Can We Scale Attuning?
One of the most common questions I get asked is if you can even scale a psychosocial approach. And my answer: yes, we can. And must.
As soon as I start talking about the necessity of emotional intelligence, attunement and conversations to accelerate action on climate and our environment, I get a look. This look says:
“This is all well and good, but we don’t have time to have one-on-one conversations with everyone, in order to shift our systems and safeguard our future.”
My response is: “Hmm. Have you heard of the 12-Step movement? As far I know, this movement consists literally of groups of people having conversations about addiction, spirituality and behavior change. It seems they’ve scaled pretty well, and they get results.”
AA alone has an estimated 2 million members. Imagine that number talking about our planet or your changemaking efforts. But I digress.
The point being, convening people in the right kinds of conversations that move the needle on action is, in fact, one of the most scalable things I know. People are already convening–in schools, churches, community groups, sports, theater, workplace, etc.
However, more importantly, what we need to do is think much more creatively, and imaginatively, about what we mean by scaling attunement and creating the conditions for people to face hard truths. There are many ways to go about this, from small-groups and cafe formats, to training people to be Guides.
Today, I want to talk about how we can leverage brand campaigns to do this.
Yes, you heard me. We can, and should be, scaling attunement – and doing this in our campaigns. This is what we mean by “Reveal”, one of my Guiding Principles.
It’s a common misconception that when we talk about relational approaches to changemaking, i.e. Guiding and attuning with people’s Three As, we assume that this has to be done in live, actual conversations. And yes, that is optimal and the answer is, “heck yes and fast.”
What if I were to tell you that we can also simulate conversations at scale, by carefully deciding the language, use of prompts, and messaging tone, to enable people to connect with the issues in a whole different way?
Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign
One of the examples I love to cite is the famous Dove Real Beauty Campaign. Yes, it’s a commercial brand campaign that made Unilever a lot of money. It’s also a masterclass in the genius of applying established psychosocial principles to a brand campaign that embodies attunement and Guiding.
What most people don’t know is that this wildly successful campaign, back in the early 2000s, was the mastermind of British psychoanalyst and author Susie Orbach. She helped catalyze a paradigm shift in the entire landscape of what we now know as “purpose marketing.”
She helped Dove attune deeply to the complex, messy and nuanced domain of body image for girls and women. Let’s take a look at what Orbach did with Dove.
Using the Three As
We can see that Orbach helped Dove connect with people’s deep anxiety about body image and beauty. They revealed the ambivalence so many girls and women have about their relationship with beauty, by highlighting the gap between self-image and damaging cultural norms. And importantly, they tapped into each person's deep aspirations to be accepted, beautiful and at home in themselves.
One example is their powerful video of a forensic sketch artist drawing several women, first based only on their descriptions of themselves (he does not actually see them). He then draws them based on descriptions of a stranger who has observed the women.
The subject, seeing the resulting sketches side-by-side, realizes that the sketches inspired by strangers are much more flattering than the versions from their own self-descriptions. The tagline? “You are more beautiful than you think.”
These videos each got over 35 million views in two weeks after being posted to YouTube.
Imagine if more campaigns applied this kind of attunement when addressing our planetary threats, from climate change to environmental justice and biodiversity.
I can guarantee you, we’d see results.
The reason why this works is because we are emotional beings who need to feel attuned with.
We crave connection, belonging and most importantly, being seen and heard. We want to know our experience, however complex, messy and hard, makes sense. We make sense.
When we feel we make sense, our cognitive processes can breathe, and oxygenate. We step outside of the spiral of internal looping, and gain perspective. And, as Dove knows, it fosters profound loyalty and trust.
Attunement is the basic unit of relationship.
We already know that emotional connection is the single most powerful driver for brand loyalty. However, and this is important: it involves risk taking.
An organization, brand, or platform has to take the risk of addressing an uncomfortable truth. This can feel untenable for many brands, policies and campaigns, as we believe it’s important to focus on aspiration, positivity, solutions and ‘selling the sizzle’ as one large environmental agency once called their strategy.
This is simply not true. People increasingly crave authenticity, nuance, and frankly, truth.
Attuning is risky.
Under Susie Orbach’s guidance, Dove arguably took a risk at openly inviting a public conversation about one of most pervasive insecurities of modern life: women’s body image.
Let’s not forget, Orbach made her name with Fat is a Feminist Issue, and was Princess Diana’s therapist as she wrestled with bulimia. What Dove unlocked was helping millions of women feel seen and acknowledged.
They empathized.
Imagine if we took a page out of this hymn sheet for our climate and environmental work.
Imagine if more leaders, organizations, public figures, influencers, artists and those with platforms chose a tone of empathy and compassion, along with guidance. Nuance. More “We hear you” and less “take action NOW.”
More guiding, less telling, yelling and selling.
In short, what this would look like is a very different approach to almost every aspect of our work on climate change. The emphasis would be on who and what is not currently in the conversation, and feels unseen, left out and unheard. Instead of pushing positive solutions or catastrophic reports that paralyze our brains, we’d be leaning into language like:
If you are like us, you are probably feeling overwhelmed.
We get it. We feel that way too. Here’s the thing. If more of us joined up with others feeling this way, we have a chance at turning this ship around. Join us for our …. [call to action]
Even better, build on this with actual offerings to bring people together. Dove brilliantly created platforms and vehicles for women to connect and share stories. Not unlike Patagonia, they defied the rules, and hit even more sales.
In this case, it’s about our capacity to catalyze our collective energies to heal, repair, mend and imagine. What’s at stake is not only the bottom line, but our future.
I think it’s worth taking some risks to see what happens if we expand our concept of conversations, attuning and connection, to scale. To step into the invitation to become the change leaders the world needs.
Let me know what you find!
Renée
Resources
🎧 Listen to a new podcast episode with Futur.io - Renee Lertzman on the Importance of Emotional Intelligence for Climate Action
Great post Renee thank you. Jotting down your words as reminders for the work of my own post writing : being seen, hearing the truth, making sense, empathic connection all so basic yet too often lost
What do you believe is the mechanism for attunement in the body? I find it interesting you shift immediately to conversations on the ecological crisis. Are there not other crises between the self and the environment that also require attention?