A Brand of Better: How 'Green' Should be Redefined
While waiting for Trump to finally confirm his loser status last week we suffered a loss much closer to home – our twelve-year-old family dog, Dewey.
He was a friend and a constant companion through the ups and downs of establishing a life in Australia, starting a family, building a business and doing the first 10km of the Covid marathon.
As anyone who has been on a Zoom call with me during the last six months knows, ‘Just one sec, gotta let Dewey in,’ has become my personal pandemic catch call. In the end old age got him and he passed of a life lived well, too many smiles, pats and tail wags. I will miss him greatly. Everyone says he was my shadow but if I am honest he was my guide. The best dogs like the best people are never what they first appear. They have the depth of the ocean and the lightness of air.
The warm up
As we enter the second act of the pandemic and constitutional court challenges, it portends to the end of what Professor Lawrence Douglas from America’s Amherst University states as the ideal central to America’s success: that its constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it. That it believes in hope. This speaks to a belief we have held since the best brand of all time, American exceptionalism, was born in rebellion against the old world. Tomorrow will be better than today. But what if that is not true? Even worse, what if it was true and you lived the middle class dream but it’s not true anymore? Maybe it’s enough to drive you to stand at an airport runway in a MAGA hoodie hoping somehow a political leader can bring it back. 'Sure he’s an ass Fred, but aren’t they all?'
Inequality breeds not revolution, but stasis
If you look beyond a year or two it is easy to see Covid as a blip in our consumption economy and as a clear marker in our struggles with polarisation. The problem is that you cannot create a vaccine for inequality but you sure as hell can sell into the blame and anger it creates. We have to tread the path between bridging inequality and establishing a growing economy. We have to step carefully because these beliefs are deeply interconnected.
The truth about empires, economies and ecosystems is that they crumble not from large scale acts of revolution or crisis but from reaching a point of stasis from which they can no longer recover. Rome fell because no-one could agree anymore how to govern, the Soviet Union ran out of cash because no one would shine a light on the failure after failure of state enterprises, and ecosystems crash through a thousand little acts that end in rapid decline.
For us as individuals, we stop growing when we see life as a stacked deck. It’s difficult to mind the gap in a world already split into two pieces. Ain’t that America for you, not me?
Stagnation is what happens when no matter what you do you stand still. This is what our modern democracies could be in for. If you replace modern misinformation via social media for misinformation via gossip and falseness of history, the parallels get eerie.
The worry is rather than achieving a green new deal that helps close the gap between those who have and those who do not, that they are going to still play politics over who gets to frack, and why in Texas when they’re running out of water in Arizona. All the while pouring cheap money on a garbage fire of inequality that means we only become more and more polarised. United we stand, divided we fall.
We often talk in absolute truths and really there is still only one. Humans can only live on earth, but the earth can certainly live without us. We are only just now waking up to the fact that our time has been running out for decades. It’s not the new normal you need to watch out for, it is the old normal that was always there that will punch you in the face.
Do you still have a dream? I sure do
I dream of a world where we become disconnected from our need for the natural world to support our lifestyle but have an understanding of its centrality to our survival. That we move from consuming nature to consuming something of our creation. But I am an optimist and have had a teary viewing of David Attenborough’s documentary and I am trying to figure out how to be more plant based and spend lots of time studying my own energy consumption. I will wait for the electric version before I buy a massive truck. #sacrifice. While I am not alone in this dichotomy the brand challenge that has always faced a greater greening is how it has been framed. It has been framed through restraint and sacrifice but humans don’t work that way. While our darker angels are primed to respond through anger and fear, our better angels respond to a version of better.
Brands are broadly based on a version of better. This can be a story that speaks to a struggle with the human condition, a unique feature, a formulation that is superior or a held attitude the brand celebrates and we appreciate. Our modern malaise is that ‘better’ has been paired with ‘easier‘ through things like Software as a Service brands. This is common throughout the growth of any new category of goods. IBM got away with, ‘Hey, look it works,’ and the broad likability of being a bit nerdy. Apple had to compete by building a better box through adding in design and individual creativity. SaaS is already going through this change as more competition always equals further differentiation through brand.
The great greening will also see similar ‘better’ constructs emerge as it moves beyond its current framing of better through restraint. The genius of Tesla is that it is based on enhancing rather than sacrificing. I can do faster and be greener. It is a lesson many other greener choices such as food, water, energy and industry could also do with heeding. They are trying to equal animal protein rather than provide a better tasting way to consume protein. They need to add a version of better that they can own. If we’re going all in, the word 'green' probably needs a rethink.
It’s time to find the plus sign
As Tesla already shows, better can be achieved through cleaner and cooler. As money floods into solving our existential challenge, what other version of a better human world could greening create?
Clean plus resilience: brands like Beyond Meat and V2 Foods that sever the link between animals and protein to ensure our food security is enhanced and our society is less prone to diseases.
Clean plus agility: brands like Lyft and AirBnB are combining better experiences with better societal outcomes.
Green plus capital: brands like Australian Super and the Future Fund are combining better returns with better environment.
Even though I no longer have my dog to let into my office during meetings, what he has left me with is a strong sense that, whether animal or human, our time is short and our definition of and approach to greening our lives will be the key that unlocks our tenuous survival.
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Be better to each other.
