Sustainability should get more irrational
When sustainability folk communicate on sustainability the focus is almost always on a rational argument. ‘It saves us money’, ‘reduces risk’, ‘aligns with regulation’ and so on. The argument is normally backed by technical language, a trust in process and tables of data (not to mention many, many acronyms!).
When consumer-facing companies sell a product, they don’t behave like that. They tend to focus on getting an emotional reaction.
The message in a Nike advert, for example, is never, “This shoe is 5% lighter and improves energy return by 12%”. Its message is more like ‘overcome adversity’, ‘be part of a movement’, ‘just do it’ and so on.
Here at Northbrook PR we believe that sustainability communications has much learn from the way consumer goods marketers use behavioural psychology to help get their message across. So here are three ideas we want to share:
The parable of the hob nob.
Not everything that is counted, counts
Do one thing well.
1. The parable of the hob nob
As we grow, human brains form intuitive shortcuts knows as heuristics. That is we subconsciously automize certain decisions based on past experience when we find ourselves in the same situation again, e.g. choosing familiar foods in the supermarket, or reordering our usual coffee at the local café. One common shortcut is the ‘trade off’ heuristic – where if we are told that something is ‘better’ or ‘cheaper’ we automatically suspect a diminution of quality elsewhere.
That’s what happened to the Hob Nob team at McVitie’s. Responding to news stories on obesity and sugar they changed the recipe and proudly announced ‘20% less fat’ on the packaging. They hoped for support. The actual result: Plummeting sales.
That’s because when people heard 20% less fat, their trade off heuristic kicked in and they automatically assumed worse taste or reduced quality.
We’ve seen this heuristic in action in sustainable finance. A client who is a high street financial adviser found that when they focused on the greenness or social impact of funds, customers automatically suspected a trade off in terms of reduced returns. Once the emphasis was on value and returns however, even though the same funds were on offer, customers were delighted to invest and have the sustainability impact too.
2. Not everything that is counted, counts
Let’s face it, the sustainability community is obsessed with targets, metrics and measurements. Fair enough, if you want to make a case through rational, scientific argument.
However beware Goodhart's Law, coined by British economist Charles Goodhart, which is that ‘when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure’. The problem is that, humans being humans, they start focusing on ways to achieve that metric rather than use it as the guiderail of progress on which its intended.
NHS waiting lists here in the UK are a good example of this. As it came to light that instead of focusing on how to treat all patients quicker – which was the intention of the metric, several hospitals were found to have prioritised those with quick, straightforward cases. Metric achieved but actual result: More complex patients left waiting longer for treatment.
Rory Sutherland has a great example of this here. He explains how a call centre spent thousands of pounds to reduce the number of rings a customer experienced before pick up from six to three. And yet feedback later showed that this was of very little value. Customers were impressed if there was less than three, annoyed by more than ten, but really didn’t care about anything in between.
When the sustainability community obsesses with emissions data, nature metrics and social value indicators we should remember the famous quote – not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that is counted, counts.
3. Do one thing well
Finally, a controversial one. Most companies and investors will spend a lot of resource trying to excel on as many sustainability metrics as possible from biodiversity to diversity, water to waste. Maybe they shouldn’t.
The goal dilution effect is a behavioural science concept that says when you claim effectiveness at many things, people perceive you do each thing less effectively. Better to choose one thing and excel at that.
In the early days of the internet all the big players – MSN, Yahoo etc – were offering complex portals that fired out information on everything from sport to news and finance. Then along came Google – with its clean and bare white screen – saying that it only did one thing: Search. Partly because of the goal dilution effect most people soon trusted Google to do search much more than they trusted MSN and Yahoo.
In an age of choice overload and decision fatigue, perhaps sustainability communicators should consider focusing heavily on their strongest impacts, rather than trying to be all things to all people.
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Interested in hearing more about how we do sustainability communications? We’d love to chat over a coffee. Get in touch via elliot@northbrookpr.com
