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Founder and President of One Change Stuart Hickox is interviewed by CBC’s Hallie Cotnam as part of their Ottawa Morning program on 91.5 FM.

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Radio interview recorded at EcoFair launch and broadcast at 6:30 am, repeated at 7:30am, 8:30am (Ottawa and Toronto).

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(originally posted on “MediaPost’s Marketing:Green”)

The Sharp Edge of Green Marketing

On the cycling commute into work this hazy spring morning, my wife and I were surprised by a sudden, loud, clanging noise.

“Whoa! What’s that?” she asked.

Then from around the corner, a squat, blue, ramshackle cube van appeared. It was The Knife Guy, ringing his bell as he slowly crept around our suburban streets seeking sharpening customers. The van looked like a castaway milk truck, with its sliding driver’s door ajar and the box cab festooned with dangly oversized scissors and imposing carving implements. The bell rang repeatedly… ding-ding, ding-ding… in a repetitive series that could easily have been mistaken for a one-room schoolhouse bell (if you’re old enough to remember those). As we passed The Knife Guy, I noticed that the sound was actually coming not from the large brass bell hanging at the driver’s window, but from a loud speaker strapped to the roof. There must be a by-law prohibiting dinging and driving.

“It’s a guy who sharpens knives in the street,” I answered.

I knew who he was because he had passed our house just a few days earlier. At that time the bell attracted me (and other neighbors) to our front steps to see what was going on. Was it an ice cream truck? A parade? A funeral? I noticed that although he attracted an audience, people were not seeking his business. Honestly, at that time it didn’t occur to me to run to the cutlery drawer and dash out into the street in hot pursuit of a better edge. But, we did all notice.

“Who does that?” my wife asked after a moment of silence as we continued along our commute.

Later, I actually found myself hoping he would come back to our street. I had seen him twice now. I understood what he was doing. The Knife Guy had made a strong, and positive, impression on me. I was ready to buy. My wife, it seemed, was one experience (exposure to The Knife Guy) behind me on the road to becoming an advocate for refined slicing.

Why did he grab my attention? There is something very powerful about simplicity and familiarity. Sometimes the best way to reach people is to go where they live. By providing an experience that is unique, multi-faceted and has an emotional appeal, a connection is made that is hard to sever. Maybe The Knife Guy is the front for an international mega-corporation; but I don’t care. He seems local (accessible), relevant and personal.

The strongest connection to a sustainable product or service can be developed through a carefully planned series of encounters (exposures), especially when these are delivered locally by a credible source and in a safe and familiar setting.

I may be tempted to sharpen my cutting knife because someone plays a bell that reminds me of Sunday. Would this work in other neighborhoods? Maybe. Maybe not. These kinds of symbols and triggers do exist for every community; we just need to discover them, be open to them and allow our broad-based green marketing programs to incorporate them. It is possible to have a state-wide marketing goal that has unique local characteristics. In fact, these days, it is actually critical.

It seems lately that all too often the marketing world is looking for the next killer app. I think The Knife Guy actually has it figured out.

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(originally posted on “MediaPost’s Marketing:Green”)

The secret to green marketing is getting first adopters to sing.

There’s an emerging consensus that traditional approaches to green marketing have run their course. It is getting more and more difficult to reach non-participant market segments through advertising, cash incentives or environmental “programs.” Five years after “An Inconvenient Truth” galvanized a nascent environmental movement, people are tuning out again.

This isn’t the first time that an environmental wave has ebbed, but the risk this time is that the retreat will be not just to indifference, but to resignation. It’s hard to imagine another wave being created by awareness-driven advertising or a Nobel Prize-inspiring documentary.

Yet, the challenge remains: How do we get people to choose more sustainable products and services? How do we reduce energy and resource consumption? How do we get people to really change? With awareness-advertising a spent force, we are left with two things that could move people: 1) calamity and 2) engagement.

Let’s start with the negative. Perhaps the only thing that will now motivate people to change is significant, dramatic environmental collapse. Like, say, the Greenland ice shelf sliding into the Atlantic, causing a dramatic rise in sea levels across the globe; or, bees suddenly dying off, with mass famine ensuing. Would this stimulate change? With new deepwater drilling about to resume in the Gulf of Mexico just one year after the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, it would seem that the scale of the calamity would have to be truly (unfathomably?) unprecedented.

