Beyond “Sustainability”: How to Engage Non-Activists in the Climate Challenge

Ally Kingston and Louise McLaren

New research unlocks fresh insights into 42% of the UK population – moderate citizens whose voices aren’t typically part of online climate dialogue and who aren’t necessarily being actively considered by brands and by the advertising industry.

If you’re working in advertising in late 2021, you may well find yourself with an inbox full of sustainability briefs. And while that’s excellent news for the planet in theory, it can be a challenging topic on which to connect.

Often, creative development will carry a disclaimer: there’ll be “climate people” who get it, and “non climate people” who are confused, angered or bored. In a best-case campaign scenario, the non-climate people will vent all their feelings quietly and not on Twitter.

That binary audience thinking comes from using limited data – usually supplied by clients – which only reveals...

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