Storytelling vs metrics in climate communication

I met my inspiration at NY Climate Week and the insights she dropped will shape my work for years. Solitaire Townsend shared something uncomfortable: we've been telling the same "running out of time" story for longer than some activists have been alive. After decades at Futerra studying storytelling, here's the truth → Stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than facts. Yet we keep managing data instead of managing emotion. Three narrative killers plague climate stories: → Sacrifice – telling people they must give up everything → Agency – making people feel powerless → Fatalism – convincing young people (up to 50%) that we're doomed When she started in the '90s, renewable energy was a joke—"what a few weirdos in California did." Now it's cheaper than fossil fuels. The story changed. The world changed. But we're STILL stuck at the inciting incident without moving forward. That's not how society changes. Society changes through punctuated equilibrium. Everything stays the same, then everything changes at once. We're at that moment. Here's what we miss: people engage with climate differently. After testing across markets from China to the US to Europe, Futerra identified three psychographic groups in your boardrooms and buying committees: GREENS (systems-first) → Push lifecycle TCO, Scope 1-3 cuts, resilience scores. Want credible roadmaps, open data and predictive impact metrics. What stalls them: short-termism and vendor lock-in GOLDS (societal-status focused) → Ask "What are peers doing?" Need recognizable logos, benchmarks, case studies. Move on what will make them look good internally and externally What stalls them: jargon and unclear immediate value. BRICKS (pragmatic operators) → Need <18-month payback, concrete playbooks, role-level wins. Track OPEX cuts and cycle time. What stalls them: Vague benefits and unclear ROI The tragedy is that Greens and Bricks fight each other. Greens push systems thinking; Bricks demand immediate ROI. Both try to convert Golds, who follow momentum. The insight: Stop trying to make every stakeholder Green. Your buying committee has all three. Your roadmap needs to speak to all three. If we change the story, we can change the world. We are homo narrativus : the storytelling ape. It's time we acted like it. -- Looking to tell effective stories for GTM in Climate? Check the pinned comment.

"If the data is strong enough, leadership will commit to sustainability." Wrong. Because here’s the reality: No amount of: ESG reports Emissions data PowerPoint decks Will get executives to prioritize sustainability—if they don’t already see the value. The CSOs who focus on facts alone? Stay unheard. (Trust me—I’ve worked with enough frustrated sustainability leaders to know.) The ones who succeed? They shift from informing to persuading. You know what actually moves decision-makers? Stories that connect – more powerful than just statistics Narratives that inspire action – connects better just reports Messaging that ties sustainability to profit – speaks louder than just purpose This is where your focus should be. One thing you can do today: The next time you present a sustainability initiative, start with a story. Instead of leading with CO₂ reduction targets, share a real-world example: A competitor who’s gaining market share by going green A customer choosing sustainable suppliers over yours An employee who left because they wanted to work for a company with real impact Make it personal, relevant, and urgent. When you shift from data → storytelling, you realize how much faster you can turn sustainability from a nice-to-have into a business priority. ————- I am Zal, and I coach founders & leaders to sell their vision with impact.

Why facts alone won’t save the planet When I think about what makes someone care about the natural world, it rarely begins with statistics or graphs. It begins with a moment. For me, it was an encounter I had at age 12 with frogs in an Indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon (https://lnkd.in/g882Ui8X fascination that turned to urgency when I later read about an oil spill near where I had stayed. Since then, I’ve come to believe that connection, not just information, is what stirs people to act. During a recent conversation with Jessica Morgenthal for her Resilience Gone Wild podcast (https://lnkd.in/gpsw-B7i), we spoke about that idea: how empathy for one being can lead to concern for an entire ecosystem. When people talk about “a herd of gazelles,” it’s abstract. But tell the story of one gazelle—its habits, its struggle to survive—and suddenly it matters. We often relate most to individuals, not collectives. The same is true for human stories of conservation. When Mongabay reported on a community in Gabon fighting to protect its forest, it wasn’t primarily the data that moved the environment minister to intervene—it was meeting the people whose lives were entwined with those trees and realizing how their stewardship sustained a healthy and productive system. I’ve found that even the smallest connections can shift perspective. When snorkeling, I sometimes encounter a fish that swims beside me and seems to remember me when I revisit the site the next day. We don’t share language or biology, yet there’s an unmistakable recognition. If we can connect with a fish (https://lnkd.in/gxz9fJtd), surely we can connect with one another. That belief has shaped my journalism. Facts establish credibility, but stories create meaning. In a world where trust in science and media has increasingly faltered among many audiences, storytelling offers a bridge—a way to make people feel before they analyze. The same principle applies beyond conservation. Whether we’re talking about communities, politics, or technology, change begins with empathy. We don’t protect what we don’t love, and we don’t love what we don’t understand. The task, then, is to help people see the world as alive, particular, and personal—and to remember that even one small connection can open the door to care.

