• by Benny Thomas , Op-Ed Contributor, March 12, 2014

“People change the world,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert, in her excellent and very frightening book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. As you may have guessed if you read this column, she doesn’t mean in a good, Joan of Arc-Gandhi-Dr.King-Einstein way. In the history of life on earth, there have been five extinctions. But none as great as the one we are now engineering through our population, our technologies and, finally, by our refusal to think beyond short-term gratification. 

This is not news to any student of behavioral economics, or what I call the “Wimpy syndrome” (from Popeye, remember?) – “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Sometimes, that kind of thinking bears dividends – it helps us respond nimbly to crises and motivates us to work hard for a perceived reward. But when it malfunctions, which is often, it leads to all kinds of disaster. The financial crisis of 2008, for example, was brought on by excessive borrowing based on overconfidence and an inability to imagine the consequences of defaulting on your loan. There’s a much bigger default coming, simply because we cannot comprehend the idea of extinction. And this time, the Fed isn’t going to save us. 

This is one of those cases where our reptilian brain triumphs over the little sliver of the pre-frontal cortex. We simply are unable to conceive of the earth being destroyed. It has always been there and, in our minds, it always will be. I’ve always wondered about those people you hear about who stay in their homes despite being warned about the approach of tornadoes, floods, fires or hostile armies. Why do they do it? Most of them are unable to think of an alternative. Consciously, or unwittingly, they choose extinction over behavioral change. 

So what can we do as marketers to jolt people out of this fatal blindness? One simple way to do that is to visualize the damage. What’s the equivalent of putting smoker lungs on cigarette packs? How do we show the effect of dumping millions of tons of gaseous waste into the atmosphere? How about an app that gradually blackens up your phone screen once a day, to dramatize the trashing of the earth? 

There is another way, one that behavioral scientists often use, and it’s the indirect motivation method. Use triggers that motivate people, to get them to do something that’s for their own good without their realizing it. Nike FuelBand tapped into that perfectly with that blinking band of lights that shows you when you are getting close to your ideal calorie burn for the day. People tend to want completion and so they’ll walk an extra block or climb more stairs just to get into the green zone.

So why don’t we gameify sustainability? Make it a competition and, suddenly, everyone will be motivated to beat the next high school or town or country. Especially if we could also add economic incentives. For example: tax fossil fuel consumption and pollution and pay that back to the winners of the sustainability game as a “green dividend.” It works every time. Just ask London, Singapore and other cities that have implemented congestion pricing to manage city traffic. 

And, finally, let’s appeal to the emotional triggers every marketer already uses: vanity, sexuality, fantasy, wish-fulfilment – why can’t these serve the cause of the environment? Next time, I’ll talk about two brands that have made a start in this direction. But, meanwhile, let’s keep this conversation going. Tell me how you would motivate people to face the realities of climate change and alter their behavior. As a species, ideas are our most endlessly renewable resource – and at this point, we need all the ideas we can get.