GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Advertising Fossil Fuels: A Democratic Dialogue, with Rebecca Willis
Discover the power of public engagement in shaping climate policy with our special guest, Rebecca Willis from the University of Lancaster. In this episode, Becky introduces us to the Climate Citizens Project, an innovative initiative that brings citizens and the government together to discuss climate and energy issues.
From the effectiveness of citizens' juries and assemblies to the role of creative communication in addressing greenwashing, Rebecca shares valuable insights on fostering democratic dialogue and informed decision-making. We unpack the interconnectedness between advertising, politics, and societal behaviour, and of course find out more also make a compelling case for sustainability.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Rebecca Villis from the University of Lancaster, where she runs the Climate Citizens Project, which is focused on public engagement in energy, climate and governance. Wow, this project is the latest in a series of projects for Becky around climate assemblies and how to better engage the public.
Speaker 3:So Becky is also a trustee of the New Economics Foundation. Bear with us, becky. You know this is your bio. It goes on forever. Former chair of the Green Alliance, previously vice chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission which is where we first met, wasn't it? And this week, with colleagues published a report on people's attitudes to advertising and fossil fuels, which is one reason why we are absolutely desperate to get you onto the podcast, becky. So thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Speaker 4:Thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 3:Brilliant. Well, listen, and I should say, first of all, I have got a tiny tiny bit of man flu, so if my voice seems a little more gravelly than usual, that's why it's not just me putting on a slightly sexy voice. I'll look out for that Anyway. So, becky, we always like to start with a little bit of background, so tell us about your sustainability journey, if we could put it that way. You know what led you to this point of being a protagonist for Citizens Engagement on Climate Issues.
Speaker 4:My whole career, actually starting as an undergraduate, has been focused on the intersection of politics and government, and the environment and climate in particular. So I'm showing my age now, but I wrote an undergraduate essay in 1993 about whether climate change would be a harder problem to crack than ozone depletion crack than ozone depletion. And I've been answering that essay question ever since and it has led me to think of this as a question of the relationship between people and government, because what is government for if it isn't to be able to do collectively what we can't do individually? So, you know, a health service that's free at the point of use is something that we can all pay for through our taxes and benefit from when we need. This isn't just a left wing thing.
Speaker 4:The armed forces, again, are providing collectively what we would struggle to provide as individuals and to keep ourselves safe. So if government is about that relationship between people and the state, then my big question is what should that relationship look like for climate? And I think we've been getting that very wrong. There hasn't been nearly enough discussion between people and the state, between people and politicians, if you like, about how to manage this existential crisis that's coming our way. So that's what I'm trying to do really to have that conversation in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2:Wonderful Conversation. Climate, communication of climate these are our areas, and recently you just published a report Managing Adverts for High Carbon Products and Services, and it's the findings from a citizen's jury and national polling. Obviously, we're dying to talk about it, but before that, could you tell us a little more about citizens, juries and climate? Are these the answers to each other?
Speaker 4:To my mind, they're definitely part of an answer. So, to go back to what I was saying earlier about the need for a good engagement between citizens and the state, that's about the workings of democracy and if you you know, when people think of democracy they think of elections I mean particularly now in the UK but generally speaking, people think that the citizens part of democracy is when you put a cross on a piece of paper and put it in a box every five years, whereas in fact I would argue, following a sort of deliberative tradition, that democracy is about an ongoing conversation and that voting is a pretty crude way of having that conversation. So citizens' juries and citizens' assemblies and you know lots of other things, including a really good, fair, functioning media, are all ways in which that democratic conversation can happen. Citizens' juries are quite special because they allow you to sort of create conditions of almost ideal democratic conditions by controlling the room. So basically, what happens is you get a group of people who are randomly selected and then chosen to represent the wider population as a whole. So in our case, we had 24 people who represent the UK in terms of age, gender, ability or disability, educational level, political view and attitude to climate change and we provide them with the information we think they need to really think about an issue, and then we give them the time and the space to work through their answer.