The other option is more positive — and ultimately more powerful. If it’s true that the traditional environmental movement has converted a core segment of the population, and that this group has expanded somewhat through the awareness-driven approach of the past half-decade, then we should harness the power of these people to reach others. But this will require a shift in strategy, now.

We need to redirect money from television ads to town hall meetings. We need to change the message from feel-good to do-good, by making it possible for the already converted to share simple first actions with friends and neighbors. Instead of overlooking small NGOs that are engaged in micro-projects at the local level, we need to develop tools and networks that allow them to connect with each other and expand their reach.

This may sound complicated, but what we are really talking about is placing faith back in an approach that has been at the heart of social change for centuries (face-to-face, person-to-person conversation). We need to make it possible for people to talk to each other again, to instill a sense of purpose and hope in a common project: Making the world a better place for everyone.

It may seem counterintuitive to “preach to the choir” instead of trying to reach new audiences directly. But the fact is that the big-media approach alone can only take us so far. There is a ready chorus to extend this reach by making local action fun, relevant and personal. All we need to do is provide the words, include diverse voices and lead the melody.

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Here’s a marketing challenge: How can we make attic insulation sexy?
(originally posted on “MediaPost’s Marketing:Green”)

(If you have an idea, please contact me ASAP, as, together, we could make a lot of money, solve a decades’ old marketing dilemma and — let’s not forget! — help save the planet.)

Governments and utilities everywhere have been struggling for decades with how to cut residential energy consumption and stimulate deep home energy retrofit work. Billions of dollars have been spent on incentives and awareness campaigns to change attitudes and behavior. Yet, the Department of Energy reported last year that there are still up to 4 billion incandescent bulbs in sockets in the U.S. And, despite cash incentives to spur deeper retrofit work — such as air sealing, insulation and furnace upgrades — only 100,000 homes in the U.S. have had work done (work that generates a minimal 20% improvement on the efficiency of a home).

Meanwhile, the home renovation market is booming — with only 30% of the non-energy retrofit work (such as granite counter tops, new bathrooms, etc.) being financed. A recent review of the home energy retrofit market by Vermont-based energy consultant Chris Granda revealed that there are up to 17 million stand-alone residences in the U.S. where the homeowners likely have the resources to retrofit their homes without backend incentives. Yet, they aren’t doing it.

Why? First of all, a high level of pervasive pessimism and disengagement still exists. So many people just don’t believe that their simple actions matter, so they simply don’t act. Secondly, energy conservation remains an abstract notion for most people. We within the industry may understand what a KWh or a DSM program is, or what “Home Performance with Energy Star” is all about. But by calling them “programs,” we distance ourselves from real people and what they care about. What folks really want is a nice deck. They don’t have the same sense of desire for invisible batting between the floor joists.

Perhaps most significantly, the deep home retrofit incentive model is broken — and everybody knows it. Dangling cash incentives in front of homeowners to get them to blow insulation into their attic just doesn’t work effectively enough. I might like the idea that I could get $5,000 back for improving the efficiency of my home, but study after study shows that people just don’t stay motivated as they travel the long road from energy audit to contractor engagement to submitting the rebate forms. It’s too much work, especially if you already feel cynical and haven’t even done the simple stuff, like changing light bulbs.

What we need to do is change the dialogue about energy efficiency so that people will understand its benefits. In addition to “savings” let’s use words like comfort, security, health, safety and warmth. Instead of using cash at the backend to drive and sustain demand, let’s use the little, cheaper things upfront to stimulate conversations between neighbors that lead to a deeper understanding of the importance of this work and drive a sense of common purpose that overcomes the cynicism and the barriers.

There’s still that matter of how to pimp the attic insulation. Let’s get working on that.

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Reposted from wellhome.com:

Campaigns to save the environment have been going on ever since Teddy Roosevelt first set aside U.S. land for national parks, but in recent years they have grown more numerous and vociferous as threats to the environment become more dire. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands of programs designed to cut energy usage and emissions around the world, from nation wide initiatives to local, grass-roots efforts. The Internet has made it easier than ever to reach a wide range of people, especially with the emergence of social media. Looking at ten of the best online energy initiatives, it’s easy to see that they’ve accomplished a lot, but how did they get there? When it comes to getting the message across, how you spread the word is just as important as the content of the message itself. Here, we examine their strategies and explore what makes them so successful. Read more here

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

One Change can Help our Environment – CFL Bulbs Are a Beginning, a video blog post by Jenine Tankoos, contributor to ToS50 News and recent post in Greening & Gardening.

