Rather, Kahneman writes, the big action is entirely between our ears. Not in a coldly logical Spock vs. warm-blooded Kirk way, but Spock vs. the knee-jerk reactive Homer Simpson. For marketing and reputation management, Kahneman’s work represents a whole new way of considering how audiences will respond to words, images and messages. It’s a way to find out how people really think in a way that predicts how they’ll actually behave.

Kahneman pits our fast-thinking, largely automatic brains against our slow-thinking, deliberate brains. It’s often not a fair fight. We’re much more Homer than we want to admit, acting quickly on instinct and responding to the images freshest in our mind. The deliberate, thorough Spock is a supporting player.

One example: we all have a strong bias toward judging someone’s career not as a sum of good and bad experiences but according to how good it was at the end. Our lives are judged by the tyrant of memory, and memory judges by peak and valley moments, especially toward the end. A misstep late in life can weigh equally with a lifetime of accomplishment.

Consider Richard Nixon. For years after Watergate, he was shunned. Yet by constantly writing and speaking about lofty issues, Nixon eventually crafted a reputation as a wise statesman seasoned by hard experience. Watergate didn’t disappear, but Nixon largely succeeded in fitting it more proportionately into a career that included progressive accomplishments like founding the EPA and the public broadcasting system.

Ergo, people need to fight incredibly hard to create “new endings” after their reputations have taken a public hit. Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is an unfortunate example of not getting a chance to do what Nixon did. Unlike Nixon, Paterno died soon after his fall from grace, leaving him no time to atone for his perceived failure to act when told of an assistant’s alleged sexual predation on young boys.

Another example is what Kahneman calls the “focusing illusion.” As it turns out, we get more pleasure from our car when we think about driving versus when we’re actually driving (at which point we’re hopefully thinking about other things, like where we’re going).

Now think of the car commercials that try to recreate some exhilarating driving experience (“warning: professional drivers on a test course”) vs. the ones that simply allow you to luxuriate in the pleasant thoughts of car ownership. Marketers might accomplish more promoting the illusion.

Now, if you’re like me, reading this book will give you a lot more respect for our intuitive, Homer-brained selves. If nothing else, without its quick associations and snap judgments (dodging falling branches, reading your spouse’s body language), our species (and marriages) would never have made it this far.

But for all its admirable qualities, our intuitive brain isn’t very trustworthy. Like Homer, we’re terrific at rationalizing, but not at giving rational accounts of our own behavior.  This is exactly why social experiments never tell study subjects the purpose of the study. If they know why, they intuitively try to “help” us, which in turn only screws up the results.

So what does this say about the future of market research? So much of what people tell us is what they think we want to hear, what they makes them look good or normal, or just whatever seems rational. That’s why the emerging field of social media analytics is going to be huge as a new tool for formative research and campaign evaluation.

Catching people in the act of behaving is the much surer pathway to understanding what they’re thinking.

As always, we’re thinking short and long term about what’s coming next in business, technology, media and social change to ensure our clients’ communications strategies resonate.

Here are just a few thoughts from Brodeur Partners associates as we kick off January:

‘SEO’ abuse is dying. Long live content

SEO, at least in its most cynical form, will lose relevance.

Search engines will give more weight to sticky content that is shared by real people, and less weight to spammy, content-farmed pages overstuffed with keywords.  That means great content will increasingly trump SEO.

And since sharing will drive search results, be on the lookout for search engines to prefer emotional content (the kind people like to share) over the boring yet factual content people have traditionally associated with search engines.

Businesses will set social strategies

What Facebook has done in our social lives – made it easier to find interesting people, follow them and share information – companies like NewsGator (our client) and Jive are doing for business.

Workers are microblogging, gleaning insights from activity streams, forming communities, sharing video, floating new ideas and discovering mentors – all through rapidly maturing, management-sanctioned social business offerings.

In many cases, workers are smarter and more productive. 2012 will be a big year for businesses to make far-reaching decisions on how social they want to be and when.

Better days for renewables

Look for more large-scale renewable energy projects – 20 megawatts or more – to enter the development pipeline in 2012. Although the Solyndra failure grabbed a disproportionate share of headlines in 2011, less politically charged events later in the year were harbingers of a good year for utility-scale renewable in 2012.

First, the U.S. Dept. of Energy signed off on a $90 million loan guarantee for the Cogentrix concentrated photovoltaic plant, to be the world’s largest CPV facility. The other good omen was the Cape Wind project’s success in court, which should inform future legal challenges to wind farm developments in controversial locations.