🌱📖 New Publication: When Storytelling Backfires in Sustainability/CSR Communication As debates about #ESG, regulatory #rollback, and growing #greenhushing intensify, companies are rethinking how to communicate their sustainability efforts. Over the last years, some have turned to storytelling to engage audiences emotionally – but is that always the right move? In our new paper (Lukas Krenz, Sabrina Scheidler, Sankar Sen & Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jan Wieseke), we show that storytelling in sustainability/CSR can backfire: 🔄 When used for peripheral activities (like philanthropy), stories often trigger consumer skepticism and perceptions of manipulative intent. 💡 In contrast, storytelling about embedded sustainability (e.g., employee-focused initiatives) is less likely to evoke backlash. 📉 These effects matter – we observe lower loyalty and even decreased purchase behavior in two large-scale field experiments. The findings challenge the assumption that storytelling is a universal tool for sustainability communication. In a world where consumers are increasingly alert to greenwashing and corporate motives, companies need to rethink when and how they narrate their impact. 🎙️ I regularly explore this tension between Numbers and Narratives with Judith Stroehle in our podcast – feel free to listen in. 👉Full paper here: Link in the comments #ESG #Greenhushing #Storytelling #Sustainability #CSR #Marketing #ConsumerBehavior #Research Universität Hamburg Professorship for Sustainable Business - Universität Hamburg

Last week, a brilliant climate tech founder showed me his pitch deck. The technology? Revolutionary. The impact? Massive. The story? Non-existent. 'But look at these numbers,' he insisted, pointing to graphs and data. 'The solution sells itself!' Here's what I told him: - No one has ever fallen in love with a spreadsheet. - No one has ever changed their behavior because of a pie chart. - No one has ever evangelized a product because of its technical specifications. The most powerful climate solutions don't win because they're the most advanced - they win because they tell stories that make people feel something. Tesla didn't sell electric cars by talking about battery chemistry. Beyond Meat didn't transform food by explaining protein extraction. Patagonia didn't change retail by detailing textile engineering. They told stories that made people imagine a different future. A future they wanted to be part of. Your climate solution isn't just fighting carbon emissions or waste or pollution. It's fighting for a story in people's minds. Yes, your solution must fit a need and work well. But in the battle for attention, the best storytellers often win. What story is your climate solution telling? 👇 #ClimateInnovation #Storytelling #CleanTech

Lately I’ve been obsessed with this question: Why do some climate messages move people—and others don’t? In a new episode of Bloomberg Television's new show Quantum Marketing by Raja Rajamannar, Pranav Yadav (CEO of Neuro-Insight) breaks down how the brain actually responds to storytelling—and how that applies to climate advocacy. Around the 17-minute mark, he analyzes a well-produced climate ad and explains, through neuromarketing data, why it doesn’t stick. The key insight? Psychological distance. The ad talks about climate change, but not in a way that connects to people's personal context—what they care about in their day-to-day lives. And when something feels distant—geographically, emotionally, or temporally—the brain tunes it out. It fails to encode in memory, which means it doesn’t influence behavior. What does work? Stories that activate memory encoding by making the stakes immediate and relatable. That connect to identity, not just intellect. That meet people where they are—then move them. This kind of research lights me up. It’s why I believe we’re at an inflection point in climate storytelling. At TIME, we’re working to reframe climate not just as an environmental issue, but as an economic one. A human one. A business one. If you're doing research in this space—neuroscience, behavioral design, storytelling strategy—or want to help us build a better framework for climate narratives, let’s talk. We need to scale these insights and we have the tools to do it. Watch the whole video but especially the last bit after 17 min if you're thinking about how to communicate urgency, value, and impact in this moment. 🎥 https://lnkd.in/et_uK4c6 #climatecommunications #neuromarketing #behaviorchange #storytelling #TIME #climateaction #businesscaseforclimate