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I had an interesting meeting last week that changed my view on something. I met up with a charity called Global Cool (http://www.globalcool.org/). They have a similar aim to us at The Marketing Society Mayday Alliance – they want to get people doing the right stuff for sustainability and they focus on making those actions desirable by associating with cool people, celebrities and so on.
Anyway, they suggested applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the environment. And of course it makes perfect sense. As you well know, the bottom segment of the pyramid is all about security and meeting basic needs, the middle levels (esteem and love/belonging) are about worrying about ‘me’, with the top self-actualisation layer about worrying about other people and the world at large too.
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So, if we segment people using Maslow with an environmental slant we see the people at the top of the triangle tend to work in the sustainability space already and talk about why it’s the right thing to do for the planet as that really motivates them to act, the middle might become more environmentally friendly if they thought it was trendy or something their peers were doing but no one has really talked to them about it in this way so far, while the people at the bottom of the pyramid won’t buy a solar panel to save the planet, but they might if they thought the Russians were going to block our gas supplies! This has made me think about the way I’m communicating messages to save the planet. In fact, it’s made me start to think differently. What do you think?
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