Also late in 2011, the U.S. Interior Department approved two renewable projects on federally owned lands – the Sonoran Solar Energy Project in Arizona and the Tule Wind Project in California. Expect more announcements like this in 2012 as work done quietly in 2011 starts to pay off.

Health-care industry consolidation

Expiring drug patents, weak R&D pipelines, stronger compliance oversight by the government, and increasing supply chain complexities are all factors which will force the health-care industry to consolidate through mergers and acquisitions to achieve the economies of scale and maximize profits. (This one came from our friends at Celerant Consulting, Inc., a client)

Will e-books kill the hardcover star?

No, but we think 2012 could deliver the first “Kindle star” – the author who has breakthrough mass-market success through electronic books before print.  Kindle and other electronic publishing platforms have been an excellent medium for writers like Amanda Hocking, who built a following through e-books and parlayed it into a contract with St. Martin Press in 2011.

The success of Hocking and writers like her – “Riptide” author Michael Prescott and “Mill River Recluse” author Darcie Chan – in genre fiction has paved the way for an e-book blockbuster – think Stieg Larsson or J.K. Rowling for the digital set. Kindle, iPad and their respective imitators are already in their second and third generations, so the mass market is there.

To lure typically non-reading demographics, e-books also enable writers to blend audio, video, and exotic typefaces into their text at low cost. All of the ingredients are there to make 2012 the breakthrough year for an enterprising author with a good instinct for current publishing realities.

The relentless indie bookstore

And while e-readers will continue to gain popularity, they will not annihilate independent bookstores, which will be buoyed by a growing “buy local” sentiment in communities across the country. Look for a modest resurgence of local bookstores, and local businesses in general, in 2012.

Case in point: the wonderful indie RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, N.H., where we have an office. Locals love it so much they actually invested in it to save it from oblivion, and helped with the store’s move to a more affordable location.

More media to go digital

Look for publications to continue shifting their resources online. The Christian Science Monitor, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, eWeek and InfoWorld have all gone digital only. They save materials, printing and distribution costs and recoup resources for amping up their online content, including audio, video and community building. We’re due to see a mainstream glossy mag make a move like this, quite possibly in 2012.

We, the people, drive brands…

The world of brand influence will belong to everyday people, not big business. And that means bloggers. As noted in a recent Associated Press story about holiday shopping, “These days, mommy bloggers don’t just gab about spilled milk and poopy diapers. In fact, they’ve become so influential in the $22 billion toy market that toy makers go to great lengths to get their seal of approval.

Their thumbs-up is particularly important during the holiday shopping season when toy makers hope to create the next hit toy. It’s a major shift for toy companies, which have always given out samples of new dolls, games and other playthings to drive sales. Five years ago, they handed out 98 percent of those products to TV stations, newspapers and magazines. But today, as much as 70 percent go to bloggers.”

…even in B2B

Branding and communications professionals can no longer ignore the consumer perspective, even if they’re a B2B brand. After all, products must appeal to the individual user.

As Paul Miller, VP-e-commerce at W.W. Grainger said in a recent interview with BtoB Magazine, “…it’s about understanding the customer’s intent. How are they finding information? How are they building their brand preference set? How do you deliver an experience that blows them away?

And the truth is you can’t look at B2B and think that’s really where that’s been emanating from. It really does come more from the consumer side—where best practices derive.”

Finally, we’ll be more mindful

With the economic correction has come a correction in attitude. The challenges of the past few years have taught us a lot. That we can get by with less. That if we have family, friends, health and the kindness of others we are doing very well indeed. And that regardless of what the economy brings or doesn’t bring, we have every reason to be more optimistic in 2012.

I see us all being more mindful – that is, more focused on and appreciative of what we have in the here and now. We’ll leave our smart phones behind when it’s time for family dinner. We’ll look for opportunities to help friends and strangers alike. And when it comes to the ways we work, live, purchase and vote, we’ll be just more real, without pretense or irony. We’ll look for relevance.

These are just a few of the ideas bubbling up at Brodeur this morning. What do you see happening in 2012?

New dynamics fashioned by the intersection of the global economy, the digital world and the geopolitical context has rendered predictability opaque. One thing is certain: we need multiple viewpoints and sensibilities toiling collectively to arrive at a firmer footing. More female corporate board members working in concert with the male of the species might help. This is not a quota issue. It is a cognitive requirement for a more successful collective intelligence.

