, that people start to engage that will debate me when I start saying this is all related to climate change.

John Osborn:

Yeah, I have personally found in my conversations that when you talk about it in terms that foster more universal understanding of exactly what we’re talking about so when I say severe weather people kind of lock in on that immediately they’re like oh we get that as we’re talking on the phone right now Lee and will it is going to be 85 on March 13th and I’m in Connecticut but the top news story are wildfires that are burning out of control in New Jersey. A state that only a week and a half ago was, the top news story because of a tornado outbreak. I don’t remember a time when New Jersey was classified as a tornado outbreak state and a wildfire outbreak state. So, you know, go figure. But back to what you were saying, I do find that when I’m talking about things in terms that more… collectively people understand as opposed to polarizing people. It tends to have more of an immediate sort of understandability.

Will Howard:

I think when it comes to kind of polarized language like that, I think something I’ve found in my work over the years on contentious issues is that if there’s one thing people hate, it’s having to admit they were wrong, whether or not they are wrong. This issue has been politicized going all the way back to Al Gore. Like, I think there is an element to this for some people where agreeing to climate change arguments now, no matter what the evidence might be, would involve 20 years, going back 20 years in their mind and admitting that they were wrong and Al Gore was right. And that’s just not something that people are prepared to do. They’re not going to do it. And they would rather dig in their heels or not engage, then admit that they’ve been holding onto something that was wrong for years. And I think. If you want to reach people, who have that position, you have to find a way to make the argument that doesn’t force them to kind of try to back them into a corner and force them to admit that they were wrong. I always try to think about separating it into like, which parts of my arguments are things that I need you to do and which parts of my arguments are things that I want you to believe. And do I really need to change those beliefs to get the actions that I want? How can I focus this and frame this around? Well, regardless of what you think or what you believe. Do I really need to change those beliefs to get you to do what I want to do? Or is that just a moral victory for me that I’m trying to twist the knife, to get, to get you where I want you?

Lee Carter:

It’s so true. It’s so true.

John Osborn:

It’s funny, you’re talking about rights and wrongs and I’m remembering a great quote that a mentor of mine used to like to say, you know, sometimes in order to get somewhere, you need to be more roughly right than precisely wrong. There’s a lot of truth in that statement. I don’t know why I thought of that, but while you were saying that, Will, it sort of popped in my mind.

Lee Carter:

You know, Will, I think on that point, there is something about some work that we’ve done on climate that was, we eliminated the word climate change altogether from this campaign that we worked on to try and engage people in the environment. And one of the slogans that we used was, I don’t do it for the algors, I do it for the outdoors.[LS(43] And it was literally like that insight that you just talked about is why that worked. Because you don’t have to go back and say, yeah, I actually should have been listening to Al Gore when he invented the internet. And yeah.

Will Howard (m+p):

We’re doing some work looking at a range of different topics related to ESG and clean energy is something we work on a lot as a firm and generally work a lot in the energy industry and thinking about how you position and talk about it. I think one of the things there that we’ve started to notice is, especially as we move into an environment where prices and energy prices are taken less for granted and cost is more of a consideration where we kind of had the luxury of wanting to be green. In the last few years, because costs was in a good place. And then as costs start to go up, you see people may be backing off a little bit or starting to worry a little bit more about the cost side of things. And how do you keep them engaged on clean energy when they have these other things on their mind? We’ve noticed that there’s a lot of mileage you can get out of just focusing on the idea of energy innovation and how much growth there’s going to be in these new technologies and how much upside and how cool the technology is and how it makes us more energy independent over the long term because it’s a self-sustaining renewable source. Right. And you can talk about all these different reasons why clean energy is a good investment without ever having to talk about how the fact that if we make these investments, it’s also advancing a climate change agenda to a certain extent.

John Osborn:

The other thing I think we have to realize that sometimes, you know, talking heads like us on this particular recording, you know, we’re a little bit older. And, Will, I don’t know if you have kids. I know that Lee and I are both parents, but, you know, I spend a lot of time with my kids and I see how they interact with their friends. And I think I separate, like, when I’m out with my friends and I talk about climate change. that immediately will turn off half of my friends that are like, oh, okay, we’re gonna go down that road. Well, climate change, those are the tree huggers, and it’s like, you guys knock yourself out. But when I’m talking with my 17-year-old and my 18-year-old, the words climate change, that is really important to them. They are really, really, really passionate about this. And so, not to bring it back to me but in my role with Ad Net Zero when I made that shift into that organization even around my house, you know, suddenly the lines of communication they opened up, my kids took notice they were like, oh, this is great. This is exactly what we’re all talking about in school, this, that, and the other. So you know, sometimes, you know, we as marketers, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to capture that next generation, you know, the future of the franchise kind of a thing similar to this conversation. Sometimes when you focus on what really matters to these kids. and the choices they make in terms of where they go to school, where they go to work. You know, employees have a tremendous amount of power these days in that they’ve got a choice. And, you know, running a business, your job partially is to maintain an unfair share of the best talent that’s out there. And so, in order to represent that next wave, that next generation, we also should just make sure we shouldn’t fall into the trap of just assuming that because we’re a little older, a little bit more experienced, and we know what we know based on our experience, that’s not necessarily the experience or the needs or wants of the next generation coming up the line.

Lee Carter:

I think it is interesting how, you know, we always say it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. And when it comes to climate change, there’s different audiences that hear very different things. But when we’re trying to engage, I think the broadest audience in all of this, I do think it’s important to think, how can we do that effectively and get more people to care because it’s going to take everybody, right, to deal with this really real issue. And so I’m curious, John, you on your homepage at Net Zero, you lead with this term climate emergency. So could you tell us a little bit more about that language? And is that something that you were involved in it first of all, and like in that language or is that already there? Tell me how people react to it.

John Osborn:

It was pre-existing to when I came into the fold, but I support that phraseology because the word emergency cuts through the haze, the smog of the debate, and it gets people to lean into the conversation because the word emergency, you know, it is a very intentional word. Now if everybody else starts using the word emergency, there’s going to be a saturation point at which there’s a possibility that people will turn off that word and let it roll over them like a wave. And they won’t really pay attention to it. But I believe that that was an intentional word choice. I believe that it’s designed to try and get people to at least lean in to start to learn more about what it is that Ad Net Zero is trying to do. And even then, though, there’s a misunderstanding behind the mission. Because again, we’re focused on trying to clean up ad operations. Changing what we do by how we do what we do is really what we’re trying to focus on. What we’re not trying to focus on is telling other companies how the business choices that they should make. We’re only trying to say, look, as an industry, we do what we do and we do a lot of various things and we make decisions on behalf of our clients. Let’s do those things and maybe change the way we do those things so that we can still achieve the same outcomes. But the process whereby we do it is a lot cleaner by cleaning up the supply path in the programmatic domain, and figuring out how to expend a lot less carbon when we go and do productions. Maybe we took a look at, you know, I’m not saying people shouldn’t travel. I’m a big believer that face-to-face interactions is something that we must, we must continue to promote. You know, as human beings, we crave that. We’ve just learned that coming out of the pandemic, but maybe we can travel smarter. Maybe we can travel better. Maybe we can be more selective about how and when and where we do travel. That’s what we’re saying. Be thoughtful about decisions like that. Everything comes down to decisions at the end of the day. We’re just trying to arm people with the information they need to consider in making those decisions. And currently, those mechanisms, those platforms, those measurement frameworks, they’re not available. And we’re trying to figure out what’s out there and bring it together and create consensus. That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s a tall order and it’s messy, but we think it’s really important to get to where we think we need to go.

Lee Carter:

And you know, it’s interesting because you talked in the beginning about the importance of context in how you’re communicating. And I think in the context of what you’re trying to achieve, climate emergency might be the right language. In the context of fundraising for Red Cross or for SBP in my case, or just having a conversation with people to engage, maybe it’s not the right language there. I saw yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article about companies taking a stand or getting involved in more political issues. And it said in it there was about 70% of executives thinks it’s important for companies to be taking a stand on our most pressing issues facing us. And more employees think it’s important to work for a company that’s taking a stand on these issues. But fewer than 30% of consumers actually want companies to be taking a stand on these issues. So there’s sort of this disconnect in how we communicate. So knowing your audience and the context, I think, is really important. So for you, working with industry, trying to get people to retain great talent, I think it makes sense that you’re really related to a cause. But then when you’re talking about something else, maybe the right language is more around extreme weather because I think one of the beauties, and just to parse some of the language that I’m, or the way I’m thinking is one of the beauties of the term extreme weather or severe weather or all of that is that it’s happening now. We don’t have the problem that we talked about earlier about this is a far off issue that’s way in the future we’re battling. Severe weather is something that we’re dealing with right now. As you talked about, as we’re sitting here, it’s 84 degrees and what’s happening in New Jersey, Florida just had flooding. I mean everywhere there’s stuff going on it’s happening right now. So you don’t have to engage people in thinking about that distant future. And so maybe for different purposes, the language should be different. I would subscribe to that.