This famous quote by Margaret Meade is exemplified in the work of an organization that started as a small group of neighbors and has grown to include over 12,000 volunteers working to prevent pollution and save natural resources. Join Green Jenine when she speaks with Stuart Hickox, the founder and president of One Change, an organization that is teaching people how simple actions can make a world of difference.

Stuart Hickox is a former freelance writer who has been published in 14 languages. He is also a creative marketing specialist who served international and social justice projects and clients such as the Canadian International Development Agency, the Arrar Commission and the Department of Foreign Affairs (International Criminal Court).

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(originally posted on MediaPost’s “Marketing:Green”) Lately, energy and environmental marketing has taken on a familiar form: just business.

I have been travelling a lot these days to conferences and meetings across North America where people like me talk about how to improve the effectiveness of energy conservation and environmental programs. Aside from the ironic environmental effect of all the travel, there is another emerging trend. We seem to have forgotten why we are doing this. The sense of urgency that spurred the work of a gaggle of energy and environmental first-adopters into a global industry of social entrepreneurs might have lost its way.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a negative, anti-corporate crusader. No. I do not disagree with the approach taken by people like Adam Werbach (former executive director, Sierra Club) who dared to declare environmentalism dead.

The fact is, change is unlikely to happen on a global scale unless we operate within a familiar and somewhat systematic framework. People understand advertising. They like plain-language marketing. Gone are the days when someone with a good idea and access to a photocopier can create a global movement. We are running out of time to wait for the impact of only small, incremental micro projects to occur.

At a time when traditional institutions and governments seem reluctant to apply policy tools to bring about change, the future might well rest in the hands of nimble collaborative projects made up of civil society organizations, marketing firms, local governments, corporate partners and others. These collaborative projects have a great potential to be big enough to attract earned media attention, have strong community buy-in and create a sense of public momentum.

This framework provides measurable economic value to a corporate partner — even if it is driven only by the bottom line. And that’s okay, if it moves the environmental engagement needle along. The risk of these collaborations, however, is that, over time, they become just another business model and not focused on action. Fear, greed and competition are always factors that can limit creativity. It seems now that consensus is emerging about the need for new rules in order to limit the inclusion of old habits. Most important of which is that project planning must include a regular, group “reality check” that is built upon a common understanding — that we are doing something important and new here.

A business approach is key to environmental progress. We need better marketing to build consensus and broaden participation of “non-environmentalists” to provide the foundation for massive scale and measurement.

Environmental organizations that have been either reluctant to embrace basic business tenets, such as strategic plans and budgets, or that refuse to entertain the thought of working with ‘corporate America’ will continue to only nibble at the margins. Likewise, corporations and marketing firms unable to tolerate the risk of innovative and open partnerships will lose an opportunity to grow.

And unless we get this right, we will fail to save the planet. That is what we’re trying to do, right?

by Stuart Hickox

• source: MARKETING: green

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Check the cynicism at the door, there’s work to be done, was the message from Stuart Hickox Thursday night.

The founder of the ONECHANGE energy efficiency movement was addressing some 70 people in attendance for Yukon Energy’s kickoff to its three-day workshop in March, to begin charting a new course for supplying the territory’s growing energy needs.

Hickox said he understands how people can grow weary of those types of exercises, of how they feel a corporate handshake is sometimes nothing more than a brush-off in the end.

He’s already heard the cynicism in the couple of days he’s been in Whitehorse.

“A three-day charrette to plan for the territory’s energy needs. Oh, that’s great, but we’ve heard it all before.” Hickox suggested he’s heard it all before too.

But having had dinner with Yukon Energy president David Morrison Wednesday night, he told the audience, he’s convinced Morrison is sincere in his desire to bring Yukoners and their ideas on board.