In this post 9-11 and post-Ponzi world, a larger mix of worldviews is necessary to understand things beyond their surface manifestation. One implication: it is insufficient to have only 15% women seated around the boardrooms of the Fortune 500. When men and women work together, their different cognitive temperaments – in alchemy and in mutual oversight – can create visions and solutions that better fit the current environment of complexity.

As a population, the male is oriented to the present, the concrete, the visual, the “hit,” the win, the “me.” Evolutionarily speaking, the male must bring home the bacon. No excuses. The male is in-the-now and, above all else, a pragmatist.

In contrast, the female is oriented to the conceptual, to underlying dynamics, to the relationship between things, and to stability over the long-term. Women intrinsically tend to experience and understand patterns over time, and are more sensitive to how things move and mutate. They are more prone to resolve conflicting meanings by creating higher-order concepts. When the game is about paradox (which it so often is, nowadays), women have home field advantage.

In business, mixes or blends of any kind are too infrequent. Things tend to be siloed. Neat, stereotypical boxes satisfy the need for simplicity, but usually don’t foot the bill.

Together, males and females are better than each separately. They could help each other bring out the best in the boardroom.

In this era of high uncertainty, many problems seem caught in an eddy. We now need a deeper understanding not only of institutions and of technologies, but also of human nature and the nature of minds that contribute to and can solve our commercial and political challenges.

If we had more individuals and groups with cognitive inclinations from both genders, those bodies just might add some innovative points of view to the mix of ideas already on the table.

Dr. Deutsch is a cognitive anthropologist, president of the strategic innovations and communications consulting firm, Brain Sells and a member of the Brodeur Advisory Board.

After two days of events, I came to the conclusion that we have a very serious communications problem in advocating global health causes.

Although it may be unintentional, health communicators are making it difficult for the average person to get involved in their causes. Why? Because too often we require our supporters to become experts, with large amounts of prerequisite knowledge, before we even say hello. We frequently inundate consumers with insider speak.

This has always been a challenge, but is even more so now that the Internet has opened new communications channels between experts and the casual Facebook or Twitter user.

We need to lower these barriers and make it easier for the average person to get involved if we’re really going to see meaningful consumer action and societal change. While the events I attended weren’t meant for the general public, the number of acronyms used and amount of industry jargon thrown around was staggering.

Unfortunately, that lingo seeped into the consumer messaging that was distributed through social media. Education is a necessary step for social change, but most people don’t have the time for the equivalent of a college-level course to follow the conversation.

It’s not that we have to dumb things down, we just need to make working on global health issues more engaging, more manageable and less exhausting for consumers. We can’t keep assuming everyone follows these topics on a daily basis.

Instead of trying to educate people on facts, risk factors and prevention programs, let’s explain the problem in a sentence and give them two or three things they can do to help themselves. Talking to regular people in a way that makes sense to them will not make you or your organization less credible. It’s time to stop thinking that if you don’t use big words and fancy acronyms, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

The Internet presents a huge opportunity to break down barriers between experts, activists and the general public, but only if everyone is willing to adapt. Wikipedia has shown that the public is meeting us halfway – they’re reading and learning things that were previously only available in graduate libraries.

Now it’s time for the experts to ante up. Technology can facilitate the conversation, but in the end, you’re having the conversation.

If the world is given an opportunity to engage with us for the first time ever and they choose to tune us out, we may not have many more chances to re-engage.

I worked in a fish-processing plant. Endless blocks of frozen cod came rolling down the line. We’d cut and pack it for millions of consumers longing for six-month-old sea catch. At least I got a uniform – a dashing cross between fast-food counterman and computer chip lab technician. My hairnet made the plant girls swoon; or maybe it was the oppressive heat.

Later, I found work in management. I managed toilets at an industrial company that cleaned uniforms, tablecloths and towels. The laundry bundles were rank with ketchup, molasses, steak juice and mayonnaise. The toilets, however, were another story. Shiny white porcelain had been replaced long ago by a black nastiness that made it impossible to distinguish between permanent discoloration and recent events.

I devoted many hours working events that inevitably ended in “athon.” Hot dog-athon. Parade-athon. Texas square-dance-athon. Although the causes were worthy, the pay was an inviting $1.50 per weekend day plus all the stimulating conversation I could muster with people attired in gingham, string ties, polka dots, petticoats and metal-tipped shirt collars who willingly responded to strange verbal calls.

But these adventures pale in comparison to setting foot in a Hallmark Store.

