ADVERTISING, MEDIA AND POSITIVE CHANGE: YES 👍? NO 👎? BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, HOW?

The Good Forum, a French conference on communication, marketing and media regarding the ecological transition and more, which took place in mid-March in Paris, brought together various actors to shed light on the following questions:

How are brands reinventing their communication plans to increase transparency and support behavioural changes towards greater temperance? How have the media taken the measure of their responsibility by reinventing their editorial lines and formats to empower their audiences about the global challenges of our era?

I don't intend to give a detailed account of the conference, but I will share the three themes that caught my attention.

Highlight #1: The importance of collective - not just individual - transformation to bring about meaningful and sustainable change.

Valérie Martin, Head of the Citizen Mobilisation and Media Department at ADEME, the French Agency for Ecological Transition, gave an insightful perspective on the major challenge of our time. She evokes the imperative to rethink our entire capitalist model from top to bottom. We must evolve our current model: "From I consume, therefore I am to a greater focus on being (instead of having), meaning (instead of consuming) and making good use of (instead of purchasing)". So much wisdom in this sentence! It says it all!

So how can we transform all the key actors and components of our societies, starting with companies - from finance to advertising and the media - through political actors and, of course, us, consumers, citizens and parents of tomorrow's generations?

All these actors must evolve simultaneously to bring about change. The question is how? Where to start? What are the most relevant approaches? Which actors will most likely give the necessary impetus to start this transition movement and get us all on board?

The first way of answering this question – as alluded to by Martin – is that the transformation must be collective and not just individual; when she says collective, I hear, on the one hand, engaging all the actors playing a critical role in driving change. And on the other hand, collective in the sense of changing the shared narratives (from advertising to social content to variety shows, TV series, political and media news discourses, etc.) that permeate and influence our daily habits.

The first point on the collective engagement of many actors implicitly refers to the socio-ecological theory [1]. This approach recognises that a person’s behaviour is influenced by many factors at the individual, interpersonal, social and structural levels.

And the collective or shared narratives reflects the necessity to move beyond logical and rational discourses towards more inspiring, more emotionally intelligent messages and stories to make people WANT to do things differently.

And this brings me to the 2nd highlight of the conference:

Highlight #2: Is advertising a producer of social norms?

According to a study by ADEME, we would receive an average of 1,000 to 5,000 advertising messages per day, which rises to 15,000 messages per day if we include product placements. The question of the responsibility of the advertising sector is crucial, and its impact on our representations, our beliefs and our cognitive system apperars indisputable.

Advertising shapes - and is often accused of manipulating - our minds and, therefore, our societies. It begs the question: if advertising has such power, can it be used to 'positively manipulate' people? Because when advertising is well thought out, it can draw from emerging trends and powerfully align brand messages with people’s conscious and unconscious expectations, creating a deep and enduring relationship. And, as we all know it,  the potency of an advertising message also relies on its multi-channel presence, amplifying reach and potentially converting messages into norms, which according to UNICEF are:

"(...) perceived, informal, and mostly unwritten rules that define acceptable and appropriate actions within a given group or community, thus guiding human behaviour".

So, to change behaviour profoundly - from reducing meat consumption to recycling to speaking out against gender-based or sexual violence - we must address the root causes of the problems rather than the symptoms; i.e. the engrained social norms that underpin everything we think, feel and do. This is no small task! 

In this respect, changing knowledge may be necessary but is insufficient. We need to activate all the key levers of change: our self-confidence to make the desired change, our deepest belief systems, our often conflicting representation(s) of our self versus our social identity, etc. All these factors, which go far beyond the acquisition or increase of knowledge, have a real influence on whether or not we can change our behaviour(s) in both a sustainable and meaningful way.

So, the next question becomes: 'how do we change social norms'?

One way is to change the collective narratives we find in our advertisements, TV shows, music, newspaper articles, Tik Tok videos, Instagram, word of mouth and so on - ALL of them. Advertising consciously and unconsciously influences our values and beliefs; some ads lock us in restrictive patterns, like these examples below. Despite being about sixty years old apart, they convey similar and undeniable gender stereotypes:

Ads from Unilever OMO in 1958, and ETAM from 2021. The latter was considered the sexiest poster of 2021 by RAP Marseille.