ONE CHANGE, explained Hickox, was an organization started back in 2006 with a tiny initiative by he and his wife to have everyone in their Ottawa neighbourhood replace one standard low-efficiency light bulb with a high-efficiency bulb. It came to be known as the Porch Light Project.

The organization has now managed $30 million in efficiency programs over the last four years.

“Our mission is to empower people to believe small actions matter.”

Hickox said it was important everyone there last night believe in Yukon Energy’s initiative to gather input to build its energy plan for the future.

“It’s up to every one of you,” he said. “If you do not believe that consultation will ever matter, that’s a real problem, even more so for the people who are not here.” Hickox challenged his listeners to take one small action: participate in the charrette, and encourage others to do so.

Change comes through conversation, he said.

Morrison opened the night with a snapshot of the Yukon’s energy situation, just as he did at last month’s Whitehorse Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

The Yukon, he said, needs more energy to supply a growing demand.

Turning on the diesel generators is the easy answer, but it’s not Yukon Energy’s preference, nor is it economical or environmentally friendly, he said.

Morrison went through the list of projects underway to find more renewable energy.

But there is no simple answer, he insisted.

Next month’s charrette, Morrison said, is probably one of the most important exercises the publicly owned utility has ever conducted, and probably something it should have done sooner.

“It’s about the future, about how we are going to do it, when we are going to do it and how much it is going to cost.” Morrison said so far, there are about 80 to 90 participants lined up for the charrette from across the Yukon, representing a wide cross-section of interests.

Recognized experts in the field of energy have been invited to share their knowledge and participate in discussions about all forms of energy options, from nuclear to burning garbage, he said.

The City of Burnaby, next to Vancouver, Morrison pointed out, has been burning municipal waste to generate electricity for about 15 years, and pumps out about 40 megawatts – equivalent to the entire hydro capacity at the Whitehorse Rapids Dam.

Morrison said the trick in planning for the future is finding the right mix, not building something Yukoners can’t afford but making sure there’s enough energy to handle the growing demand.

“None of the questions are simple,” he said. “The questions are difficult.” But Hickox insisted through one action at a time, can come big change.

It was actually Whitehorse and the Yukon that provided ONECHANGE with the springboard to the big leagues, he told the audience.

He and his wife’s neighbourhood Porch Light Project received some attention in the nation’s capital, though many believed its success was built on neighbourly friendship, and not practicality.

Things changed when Shane Andre of the Yukon’s Energy Solution Centre called up Hickox in early 2007 to see if he could co-ordinate a similar project for the Yukon.

There he was, Hickox recalled, tasked with distributing 10,000 high-efficiency light bulbs – a week before the 2007 Canada Winter Games. More than 100 volunteers showed up to help.

“It was a big success.”

To this day, the ONECHANGE promotion literature includes pictures and information from the Yukon project, he said.

Hickox said from its simple roots, and with the success of the larger Yukon project on its résumé, the organization has grown to a full-time staff of 25, co-ordinating projects across Canada and the United States, backed by sponsors such as B.C. Hydro and SaskPower. ONECHANGE, for example, now has a program to promote proper tire pressure as a surefire means of increasing fuel efficiency.

And last night, its founder invited the audience to participate in its water conservation effort by providing everyone with a little blue tablet to put in their toilet tanks at home.

If, after a little while, there is blue dye in the toilet bowl, then the toilet tank is leaking, he said.

Hickox said statistics indicate water leaking from toilet tanks to the toilet bowls in toilets across Canada account for 1.9 billion litres of reated water being wasted every single day.

In some households, he said, that can account for up to $250 on the water bill in a year.

Hickox said 1.9 billion litres are equivalent to the amount of water that flows over Niagara Falls in 11 seconds.

“Maybe we should have 11 seconds of silence for Niagara Falls,” Hickox quipped. “The simple action I want you to do now is show up to the charrette, tell people to go to the charrette, because it really matters.”

Yukon Energy spokeswoman Janet Patterson said this morning the cost of the charrette, planning for it, including last night’s kickoff, is estimated at $300,000 to $350,000.

• source: Whitehorse Star
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One Change’s Stuart Hickox encourages the public to help define the Yukon’s energy future by attending and giving their input at Yukon Energy’s Charette Kickoff and Energy Charette in March.

• Listen to the interview.mp3

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