Speaker 4:So, in a way, that's how our wider democratic system should be working. Ideally, we should have access to really good information. We should all be allowed to discuss and debate. We should be given that sort of freedom and responsibility to play a role in a democracy. Unfortunately, as you can see by looking out the window, that doesn't happen at the moment in wider democracies. But we can allow that to happen in that, you know, in that very special space. So that's what a climate jury or a citizens jury or a citizens assembly on issues like climate can, can do. It can give you an idea of how people um reason and think and come to uh conclusions about how to tackle an issue collectively so thank you and and uh, and I'm a big fan and you've been you've been in that world for quite some time, haven't you?
Speaker 3:and it? It's fascinating. So the latest iteration of this um is the report you just done, and we we represent a network of agencies very focused on um, sustainability messaging, but also greenwash, and fossil fuel advertising in particular is about as bad as it gets for for our colleagues in terms of greenwashing. So we're really, really, really interested in this work that you've been doing. So what led you and the rest of the team to decide to look at the world of advertising?
Speaker 4:This is part of a wider project. So my research group as a whole at Lancaster looks at essentially how to improve democracy for climate change and you know we do the theoretical end of that and we write our journal papers. But we think it's also really important to get an idea of what that looks like in practice practice. So we built into the project some very practical um, some very practical sort of experiments or innovations in in democratic process. We did one of them with the climate change committee, which is the uk's um government sort of statutory government advisor on climate. We did one for them on home energy decarbonisation, where we got citizens and analysts to work together on policies for home energy decarbonisation and that was great. It was really useful for the Climate Change Committee. They've used that work in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 4:But it's sort of quite techie, it's sort of quite pragmatic. And we also wanted to look what would happen when you got citizens deliberating about the sort of more chunky, more sort of small p political issues, about you know, levels of consumption and how you know what, what, what drives the economy. And we were looking for a sort of way into this. And then we were aware that there were a lot of debates about the role of advertising, because obviously you know, in other areas, like unhealthy foods and tobacco, there has been control of advertising to meet social goals, and so we wanted to delve into public attitudes to that and no one else had really done that. So that's why we decided to dive in, knowing lots about climate and nothing about advertising.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we all even we as advertisers forget that advertising first began as information distribution and also the very first campaigns of Kaczynski and others were on social issues, actually Milk for mothers, milk for babies. So I always say that this is reclaiming it. Reclam, reclaim we have to reclaim the power of advertising to do good. Steve, as always, I have a question, kind of combining your findings with your report and your methodology, which is very interesting. You have the jury, but also you cross-check it with a poll. So with this methodology and your findings, you say that people want change.
Speaker 2:We also read another report on EU elections and that report also came out that the climate fatigue we are talking about is not real and people really do want to see the change, but they cannot be sure that that change will be delivered. So we lose the will and the power there. So when you were working on this report and you have this various people representing UK what did you see there? That's very interesting for me. People want change, but do they vote for change or do they act for change? What is the barrier there? How do we cross that barrier from wanting change and making change happen?
Speaker 4:What you said just now about how people want change and feel frustrated that government isn't delivering it. That's, I think, a very consistent finding in the research. So the way it's often painted is that decision makers want to meet carbon targets but they're not sure if they can quote take the public with them that's the phrase used. You know, can we take people with us? And in fact the evidence is quite the reverse that people are consistently ahead of where politicians are on climate, but they don't trust government to deliver the changes needed. And so you know you could be really depressed about that or you could see it as quite a positive finding that there is sort of the kernel of something there that people could. You know, if people felt more trust in government and government showed more leadership, there's a possible way through.
Speaker 4:So I think in our jury that showed really clearly in that um people just wanted more information and more leadership on climate and that's why um and we were a little bit surprised about this, but that's why the headline recommendation was for um a sort of traffic light labeling system for adverts. The main reason they wanted that was because they just felt like that they didn't know enough and they weren't being given the proper information about the things that they were, uh, buying whether that be you know um airline flights or cars or some food product and they wanted to know. And, although other research tells us that just giving people information is not enough, it is part of the picture and it's definitely something that people really, really want yeah, I, I I'm so glad you got to that becky, because that's I really wanted to get into that.
Speaker 3:Um, because I've I've found all this fascinating. I've been in on conversations about banning fossil fuel ads and, um, particularly a city scale, it's quite, it's quite trendy for a mayor to ban the fossil fuel ads from the city and um, and I've always felt quite uncomfortable with that because the idea of just blanket ban on fossil fuel ads is what do you mean by that? Do you? Do you mean literally just adverts for petrol, or do you mean adverts for high carbon products and services? Where is that going? What is that? And I also I also, quite even as a sort of cycling vegan, I feel quite compromised in that space because I don't like the idea of banning things.