Then, fortunately, some ads do question our limiting beliefs and try to change them:

Always — Like a girl, 2014 and Like A GirlDove — Reverse Selfie d’Ogilvy, 2021

Most taboos about gender stereotypes have yet to be debunked. The censorship of the Frida Mom advert during the Oscars ceremony a few years ago speaks volumes about the reality we live in. Depicting what it is like for a mother going home after giving birth was deemed ‘too graphic’. Well, denying women's humanity will at least have had the benefit of getting people discussing a subject that is never discussed: revealing the reality of postpartum without a filter.

Advertising and the media more generally know their power - through the choice of words, settings, storylines, and character archetypes - to maintain and indirectly legitimise outdated models [2] or, on the contrary, to question and evolve them. And as mentioned above, the more ubiquitous the dissemination of these messages is in our societies, the greater their ability to 'normalise' the models promoted.

To sum up, messages and, more largely, stories, or should we say ‘the art of storytelling’, goes way beyond a mere information campaign, aka an "education" campaign. The power of stories is to transcend reality, inspire, and strike a chord with people to make new behaviours not only necessary but also ATTRACTIVE.  And this approach requires a fine and creative use of the language, a deep understanding of popular culture, its codes and the media to contextualise and unite audiences around a shared vision.

And this brings me to the third highlight of the conference:

Highlight #3: The media in search of exemplarity

Damien Marchi, Director of CSR Development at Vivendi, presented the group's media partnership with Plastic Odyssey to demonstrate their ability to harness the power of media to support a major cause, in this case, the fight plastic pollution in the oceans. What is quite interesting to observe is that every media programme of the Vivendi group will support Plastic Odyssey's ambition [3] and adopt dedicated editorial lines.

For example, the TV channel Canal+ will produce a documentary and a web series on Les Eclaireurs and Dailymotion; GEO, Ça M'intéresse, Capital & National Geographic magazines will develop print and digital content; prevention messages will be relayed in Gameloft's communities; and on-the-ground initiatives will be launched to raise awareness amongst the target populations and companies about plastic transformation etc.

What is worth highlighting is that without naming it, Vivendi is following a systemic approach to change, using a plurality of narratives and media programmes to influence the different levers of change – our (lack of) knowledge about plastic pollution in the oceans, our (lack of) interest, self-confidence, and physical and mental abilities to change or not change our behaviour etc.

A case study to follow closely to assess the astute use of storytelling and media to bring about real behaviour change.

The question of impact remains to be addressed - what tangible and measurable outcomes will these campaigns and media generate? How can they define, monitor and measure the desired behavioural changes? What causal links will they be able to establish between their media activities and the outcomes?

To sum up, here are my five big takeaways:

1. 🗣️ The role of advertising & the media in producing social norms - positive or negative - is indisputable. Advertising is not ‘bad’ in itself, it is a tool to convey messages. It is the intention underpinning it that makes advertising a 'force for good' or not.

2. 🤓 Changing norms to change behaviours is a more subtle and effective job than simply focusing on increasing people's knowledge.

3. 🔥 Contrary to logical & educational discourses, crafting inspiring, emotional, and culturally relevant stories is essential to highlight - as Valerie Martin says it - “ the need for being (instead of having), meaning (instead of consuming) and making good use of (instead of purchasing)". This is essential to make us WANT to adopt new behaviours. Also, one must not forget the power of media dissemination to help ‘normalise’ the codes and behaviours promoted.

4. ⏩ ⏪ To the question of 'where to start and with whom?', one of the answers is that consumers and the media are interconnected.  The evolution of consumers' mindsets and behaviours is necessary to change the media narratives. And the evolution of media narratives is critical to change consumers.

5. 🤲🏻 Transformation will either be collective or not at all, as advocated by the socio-ecological theory.

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NOTES :

[1] A person's behaviour is influenced by different factors which can be understood at an individual, interpersonal, community and structural level.

[2] IPSOS study.

[3] With 20 tonnes of plastic dumped into the oceans every minute, the Plastic Odyssey ship has been sailing the coasts of the Mediterranean and Atlantic Oceans for three years to encourage local waste treatment initiatives, to develop the recycling economy, to create jobs, and to raise local awareness on the issue.

[4] The COM-B Model by S. Michie, M. M van Stralen & R. West (2011).

[5] The Theory Of The Diffusion Of Innovation by E. Rogers (1962).