Oh, I’m sure Joyce Clyde Hall meant well when he invented the business in 1915. He thought greeting cards represented class and were “more than a form of communication, they were a social custom.” By 1944, this philosophy had been ingrained in the public’s consciousness via a clever tagline: “When you care enough to send the very best.”

Fast forward nearly 70 years, however, and greeting cards have become arduous and quaint.

Arduous:

I’m always amazed how something so simple becomes so complicated. They’re all cards (one idea), but there are so many layers:

• Recipients (grandmas, brother-in-laws, dogs, neighbors!)
• Categories (stress, consolation, surprise, death!)
• Occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, retirement, weddings!)
• Varieties (Shoebox, Maxine, Forever Friends, singing cards!)
• Mood (serious, sappy, sublime, inspirational!)
• Quantity (50 different card choices – at least – per major category)

When I’ve worked through the layer matrix and finally zeroed in on the card zone I need, my frustration spikes again. Despite the expansive choice, the words never feel right. I don’t talk that way, and I don’t think that way.

Quaint:

Sending a greeting card seems so irrelevant in this age of social networking; the way we communicate has changed radically since Clyde invented a new social norm.

People communicate more than ever and they’re very comfortable doing it. Whether it’s sending Tweets, Facebooking, writing blogs, texting, posting videos or sharing photos, our country and the whole world for that matter is connecting and expressing constantly.

We’re also much more aware of our environment and sustainability. We care about what we buy, consume and dispose of. How many beautiful, life-giving trees is Mr. Hall’s social custom responsible for?

So I’m wondering:

Do we really need to waste a half hour in a store looking for a printed card written by someone we don’t know that’s consumed in a few seconds and thrown away? Is social media really more impersonal than a card? Could hearing a live human voice be, by any chance, more meaningful? If I convey my own thoughts using my own words and send that message however I choose, is this not the most personal touch of all?

The greeting card business is headed the same place as film cameras. And I no longer feel guilty about not sending the very best. I’d rather don a hairnet, pack fish and clean a toilet.

I’ve got three examples on my mind today.

Ford. A few years ago, Ford was just another U.S. automaker being schooled by the Japanese and headed for bankruptcy. My, how things change. In 2009, Ford bravely turns away a government bailout. The company introduces new, greener and more affordable models. Customers are delighted.

In Q1 2011, the company announces a $2.55 billion profit, its best quarter since 1998. Ford’s 2010 sales beat 2009’s by 19 percent, a larger margin than any full-line automaker. Its stock price soars to $14.12 today, up from $1.26 on Nov. 19, 2008. J.D. Power quality ratings rise. (Even the much-maligned Ford Pinto is suddenly drenched in nostalgia.)

As we’ve said, relevance is a function of experiences that go beyond the rational. Did rejecting the bailout engage peoples’ values to reheat the brand?

Hand dryers. Hand dryers? Yes, hand dryers. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you haven’t tried one of the new, turbocharged XLERATOR or Dyson hand dryers. Not only do they actually dry your hands versus breathe warm air on them (eureka!), but they practically blow you off your feet. Their drying speed relieves patron traffic jams at the movies. Their novelty puts forgotten gas stations on the map. Their power has spawned a new YouTube genre: hijinx in the public restroom. Someone even created a mobile app to tell you where to find them. Transcending the rational, these new hand dryers are all about senses and emotions.

Steven Tyler. Advancing age, squabbles with the band and falls from the wagon pushed the former Aerosmith frontman into irrelevance in recent years. Then he joins “American Idol” (itself headed for obscurity) and becomes everybody’s favorite judge. It’s not that he’s better at judging; he just clicks with us. Suddenly, the ladylike dude matters again.

Now in our view, something’s relevant only when it’s powerful enough to prompt behavior change: a vague shift in perception isn’t enough. In this case, we can measure Tyler’s relevance in readers of his memoir, purchases of Aerosmith music (up 250 percent) and viewers turning back to “Idol” after many thought it was washed up.

Those are three examples off the top of my head. All somehow delighted us, or at least triggered an emotional response. What’s relevant to you these days? And are you still relevant? Are you triggering senses, emotions, values and social impulses? If not, how can you stage your own comeback?

A new Buick TV commercial called “What Matters” does just that. It isn’t focused on automotive speed, comfort or price. It doesn’t spend time spouting superlatives. Or cite independent sources to validate car quality.

Instead, it frames around the inevitability of dying and living the best possible life. Heady stuff in an industry still largely dominated by flash, sex appeal and performance.

