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Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green Bandwagon

Donald Douglas is impressed by a new book by Alex Hesz and Bambos Neophytou about getting to grips with guilt and keeping it real

I had a business idea a while ago for a website called Neutralisemykarma.com aimed at people suffering from the hangover you get from buying too much stuff.

You’d go to the site, punch in what you’d bought (trainers, packaging, air travel, oil, tuna, diamonds, etc) and it would tell you how much you’d have to pay to charitable causes (via PayPal of course) to realign your karma.

Corporations would transparently provide all the information required so you’d get an accurate karma calculation in dollars to pay back and cleanse yourself of your guilt (like going to the gym after an all-nighter).

Over-consumption, guilt and engaging with the ‘green’ consumer

I was reminded of this when reading Alex Hesz and Bambos Nephytou’s Guilt Trip, a timely, semi-worthy but fresh and occasionally funny book about the behaviours that got us into our current mess (less economic and more environmental).

It’s about the fear induced by over-consumption, the resulting guilt, and how to engage with the ‘green’ consumer. It made me think of my idea above because, as a marketer looking for new tricks (and clients want case studies, case studies!), I didn’t actually come away with any concrete examples of how to properly involve consumers one by one beyond ‘ads’.

The new, enlightened digital consumer

This is often the problem with these books: like digital conferences, they string you along for ages and tell you the model’s broken, but don’t include many examples of solid ideas at the end. But maybe that’s precisely the point – because everything is changing so fast right now that it’s taken advertisers (still using old tricks, let’s face it) a while to catch up, especially with the new, enlightened digital consumer.

Interestingly, David McGee, retail director of PricewaterhouseCoopers, told a recent Checkout conference that, similar to Great Depression consumers, Ireland’s consumers will never recover from the guilt they feel over their over-consumption during the boom years.

Defining ‘fear’

Anyway, let’s get down to some definitions. The first part of the book is all about defining fear. We are all done with unrealistic messaging around ‘fear’ (McCarthyism, drink driving ads, Blair’s dodgy dossier, Bush, Olay and Twiggy spring to mind).

Fear, which we’ve moved on from apparently, is described as a primal knee-jerk ‘flight or fight’ reaction and, although a potent weapon in any marketer’s arsenal, doesn’t work anymore – it’s too temporary, a bit unrealistic, hard sell and exhaustive.

The main example the authors use here is how we all used to look at Hollywood blockbusters, sinking ice shelves and stranded polar bears and ask ourselves, “What are we going to do?”, whereas now we’re all going, “Oh my God, what have we done – can I help?!”.

The second reason we’re done with fear is that actually there is a whole load of bad stuff to be afraid of for real – remember how everyone said that 9/11 was just like the movies? Our fears have been realised.

Challenge for marketers to remove ‘consumer guilt’

The second part of the book moves beyond fear, is less about advertising and more about our collective state of guilt for what we’ve done to the planet. Guilt, the new master, is a more considered, cognitive and deeply-felt emotion and is less given to impulses and splurging on the Visa card.

Guilt also employs a much more prolonged decision-making process and the new battle ground for marketers is the removal of consumer guilt via information and transparency. We’re looking for brands to ‘pop the hood and show their workings’ and we want to get actively involved. In the Reparations chapter, they talk about how ‘responsible’ Obama tapped into this need.

How companies are approaching consumer guilt

When you’re marketing around guilt in the green economy, success is down to the detail and the authors show how companies are approaching the different sources of consumer guilt and the potential risks in addressing these.

Approach one is ‘green washing’ (grandiose, cliché ridden, forward-looking vaguery); second is the ‘bandwagoning’ advertiser who does the odd bit of token green marketing because everyone is doing it; and lastly we have the recommended approach, which is to not do it at all if you can’t and, when you are ready to do it, to take it to heart. 

Placing the consumer at your core

This is pretty much the kernel of the book – it’s about being authentic and real and you’re either an open company that engages with your consumers or you’re not. So it’s back to that old chestnut of putting consumers at the heart of the conversation and building a value exchange and dialogue.

And, I guess this is how consumers are – we don’t like being lied to, we know that certain industries find it hard to be good, and while we know how wrong and morally unfashionable it is to harm the environment we like air travel; we are willing to compromise when the circumstances benefit us enough.

It’s a good read. Buy it, read it, and study it or your competitors will shut you down!

Donald Douglas is managing director of Return2Sender

Guilt Trip: From Fear to Guilt on the Green Bandwagon by Alex Hesz and Bambos Neophytou

Publisher: Wiley

ISBN: 978-0-470746226