“Gareth, how do you keep your warehouses clean?”

Like most, I get a daily deluge of spam, mainly SEO or web services, AI-generated come-ons from imaginary women or unbeatable investment opportunities (oh yes, I’m going to trust a stranger with all my savings…). But occasionally I get weirdly esoteric stuff, like warehouse cleaning, “clothing apps” or “container canopies” (me neither).

The latter always makes me wonder “why on earth do they think I’d be interested in that?” And then I have to remember spammers are panning for gold – repeatedly scooping up a huge amount of our bandwidth in the hope they might find a tiny nugget of interest.

But surely warehouse cleaners would be better focussing their efforts on people with warehouses? I mean, if you did happen to have a warehouse or two, surely a. you would already have some form of cleaning process and, b. why would you trust a spammer to do that cleaning for you? I’d love to see the ratios of spam sent:potential buyers:actual buyers – I would be surprised if the latter was enough to run a business on. Maybe I’m wrong, but it smacks of desperation to me.

Climate communications can often feel more than a little bit spammy. In particular, my LinkedIn feed often feels like a deluge of virtue signalling. Yes, I know there’s a global problem, yes I know you’re dedicated to tackling it, but WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?!! I recently accepted a connection invite from a Sustainability consultant who immediately DM’d me a copy-and-paste sales pitch for a Sustainability strategy for my business. I replied to ask him had he read my profile first – because that’s what I do – but got no response.

I blame purveyors of ‘content marketing’ for this blizzard of white noise bouncing around the Sustainability echo chamber. I cleave to the one effective, but small subset of content marketing, ‘value marketing’, where you communicate something useful to the world. The recipients can either pick that idea/concept up and run with it themselves (fill your boots!), or get back in touch for my help if they need it.

Probably the most useful value I have brought to the debate is that of ‘green jujitsu’, translating the Sustainability message into something meaningful to each audience. It is the polar opposite of spam, thinking about the needs of the recipient in the context of what you are trying to achieve and then crafting an engagement approach to find the win-win sweetspot for both. It works a treat, and every time somebody uses it, whether inspired by my resources or working it out for themselves, it gives me a glow of satisfaction..

But to go back to my main point, let’s have more signal, less noise and maybe we can make some progress (and I might even buy from you).