Being further north, nearer the icecap, an island nation,having a government that acknowledge global warming as something other than junk science and a freer media means that Brits get to hear some interesting stuff on the "Beeb", BBC radio four. If you are interested in informative, well research material about what our European neighbors are doing to be green, tune into the BBC through your computer.
Here are the action items I gleaned from a recent show. A longer piece will soon be in LNE magazine. Check out www.lneonline.com if you don't already get the magazine. Their most recent editor is waving the green flag and publishing about all sorts of holistic treatments. It is really worth a read. Great pictures too.
HOW HELP YOUR STAFF AND CLIENTS BE BOTHERED AND TAKE ACTION -Advise from British psychologists.
Paint a heavenly future when you talk about your green goals rather than describing the hell we all want to avoid. Pictures of gloom and doom turn us off, sap our energy and paralyze us rather than energizing us into action.
Talk about ordinary tangible things that the average client or staff member can choose to do. Don’t talk about tipping points, deadlines beyond which there is no hope. They are great to motivate serious funders that are used to planning on predicted numbers but totally freak out, bore or plain turn off the average person.
Introduce changes as being positive for everyone that are just plain common sense and demonstrate common ethical values. Don’t use saving money as the single motivator for change. This entrains people to make decisions that help our environment only if they are cost effective.
Be inclusive. Green initiatives, especially here in the US, are either thought of as hippie/environmentalist, liberal democrat especially as we had an ex-democratic vice President Al Gore presenting the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” or even elitist. These habit changes must be something everyone can get on board with irrespective of social group, political persuasion or any other socio economic reason. Every spa can be green in some way.
Green must not be associated with austerity, not having, but having something better and more rewarding. We see this trend in magazines like Real Simple whose by line is cleverly, “life made easier, everyday”. Most of us thing easier is better . Let’s make green easy and better too.
Green must become the new glamorous. How about hosting what in Europe they are calling a “swishing party” which tries to replicate the buzz women get from clothes shopping, but in a carbon neutral way. Buying clothes from foreign countries accounts for about 10% of our carbon foot print. Green action must become fun and status-rich, rather than signing clients or staff up for a life of grim austerity, SWISH.
Talk to people, every client and staff member as if green actions are normal and the smartest thing to do for everyone, which they are of course. Marketing geniuses tell us clients don’t respond well to words like global warming, climate change, or even pollution. But interestingly everyone seemed to respond positively to working to take care of our deteriorating atmosphere. Even though CO2 is not poisonous breathe, maybe the intimacy of the very air we breathe is present and understandable so start there.
Use local examples. In Britain they had a campaign to highlight the melting northern ice cap with a jingle, whose punch line was, “Don’t make the polar bears cry”. It failed on two fronts. Firstly, people thought they had to be environmentalists to be concerned and secondly they believed the world of polar bears was a long way off and didn’t have much relevance to normal life of the average Brit.
Make every green suggestion sound and feel important. If the solutions offered in a message are too simple or painless such as turning off the lights or unplugging your phone charger, unintentionally we might be encouraging the idea the problem can't be that serious if the answers are so trivial and so not worth doing?
Do your part to connect clients with nature. People will value the natural world if they experience the bliss that this connection offers. Many destination spas are in beautiful places but even the small city bound day spa can have local flowers, fruits and skin care products. This approach is now being tested by WWF the World Wildlife Fund with projects like Natural Change in Scotland.
Give it a try.
Here are the action items I gleaned from a recent show. A longer piece will soon be in LNE magazine. Check out www.lneonline.com if you don't already get the magazine. Their most recent editor is waving the green flag and publishing about all sorts of holistic treatments. It is really worth a read. Great pictures too.
HOW HELP YOUR STAFF AND CLIENTS BE BOTHERED AND TAKE ACTION -Advise from British psychologists.
Paint a heavenly future when you talk about your green goals rather than describing the hell we all want to avoid. Pictures of gloom and doom turn us off, sap our energy and paralyze us rather than energizing us into action.
Talk about ordinary tangible things that the average client or staff member can choose to do. Don’t talk about tipping points, deadlines beyond which there is no hope. They are great to motivate serious funders that are used to planning on predicted numbers but totally freak out, bore or plain turn off the average person.
Introduce changes as being positive for everyone that are just plain common sense and demonstrate common ethical values. Don’t use saving money as the single motivator for change. This entrains people to make decisions that help our environment only if they are cost effective.
Be inclusive. Green initiatives, especially here in the US, are either thought of as hippie/environmentalist, liberal democrat especially as we had an ex-democratic vice President Al Gore presenting the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” or even elitist. These habit changes must be something everyone can get on board with irrespective of social group, political persuasion or any other socio economic reason. Every spa can be green in some way.
Green must not be associated with austerity, not having, but having something better and more rewarding. We see this trend in magazines like Real Simple whose by line is cleverly, “life made easier, everyday”. Most of us thing easier is better . Let’s make green easy and better too.
Green must become the new glamorous. How about hosting what in Europe they are calling a “swishing party” which tries to replicate the buzz women get from clothes shopping, but in a carbon neutral way. Buying clothes from foreign countries accounts for about 10% of our carbon foot print. Green action must become fun and status-rich, rather than signing clients or staff up for a life of grim austerity, SWISH.
Talk to people, every client and staff member as if green actions are normal and the smartest thing to do for everyone, which they are of course. Marketing geniuses tell us clients don’t respond well to words like global warming, climate change, or even pollution. But interestingly everyone seemed to respond positively to working to take care of our deteriorating atmosphere. Even though CO2 is not poisonous breathe, maybe the intimacy of the very air we breathe is present and understandable so start there.
Use local examples. In Britain they had a campaign to highlight the melting northern ice cap with a jingle, whose punch line was, “Don’t make the polar bears cry”. It failed on two fronts. Firstly, people thought they had to be environmentalists to be concerned and secondly they believed the world of polar bears was a long way off and didn’t have much relevance to normal life of the average Brit.
Make every green suggestion sound and feel important. If the solutions offered in a message are too simple or painless such as turning off the lights or unplugging your phone charger, unintentionally we might be encouraging the idea the problem can't be that serious if the answers are so trivial and so not worth doing?
Do your part to connect clients with nature. People will value the natural world if they experience the bliss that this connection offers. Many destination spas are in beautiful places but even the small city bound day spa can have local flowers, fruits and skin care products. This approach is now being tested by WWF the World Wildlife Fund with projects like Natural Change in Scotland.
Give it a try.
No comments:
Post a Comment