Will Howard:

Yeah, and I will say, as we think about the kind of cloud of crises and how the word crisis is the banking crisis or time and crisis, whatever the different, all the different… You haven’t fully shifted from the tone of crisis, but to me, an emergency, the first-word association I have with emergency is “response.” And the idea that there is something you can do in an emergency, you call a number and someone comes and they fix it. At least there are steps associated with an emergency, whereas a crisis to me just is an ambient chaos. We are in a crisis, it’s a catastrophe. There’s no professional who comes and shows up and solves it for you. Like there’s no way to fix it. And I think that at least in that regard I like emergency as a direction better than crisis

John Osborn:

That is brilliant and I completely agree with you. It’s sort of like there’s a big difference between gloom and doom. We’re doomed. There’s nothing we can do about it versus emergency. Smokes on the horizon, boots on, saddle up, we’re heading up. We’re going to tackle this thing. That’s the spirit and that’s the opportunity that still exists despite the data, despite the headlines. If we take action now, we can make a difference. We really can affect the future. We can time-shift what the world will look like in the future. And it’s just really hard to get that message to stick across a very wide array of people. It’s a classic marketing challenge, but what industry better than advertising to respond to such a challenge? And we’ve seen what happens when advertising bands together and puts aside self-interest and competitive spirit because let’s face it advertising is one of the most competitive businesses out there but if you look back after you know after wars after 9/11, the Great Recession what’s help restore the spirits of cities and the United States better than advertising scott and people off up off their that you know they stood up the dust themselves off and we’ve locked arms and we’ve gotten on with it. And we’ve solved really sticky, thorny, hairy, giant problems over history. This is another such opportunity.

Lee Carter:

I do love the idea that it’s boots on the ground. It’s like you can do something about it rather than it just being this overwhelming haze. I think that is really, really powerful. And I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. The other thing it reminds me of is a project we did some time ago where it was a financial institution. Everybody was talking about their retirement solutions and financial solutions. And what we heard from folks is, you know what, I don’t really want a solution, I want a strategy and here’s why. Solution implies I have a problem. I don’t have a problem. I don’t have a financial problem or retirement problem. You’re telling me I have a problem. And if it’s a solution, it’s one point in time you’re gone. I want somebody who’s going to be in this with me for the long term. I need a strategy that’s going to get me through everything to come. So it was like the difference was one point in time a problem versus a partnership where we’re going to get through this together. In this case, it’s almost like the reverse. In emergency, it’s like, we can do something about this right now. Let’s lock arms and we can solve this. I love the spirit behind that. I never even thought, in some ways, we always talk about how positive framing can be more powerful than negative framing. When you think about the term emergency, you wouldn’t think that’s more positive framing, but it is definitely more spirited, positive than crisis.

John Osborn:

The firehouse mentality for sure.

Lee Carter:

Yeah.

John Osborn:

I really enjoyed that conversation. By the way, Will, you’re absolutely right about the word emergency conveys response. I hadn’t actually thought about that prior to this call, but you’re absolutely right. Probably hadn’t thought about it because I don’t spend that much time thinking about the word emergency the way you guys do because it was preexisting when I came into the fold. But when we really pause and we hone in on that word, you’re absolutely right. That’s a word, alarm, emergency, like, God, I like respond. You’re absolutely right. It’s really smart. Now, we may need to rethink that word if all of a sudden emergency becomes like the word du jour, you know, the way things tend to be.

Will Howard:

And I think it still has some of the same issues crisis does is like if you accept the fundamental premise that people are like, crisis out or that you want a more positive as opposed to negative framing, but I at least think emergency to me feels more tangible than crisis, it feels more solvable than crisis, which I think is a good thing.

John Osborn:

Yeah. And then Lee, you’re right about the fatigue aspect because you do get to the fatigue. I mean, crisis, crisis, crisis. It’s like, oh my God, how many more crises can there be? You know…

Lee Carter:

But I was in a presentation this week and they had a slide about the number of crises that we’re in right now and there was some I hadn’t even heard of before. I’m like, we’re in the middle of like 27 crises. It’s like there’s a global crisis, there’s an oil crisis, there’s an energy crisis, there’s a retirement crisis, there’s a financial crisis, a banking crisis, a health crisis, like opioid crisis. Fentanyl crisis, a border crisis, an immigration… it was insane. I looked at it, and I was like, so how do you pick which one you want to jump on? It’s like, I don’t want to deal with any of it. I’m just going to go have a cocktail, call it a day.