It begins:

“How will the value of your days be measured?”

“What will matter is not what you have, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance. What will matter is how long you will be remembered by whom and for what.”

“A life of meaning and purpose and happiness… that’s the greatest luxury of all.”

During the voice-over, we see images that are largely people-action-centered:

• A man and woman run for their car in the rain; he shields her with a newspaper and opens the car door for her.
• A dad and son shoot hoops in the driveway at night.
• A father and daughter play in the beach sand. Then he gently brushes sand from her little legs as they spill out from the rear seat.
• A man pauses to savor a beautiful landscape, then captures the moment with his camera.
• One driver happily yields for another.

While Buicks are visible throughout, they’re in the background quietly supporting the spirit of “what matters.”

Then Buick transitions more directly to its own brand and makes the consumer connection.

“What if there was a car company that felt the same way? That car company is Buick, a brand that’s growing faster than any other major car company in America. By making vehicles of substance and quality, with a look and feel that says, ‘come as you are.’”

“This isn’t luxury the way you’ve always known it; it’s luxury the way it should be. Your kind of luxury.”

Turns out this clever emotional alignment was based on a longer poem written in 2003 by Michael Josephson. Buick gives credit at the end of the spot, but the tiny type is easily missed.

By aligning its brand with the highest level of human desire (remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the ultimate level of self-actualization?) – instead of wooing base desires – Buick is leveraging a high-level branding platform that spans multiple demographics in one swoop.

Caring. Kindness. Helping. Is it magical positioning? Authentic brand reinvention? Or clever salespersonship? I’m not sure, but I do know Buick hopes to sell more cars by embracing the best in all of us and hoping we, in turn, align with their brand because it represents what we cherish (or hope for) most in ourselves.

I don’t think this kind of appeal will hurt Buick, and it may spur even higher revenues. After all, Buick was the fastest-growing major automotive brand in the United States in 2010 with 40 percent of its sales coming from other manufacturers’ customer bases.

At the very least, we’re seeing a formerly stodgy brand intelligently re-aligning itself toward a new level of success…and Relevance.

It was the smell.

It was the “train station smell,” a peculiar mix that is part diesel fuel, a dose of pumice, quarry and an occasional whiff of sulfur. Add to that a liberal dose of dirt and grime and the quotidian smells of large groups of people, reheated fast food, and refuse.

But this was not peculiar to New York’s Penn Station. It was universal.

It was the the same smell at Union Station in Washington DC or Gare du Nord in Paris or South Station in Boston. At Shinjuku Station in Japan or Centraal Station in Amsterdam.

I was struck by how sensory experience communicates across cultures and across categories.

I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out a giveaway from the hotel I had stayed at the night before – the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue. It was a mini-card with a perfume vial. The card and the vial held the promise that you could take the “smell” of the W Hotel with you. There it was, the W Hotel captured in a perfume vial.

Think about all the things you know by smell.

The chlorine-laden scent of a cheap hotel lobby. The musty smell of grandma’s house. The scent of the sea or aroma of fresh cut grass. The “godknowswhat” smell of the local gym.

Sensory elements communicate at a level far greater than traditional “messaging.” We spend considerable time and attention to words and rhetoric. We identify influencers and communities. We plan events and gala openings. Organize promotions. Plan and execute media tours. But what about the senses? How are we using them to convey our story?

Of all the things that communicate, perhaps the most powerful are sensory elements like smell. Yet for those in the business of communications, these sensory elements rarely come up as a matter of discussion or study.

Michael Overstreet, head of Fragrance Design LLC claims that, “Neurologically, scent is tied very closely to the memory, so brands are looking to include scents that invoke positive memories for consumers and take us back to pleasant experiences via that fragrance.” He goes on to say, “Vision is people’s most relied-upon sense, but scent often scores a much greater emotional impact.” [GCI Magazine]

When Starbucks growth began to flatten, founder Howard Schultz wondered aloud in a very public email that perhaps the neglected element was scent. The stores had slowly introduced non-pastry foods including microwaved breakfast sandwiches. This, said Schultz, risked fundamentally changing why people came to their stores in the first place – for the smell.