Speaker 3:But I was really interested by the fact that you're in this report. You get to potentially carbon labeling and traffic light system as being the next step forward, and I think you've hinted at this in what you're just saying. There is that it's been tried before that carbon labelling on products and then the evidence was that people just stopped recognising, they stopped seeing it, they stopped being a signal that affected change and meanwhile the fossil fuel. Advertising industry can continue to use emotional triggers, blurring the lines between truth and falsehood, and we're just giving information quite dispassionately, and information often doesn't achieve change. Actually, the challenge is systemic as much as anything. So where do you feel you go next with the carbon labelling proposition? Will that work, do you think so? Where do you feel you go next with the carbon?
Speaker 4:labelling proposition. Will that work? Do you think so? In this piece of work, we have very carefully not taken a position ourselves. Our role has been to explore public attitudes and that was important because when we dived into this world of advertising and views on advertising regulation, we realized there are some that the debate is very polarized and you know, in the steering group for this work we had everyone around the table, so we had the advertising industry, the regulators, the campaign, the academics, and so we've always been very clear that I mean, you know, on other work, I, you know, propose particular policies and advocate them over others, and this we were deliberately holding back from that.
Speaker 4:We did provide the jury with information about how information works. They also heard about social norms and how advertising can contribute to social norms. I think it's important to say they weren't against a ban. They chose not to develop it as one of their recommendations. And then when you look at the polling data, we polled about a ban and there was just under half supported and, um, quite a bit less than half opposed a ban. So it's it's a complicated picture. It's not saying no to bans.
Speaker 4:The reason, as I said, that people want the traffic light system is because they, um, they feel that they want information. So in a way, a band would be sort of taking away a chance to learn something, if you like. Um, now, I think a lot of this comes down to that wider debate about whether or not you think that advertising contributes to social norms. So you know, essentially, if you see adverts for, you know low cost airlines of people, just you know, jetting off for the weekend, does that make you more likely to do it? And I have to say that that wasn't a key theme for the jury in their discussions. We trawled the data really carefully and there's a lot of detail in the report this idea of creating wider social norms around it being fine and positive to do high carbon stuff effectively. That wasn't really discussed much, um, and we we thought a lot about that and in a way, the whole, the whole way that social norms work, is for you to not quite realize they're there so you know and and and.
Speaker 4:We could obviously have.
Speaker 4:You know we could have, we could have focused more on that and and and, made that you know, pulled that out as facilitators.
Speaker 4:We could have focused more on that and made that, you know, pulled that out as facilitators. We could have pulled that out as a discussion point, but it didn't emerge naturally from the citizens' discussions. And in a way, this depends where you draw your boundaries, because it's prevents social, you know, sort of high carbon social norms from um from being um, from from from being reproduced, and the advertisers say no, no, it's actually about individual choice and providing information, and so when you're assessing the, you know the, the impact of advertising, it really depends where you, where you draw your boundaries, and so you get lost in a sort of quite arcane discussion about um, you know, about data and what can and can't be done. That seems to be. You know that. That seems to be the result of any previous research on advertising um and to a certain extent, the jury replicated that in terms of saying we want better information, but also saying that advertising, that regulating advertising in and of itself wasn't enough.
Speaker 3:That you know, if you stick a big red warning label on um, you know, on um a petrol car, for example, um, if that's the only car someone can afford, they'll still buy it yeah, but and and I I think I mean, and I definitely I think I was impressed by the fact that you I'm not, because I have read some of your previous reports, becky and, and you do make concrete recommendations, but I got the feeling from this piece of work that you could only let the jury get to their conclusions and present that, rather than going to that next step of of what should we do. Just one quick aside before damon comes back in, and for you personally. So this is you getting up close and personal with the advertising industry, which we do all the time, and I've got a whole slide deck full of the, the most criminal acts that they've done over the over the last few years. What was it like? Sort of exploring advertising for you?
Speaker 4:I think that it's the way that industries work to um to justify their position is always fascinating to me.
