Adam Devine writes:
There may be a major magazine cover that hasn’t featured the environment. There may be a celebrity who hasn’t taken an affirmative stance on the push to protect the planet. There may be a handful of people who aren’t at least vaguely aware that everyone is talking about going green.
But I haven’t read, seen or met any of them.
Everyone and everything is about sustainability right now. This is awesome. This is beyond awesome. I’m relieved. But even as I sigh in relief, I pensively hold my breath: is the passion for all things and behavior green sustainable? I call this into question because sustainability has become a trend adopted by people and brands alike, and trends by nature are tied to collective attention spans. Which are tiny. Here’s how I view the situation….
The problem with – to spotlight the most obvious enemy of sustainability - global warming, unlike drugs, cigarettes, obesity, guns and disease, is that it hasn’t directly, obviously killed anyone. And by anyone I mean any person; plenty of animals and plants have bit the dust because their ecology has been inexorably changed. But no one human has died expressly because it snows less, because sea levels have crept up and decreased the amount of waterfront real estate on the coasts, or because sunsets are redder from the amount of pollutants in the air. You could make the case that skin cancer is a lot more common and that respiratory illnesses are more prevalent, but people aren’t dropping en masse. It isn’t obvious. It isn’t immediate. It’s a slow, ignorable demise.
But a handful of visionary, passionate individuals and companies tapped into an idea on the rise and alarming heretofore buried and boring stats and figures became a part of public discourse, and sustainability became a megatrend.
Trend is a troubling word, though. A trend by nature is fleeting. We have short attention spans, and the 3,600 ad messages we get a day, coupled with the litany of new ideas and content and technology, has reduced our ability to focus even more. We pick something up, play with it and toss it for the new cool – or altruistic - thing. Remember when PETA ruled the moral roost and no designer would be caught dead sending models down the runway wearing anything, well, dead? I see an awful lot of leather and plenty of fur running around here in trend setting New York City. Remember when everyone was Just Saying No? Coke and all the really hard stuff is as big now as it was in the early 80s.
Green is the new Badge Value. At what point does the Badge become played-out and suddenly overshadow and compromise the Value?
I wonder if – or rather worry that - the huge amount of hype around sustainability isn’t sustainable. I worry that sustainability is a trend that will come and go, and then come again when people actually start dying in 20 or 50 or 100 years, when it’s even later than too late (because it’s almost too late now). I worry that, in the same way that people gain 30 pounds in two months after losing 20 pounds in six months or start smoking again after a valiant but failed effort to quit or stop jogging after lowering their resting heart rate or raise a stiff celebratory cocktail after detoxing for Lent or stop using condoms because they’re tired of being nagged and are less concerned about AIDS/HIV because the government stopped talking about it and because scaring people wasn’t really a sustainable approach to begin with, people will resume their old consumptive, careless ways.
Sustainability shouldn’t be the hottest trend in marketing or badge value for a blockbuster actor or this season’s must-have ideological accessory or a platform for election. It should be, it has to be, the way we live from here on out.
I think communications agencies and our clients have a responsibility not only to voice their green work but also to help define how people can make it a part of their lives, and in doing so make sustainability trend-proof. Sustainability should manifest itself not only in press releases but also as products and ideas that people cannot fathom living with out. I think it should manifest itself as collaborative, hands-on community and national efforts that educate people and improve the environment. Brands and their agencies must help to make the culture of using smarter and using less as taken for granted as breathing. Because if it doesn’t, we won’t be able to take breathing for granted someday.
My next entry will be lighter. Promise.
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