What have sausages got to do with climate change (and no, this isn’t about methane emissions from livestock)? For the answer, see Sizzle – the new report on communicating climate change from Futerra. Why sizzle?
In the 1940s a supersalesman named Elmer Wheeler made what TIME magazine called ‘a handsome living’ advising U.S. businesses: “Don’t sell the sausage – sell the sizzle!” Elmer knew that the big secret to successful selling is that you don’t advertise the sausage itself – because it’s the desirable sounds and smells which get the juices flowing and the people hungry.
And what’s this got to do with climate change?
Climate change itself isn’t the sizzle, it’s the sausage. That’s where our second metaphor comes in. The most common message on climate change is that we’re all going to hell. That’s what climate change looks like when you get right down to it; rising seas, scorched earth, failing food supplies, billions of starving refugees tormented by wild weather. But contrary to every expectation, hell doesn’t actually sizzle. Hell doesn’t sell. Although these Armageddon climate scenarios might be accurate and eye-catching, they haven’t changed attitudes or behaviours nearly enough. Threats of climate hell haven’t seemed to hold us back from running headlong towards it.
So what is the sizzle on climate change? In a nutshell, it’s about making sure that narratives describe the positive, by painting a really resonant picture of what ‘low carbon heaven’ will look like.
This is a really great report. Although I think narratives that emphasise the opportunity on climate change need to be deployed with care, I think that Futerra are spot on in arguing that narratives about responding to climate change and scarcity have to paint a picture of the “sunny uplands” that lie at the other end of the transition. This is something that’s all too often not reflected in campaigning groups’ messaging – and it’s something that needs to be fixed.