Speaker 4:I mean, years and ago I worked on the role of trade associations in the policy debate, and it's complex because, on the one hand, their members can provide really good information about how the industry works and what kinds of incentives could work, because they're closest to it, right.
Speaker 4:But on the other hand, there's an information asymmetry because and and they so they sort of curate the information that's out there, um, there are, you know, within every industry, I think there are um elements that will not um do well out of the transition to net zero, and those elements tend to shout very loud.
Speaker 4:And so it's always difficult working with industries because you're having to sort of factor that in all the time and I would say that's definitely the case with advertising that if you see the to and fro about the underlying research about the connection between advertising and climate change, or if you see more widely the research about tobacco bans and unhealthy food, you'll see the industry sort of vociferously opposing any report showing that advertising leads to these unhelpful consumption choices. And you know, I think that a really important role for trade associations actually, and you've seen this happen in the energy sector. A really important role for trade associations is actually to help their members say massive change is coming. You know we can help guide you through this. It is going to be a shift. You might make your money in different ways in future, but you but let's tackle that together rather than trying to delay and defend the high carbon status quo.
Speaker 2:Well, becky, it is so interesting that your report also matches with what we live in the advertising sector too, because usually I'm an optimist. Steve knows it. I always want to be on the optimistic side and I usually tend to believe that the masses have a common sense, more than the ones in charge. So in the report we see that they say that advertising is not the real and the only solution. It's a part of a bigger problem, as you said. I'm circling back to what you said.
Speaker 2:I think that's very interesting and we should also put an emphasis here, because sometimes some of our clients come to us and they just see the advertising and communication strategy and the designs like a magic wand. So we will just hoop it and then the sales will go up, even in commercial marketing, but also in the social advertising too. We will just have this magic wand and then, poof, everything will be green. But it's not so that we see this on the report too. Advertising is not a magic wand. They do tend to put more emphasis on the cost and convenience. So this is a systemic issue. Here comes my question about it how can we translate this common sense in politics, but also in the NGO world, so that we can push a greener agenda.
Speaker 4:I think that I would go back to where I started, that if we want a net zero transition which works for people and which is effective, it's not about individual consumption decisions, is it? And so what that means for people is that we shouldn't treat people as consumers or we shouldn't treat people just as consumers. I should say we should understand that. You know, you are a multifaceted person. Yes, you're a consumer when you buy things, but you're also a citizen, a voter, You're a member of a community.
Speaker 4:You do a lot of stuff for free in which we collectively can tackle the climate crisis, and it requires people, businesses and government to be working together. So you know that sounds pretty basic, but I think that's often forgotten. If you do boil it down to consumption decisions, which tends to be the way that both industry and government that tends to be their safe space to flip back to seeing people just as consumers and if we saw it as a societal challenge and if we got some joy actually about the idea of tackling this societal challenge together and really improving things, not just for the climate but also for our health and well-being, then I feel like that's really positive and, to be honest, I'm confused about why more people don't take up that offer. More politicians don't take that offer, because it seems like really obvious to me.
Speaker 3:Do you know? It is blindingly obvious. Well listen, Becky, I think we could go on. We might have to do a part two where I get more of a chance to eviscerate the advertising industry, because I don't think we've done that and I feel disappointed. But it's really fascinating that point around. Well, Dan was talking about bringing common sense to the fore and turning that into a thing of joy. There's something in that that's really quite lovely. Anyway, final question to um, is our network of agencies called do not smile? Ironically, because we need to. We know that we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness in the world, into the world. So what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:I think that I'm going for a place anywhere wet in the Lake District where I live, so any river or lake I will happily jump in, and we've just acquired a dog who will jump in with me, so that makes me smile every time.
Speaker 3:Brilliant. Who goes in first, you or the dog?
Speaker 4:Well, the dog goes in like three times a day all year round, which is more than I can manage. So I'd say it's the dog.
Speaker 3:Amazing. Oh, becky, it's been absolutely well. It's been so lovely chatting through. Obviously, your wider workforce of this report has come out and we'll make sure that we give it a big plug. Damla over to you.
Speaker 2:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:Podcast brought to you by the Do Not Smile Network of Agencies, and make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, becky Damla, see you soon.
Speaker 4:See you Bye. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