John Osborn:

Yeah. Exactly. But we can’t do that, Lee. We cannot do that.

Lee Hartley Carter:

No, we’re not going to do that because we’ve got to get people engaged. But I think that the important thing that I just want to sort of come back to here is that understanding the context, understanding… how you’re communicating, what people are hearing is so important. It’s not enough to be right in this case. It’s not enough to have the facts on your side. What really matters right now is engaging people so that they do something. So we’ve got to think about the behavior, just as Will had said earlier, what is the behavior we’re really trying to get them to enact and what are we trying to drive here and make sure that we’re communicating in a way that has the result that we’re looking for. I think it’s a really important time for companies for nonprofits and for associations to figure out where do they fit in all of this? Are they speaking to people who are going to be mobilized by terms like climate emergency and climate change? Or are you speaking to folks who are going to be more engaged by extreme weather or severe weather? Or are you going to be more likely to be successful if you just get people to care about a small action that they can take today? But all of it matters because we want everybody on the same team. We’re all in this together. And I think you’ve just got to think about where you’re getting people on the environmental curve.

John Osborn:

It’s exactly right. And I think storytelling, I think, plays a role in it as well. You know, having a great ability to tell a story in a relevant, meaningful way that hits people here in their heart, as well as, you know, makes rational sense to them in their head.

Lee Carter:

So I know you have a bunch of issues that are important to you, because over time, I know that you’ve been involved with the Red Cross, you’ve been involved with PAL, you’ve been involved with mentorship. I mean, there’s so many things that I know you have a heart for service. How did you get to a place, like what is your story about how you got so involved in issues related to climate change?

John Osborn:

Well, it’s really twofold. I mean, I’ve always been an outdoors person and that’s sort of my quiet zone. So my off valve, if you will, is just taking the dogs, going for a really long hike through the woods. And I love nature and I don’t know why I love nature. It just goes back to my childhood. I just really love different things. And I haven’t told this story that much, but like years ago, about nine years ago, I was doing some work for a college on a committee and it required me to drive north once every month and I would get up early on a Thursday morning at like four in the morning in Connecticut and drive up Route 91 and as the sun would come up you’d see things come alive and I love owls for a variety of reasons. One is that we live in a world where everyone’s looking down at their phones or whatever and owls look up more importantly they look almost 360 around which is kind of cool so they’ve got like a good peripheral vision and you know 360 vision… But one morning I was driving north on Route 91, doing about 85 on 91, and as the sun came up, I thought to myself, wow, it’d be cool to see an owl. And then my mind, because I always have healthy paranoia, my mind then immediately leapt to like, oh my gosh, wouldn’t it be horrible to hit an owl with a car? I wonder how many owls get hit by a car. As I’m thinking this, I kid you not, out of the left side of my field of vision, I saw something move. And coming across the highway was just not flapping just wings outstretched swooping down was a giant owl and it was coming straight for the front of the car which I realize I would have run over if I stayed at the pace of speed so I floored it hoping that I could get in front of the trajectory so it would fly behind my vehicle going after whatever was going after and it hit my driver’s side window hard and the last thing I saw was the face of the owl crushing against the window and then it dropped out of frame and I started to slow down. I pulled into the breakdown lane, put my hazards on, and looked down the road and all it was was like a crumpled pile of feathers, like an old feather pillow in the middle of the road. And I said, oh my gosh, I’ve killed this owl. What have I done? It was too far up the road to back up. And then another car came along and the car stopped and someone got out and they looked over this thing and I stood there for about three, four minutes, nothing I could really do. It was too dangerous to back up. I’ve tried waving, yelling, whatever, but nothing worked. Got back in the car, went up to the meetings. At lunchtime I called my wife before I drove back home and she said, you know, on the off chance maybe that person that you saw, maybe the person rescued the owl, drove it to that great place that we went to a year ago called Vins over in Quechie. You might want to call them. I called them. And they said, we got your owl. And I was relieved, so much so that I gave a small donation and they agreed to kind of keep me in touch with the rehabilitation. I ended up driving up and releasing the owl and it was really fascinating because no, the metaphor isn’t the world is the owl and we’re like going to crush a car windshield. The real story here is the story of collaboration between something much more intricate than I had realized, which is, you know it was a tale of how people, even strangers when they come together amazing things can happen. In this particular instance, it had a happy ending. And so that’s what I’m hoping for with the conversation we just had, which is if different people come together and put a little bit of self-interest aside, we can make a bigger impact and we might, if we do it right, pave the way towards a potentially happy ending to this dialogue. And so that was kind of the eye-opener. And then I got really involved in the American Red Cross in addition to my day job. And I’ve always sort of viewed my role in any kind of a job as consistent with how I view my role in life, which is try and help and serve others. And so I jumped into the Red Cross, served in Greater New York. And when I left my former role and I was on the sidelines for a moment, the phone rang and they said, look, we’re looking for somebody to come in and it’s got some creative background, media background, but importantly, someone that’s done a lot of not-for-profit work. And that’s important because in the not-for-profit world, it is sometimes like herding cats. You’ve got to appeal to lots of different constituencies, different stakeholders, many of whom have different opinions, different experiences, different walks of life, whatever. And I’ve always tried to kind of look for the commonality. I’m always sort of thought of myself as kind of a unifier. And I think that’s important in this dialogue. We’re trying not to repel people away. We’re trying to find common ground in the dialogue so that we can bring more and more people into the fold. And just to round out my very long answer to you, very simple question, Lee, it really came true after that call that I got from Ad Net Zero, like so many pieces have to kind of click together in order for this to really represent the kind of leap forward that we need to make. It’s just fascinating. Another thing we have to think about is like, I think that like climate change, you know, solving climate change is not always free either. You know, when I order my food from Chipotle and it gives me the readout of all the various carbon loads of various things, that’s very informative, but oftentimes there are other calculators that show, if you click this button for the carbon offsets, it’s gonna cost you more. Sometimes it’s a fair amount more, not a dollar more. I mean, it could be like five, 10, $15 more for a product that used to cost $30. That’s a significant increase in cost. So we have to think about the cost barriers in all of this as well as being another determinant. That’s not the conversation we’re having here today, but it’s an intricate problem that we’re trying to distill down in a simple way in a way that will more unify more people together into the conversation towards ultimately trying to get them to take the right kinds of action. Classic marketing problem and opportunity.

