How to realign behaviour to tackle big challenges in a world that is on the edge of a nervous breakdown?
In an age of fluid information flows and ridiculous interconnectivity, I’m on the look out for neat, smart things that can have a big impact, fast, taking the sustainability message out into the wild and engaging with the seemingly unreachable.
Moving on from easy wins
Sustainability needs to be about more than preaching to the converted. At a corporate level, the language of responsibility and values is a good one as it resonates well in the boardroom. Who doesn’t want (need) to say they to run a sustainable, responsible company, despite what the accounts, ethics, and performance of the business may actually tell.
Beyond the glass doors of the boardroom, ethics and ‘eco’ fit the green consumer well. The rise of ethical consumption has, to a certain extent, raised all boats. For example, the mainstreaming of certification standards has been helped by the push of retailers to use these standards on their own branded goods.
But as with the chief executive, who doesn’t want to say they live a responsible / sustainable life. Would you eat crappy food, buy harmful/ toxic products, wear poorly made clothes if you didn’t have to? These two groups have been easy wins – but what about everyone else?
Everyone else is getting on with living in a scary post-financial crisis world of greater job insecurity, food price inflation, and now the swinging public services axe.
Living well is about enjoying yourself and doing what matters to you:
- If you are into living sustainably fine. The companies you engage with take note, providing you with better options and a positive feedback loop kicks into action.
- If you are not, you are more likely to need more help with your health, be bigger polluters, not put pressure on retailers to up their game.
We need tools that fit into peoples lives and make them better
RPGs and sustainability
EpicWin (do watch video as it explains it very well) turns your to-do list into an role playing game (rpg). As you complete to-do items on your list you unlock levels, points etc.
The more you complete in real life, the more you accumulate in the game.
This neat approach approach is exactly what is needed to make the shift from doing your (sustainability) chores to adding your chores to something you will probably do anyway (play games). This mobile gaming model gets into peoples lives without being obtrusive, annoying or worthy. Of course, you could cheat but the appeal of this is that you might actually do something that would otherwise be permanently on the sh1tlist.
Taking the format and changing it up a bit, its not a stretch to see companies and organisations working much more closely with games developers like those behind Epic Win to create games like this that are tailored to users lives and promote sustainable (better) living.
Below I have looked at health and recycling (thanks for image: http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/):
The ‘app explosion’ has come at the right time for big companies for whom trust is bust (provided hardware makers work on the satisfaction footpinting side of things). Putting a bit of budget into something like this is about becoming an enabler and making your marketing department fit for the 21st Century. Make our lives better and more enjoyable and we may become your friend.
This also helps sustainability get out of its box which, if you remember, is what you all say you do as good responsible citizens.
Anyway, loads of possibilities. The above image comes from a slidedeck which explores the idea more fully, looking at outcomes, possibilities, etc. I’d be keen to hear your ideas for using this. This is a very exciting way to get all the pent up knowledge out there, interact with new people, forge new relationships, and have the values conversation (without referring to it). In fact, everyone should be doing this already.
Now to find a sponsor, get in touch with a developer and build it. If that’s you (!) or you want to see the full deck and explore how this might work for your organisation get in touch.
Related posts:
Resetting retail (saving our cities)
Buy less, get more: sustainable consumption goes social
From thought leadership to mass collaboration
RSA: Animate -What motivates us
How to: Futuregazing, sustainability and creative content
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