“I believe we overlooked the cause and the affect of flavor lock in our stores. We achieved fresh roasted bagged coffee, but at what cost? The loss of aroma — perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores; the loss of our people scooping fresh coffee from the bins and grinding it fresh in front of the customer, and once again stripping the store of tradition and our heritage?” – Howard Schultz email

Hospitality and retail are the most attuned to how sensory experiences can influence mood and behavior. In the hotel business, one of the earlier adopters of “brand by scent” was the Westin. One distinctive element of the Westin – apart from beds that are to die for! – is the unique “woody” smell that you get when you walk inside the lobby. That scent, delivered by a company ScentWave, offers in their words “a light and refreshing white tea welcome in Westin hotels worldwide.” According to the SVP of Westin Hotels and Resorts, “We think scent is a pretty exciting element of the whole guest experience.”

Retailers have also gotten into the act. Abercrombie and Fitch invest in their own “scent.” This use of smell, known as “scent branding,” has gone from hotels, apparel and electronics companies and is now even an experiment in a Bronx low-income housing development.

We often spend a lot of time perfecting “the look” something is going to have. But that’s just one of the senses. And in some respects, not the most impactful or memorable.

We know that smell, sound, taste, and feel have a tremendous impact on how people perceive, connect, and behave.

Like our colleagues at Starbucks, Westin, and Abercrombie and Fitch, we believe sensory elements are a key part in connecting to the average person. It is as powerful (and often more so) than a case study, a testimonial or appeal to status, connections or values.

Sensory elements connect at the most basic and primal level.

What does your product or program smell like?

Truth be told, when it comes to other people’s behavior, we all carry a very skeptical gnome on our shoulders. Psychologists call it “the fundamental attribution error” – our bias toward thinking people’s behavior reflects something about them – some deep-rooted characteristic – rather than something in their situation. Show us someone speeding through a yellow light and we’ll see a chronic reckless driver, not someone rushing home in an emergency.

But the fact is that changing people’s situation is always a big part of the answer, and – because of the fundamental attribution error – almost always the part we’re not paying enough attention to. Take one example that’s much in the news.

America’s children didn’t get to be epidemically obese over the last 30 years because we somehow produced a generation of gluttons. Or because a generation of parents somehow lost their parenting skills. They got obese because the foods that were the most heavily promoted, cheapest and most available to them made them that way. They didn’t get obese because they suddenly decided physical activity was anathema to them. They got obese because their routes to school became unsafe for pedestrians and bikes, because their PE classes were cancelled and because their playgrounds and parks became unsafe or unavailable to them.

I’m not saying that people don’t need to be part of the solution. They need the motivation and the facts to help them change. We’ve worked on hundreds of campaigns with clients for whom changing people’s behavior – to get teens to reject tobacco, to get moms to sign their kids up for health care, to get young people to get HIV-tested, to encourage people with depression to seek treatment – is a big part of their life’s work.

Our experience has shown us that the behavioral scientists have it exactly right – behavior change happens when we create an environment that helps people make better choices.

And those positive changes will, indeed, happen.

That’s the science of optimism.

Perhaps my explanation was off. Or perhaps we’re all suffering from a Hollywood-induced relevance deficit. Human response systems are really good at spotting and dealing with near-term problems. If it’s not a clear and present danger, it’s not relevant and therefore not motivating. Hollywood understands this and formulates its films to capitalize on it – particularly the action and disaster ones.

In a typical Hollywood disaster flick, the world crisis is glaringly apparent – and personally relevant – to viewers within the first 10-15 minutes of the opening credits and will be resolved within about 120 minutes. The real world doesn’t work that way, of course. However, our media-mediated lives often create a bleed-over of Hollywood-style expectations. No category five hurricanes raking the East Coast flat on a weekly basis? Well then, no climate change, obviously. Plants and animals shifting their ranges in response to climate changes is a subtle thing, ill-suited for hardy action heroes like Bruce Willis and Vin Diesel.

This lack of near-term urgency makes it tough to change behavior on important issues like climate change and carbon-intensive lifestyles. People tune out long-term problems. Clearly your warning to them has no relevance to their particular life.

That is the challenge for those in green tech seeking to motivate people. Rather than reflexively grabbing for a “Save the Planet” positioning, stop and look closer for angles that make what you’re offering relevant to issues your target audience is grappling with.

Have an all electric car that makes polar bears want to hug people who own one? Great, but I’m pretty sure that’s not relevant to anyone concerned about rising gas prices and the fact that increasingly complex internal combustion engines and their drive trains are making regular maintenance an expensive proposition. Electric cars are also kinda cool and hip. People like to be cool and hip, even if it costs more. Just ask Steve Jobs.

Find what’s relevant, match it with what you have on tap and then sell. Maybe even get Vin Diesel to star in the commercial.