What Works When Communicating About Climate and More

Published November 19th, 2009 in communications strategy, green marketing, resources, universities | No Comments »

I wrote in April about what decision science research tells us about how people respond to environmental issues and what that means for communicators. Now the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University has released an illustrated guide to the psychology of climate change communication—handily summarized by Grist blogger Jonathan Hiskes here.

Even if you’re not communicating directly or specifically about climate change, take a look. There are nuggets here that can be useful to people trying to influence behavior on a spectrum of environment-related topics—from clean tech companies trying to get staid industries to adopt new technologies to universities trying to boost participation in campus sustainability efforts.

Much of the advice boils down to the fundamental communications truth—it’s not about you; it’s about your audience. Know who they are, speak their language, put problems and solutions in their context, be concrete, don’t exaggerate, and give people easy ways to act. You’ve no doubt heard these rules before (we certainly can’t shut up about them), but this guide gives you the science behind why you ignore them at your peril, and may give you fresh ideas on how to to apply them.

Lack of Clarity Can Mean Lack of Credibility

Published November 2nd, 2009 in Credibility Quotient, marketing | No Comments »

We love engineers. We work with a lot of them, and appreciate their analytical minds and openness to well-supported suggestions. But engineers should not be writing marketing copy. Alas, in the world of clean tech (and sometimes other sustainability sectors) it seems they often do.

The result for most readers is a lack of clarity. Symptoms of engineer-driven copy include an overabundance of technical detail up front, inadequate explanations of complex technology and processes, and a failure to show benefits and results. This that can translate to a lack of credibility with the target market in number of ways:

  • When you hit people with technical details right off the bat, many will give up trying to understand and go away.
  • If you can’t explain what you do clearly and concisely, it may send the message that you aren’t quite up to the task of execution.
  • If you don’t show people how they will benefit and what results they’ll see, you give them no reason to engage you.
  • Lack of clarity is increasingly associated with greenwashing (see an earlier post on this).

Communications that are clear and credible explain the  solution and technology as simply as possible, keeping audience needs in mind; provide technical details and specifications separately from core messages whenever possible; and keep benefits and results front and center.