Lee Carter:

Wow, the thing I think that’s so powerful, John, about your story is when we did the research years ago, and I did research on trying to get people involved in the environment in China, in India, in the US, all over, the common thread, where people fell in love with this issue was their love for nature, was I remember going camping and seeing the stars. I remember being able to swim in a lake without being concerned with my parents. I wanna make sure that I can take my kids camping, fishing. Whatever it is that is our tie to nature is usually what ties us to this issue. And I think that’s what’s so powerful. That’s something we can all agree on. We don’t have to get everybody to agree that climate change is real or happening. What we do have to get people to agree on is this planet matters. And however you experience nature, you want to keep it that way, right? You want to keep it pure. When you look at some of the things that we’ve accomplished, I mean, think about the rivers around New York City. When I was growing up, nobody would even dream of going in a, you know, triathlon across the East River because that would be toxic. Now you can swim in them. There’s been huge leaps forward. And if we can focus on that, there’s so much that we can do. I’m really sorry for your owl, but I’m glad it got you here.

John Osborn:

Thank you. Thank you, Lee. I really appreciate it. I also have a theory. This may be, this is just a personal theory. It’s not based on any kind of data or anything like that. But coming back to our role in the advertising community, there’s been so much talk about the metaverse and about, you know, the alternate worlds through portals such as screens on various devices. People escape. Now there’s the whole new wave of AI and what that’s going to imply for people and organizations. I actually think that all of this is also, for every trend there’s a counter-trend. I think it’s only going to put more of a premium, more value in real life things that are more connected to the world in which we live. So things like those walks in the woods, things like the owls, things like Montana, this is gonna become more and more precious. It’s gonna become more and more rare in a way. And I think it’s actually that much more important that we work now to preserve some of that before it’s too late.

Lee Carter:

Absolutely. Well, John, thank you so much for joining. Will, thank you for joining. For all of our listeners and guests, thank you so much for joining. I hope all of you got something out of this conversation. I know I feel like I need to take a walk in nature, and get more involved in an issue that’s going to help preserve and matter. So wherever you are in the business world, in the nonprofit world, I hope that you find language that can help you get more people engaged in this episode. And so for more language insights and to be in a loop on all the other fun stuff we’re doing, follow us on LinkedIn at maslansky + partners and join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more episodes of hearsay because when it comes to truly effective communications, it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.