When crafting sustainable storytelling for your brand or design product/concept my number one piece of advice is: don’t use the word sustainability!
Why?
Well, first of all because sustainability has become a diluted word… it means too much, has been used too much, and is unfortunately too often interlinked with greenwashing.
Second of all, most people’s eyes start to glaze over when you communicate about your sustainability strategies. Because they most often consist of too many empty words, too many boring facts, too much talk on certifications and too many don’ts and doomsdays scenarios. And of too little humor, too little passion, too little heartfelt information, well, too little good storytelling. Or simply put; sustainability strategies seldom make for a good story!
Sustainability is a lot of things. It’s important, it’s necessary, it’s something we all have to work with or deal with somehow. It’s even expected.
But, sustainability is also a potentially boring story. And boring stories don’t get remembered — and they don’t sell.
As Richard Powers writes in his eco-novel The Overstory, “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
But what is a good story?
A good story is a story you remember because it made an impression on you, made you feel good, made you feel sad, made you feel energized — made you feel something!
Examples of a good story is a folktale or an urban legend. Such stories are typically characterized by a simple problem, a plot, interesting characters, and a solution.
Like this 1852 fable called “Solomon’s Seal” by Edward Fitzgerald (that I love dearly):
King Salomon once lost a chess game to his most trusted advisor, Benaiah Ben. Being a bit of a bad loser, King Salomon decides to teach Benaiah…
