3D Storytelling for Sustainability
Two days of motorway driving just to spend a day queuing for rides at a theme park – my weekend couldn’t have been designed more around my pet hates. The theme park was Legoland and, even though my expectations weren’t that high, I was still disappointed. There were very few ‘Wow!’ moments and everything was aimed at kids.
You may be surprised at my surprise at that last bit, but if you think of last year’s Lego Movie, it worked on different levels – the kids loved the crash bang wallops and the slapstick, the adults got all the quest-movie parodies and jokes about overpriced coffees. Just a soupçon of that wit sprinkled across Legoland would have lifted it from over-priced banality to something everybody could enjoy, not just the kids (especially those who were paying for it!).
Much ‘green communication’ is similarly one-dimensional – it assumes that everybody is interested in rather bland hand-wringing. People who aren’t interested ignore it, people who are interested don’t get anything extra out of it (they already switch the lights off) and people who may be suspicious of greenwash don’t get the proof they need to allay their fears.
So how about designing you communications to handle 3 dimensions of interest from your target audience?
- Interest in green issues – ranging from tree-hugger to eco-sceptic;
- Learning – how does this apply to me, from simple efforts to step changes such as eco-design;
- Depth – ranging from punchy slogans to detailed data.
This can be done on websites and reports – you start at the shallow end and gets deeper and more involved as you explore further.
The wider the audience you appeal to, the more successful you will be – sustainability doesn’t benefit from the pester power that Legoland does!