Climate Storytelling Lessons from SXSW: How to Avoid the Echo Chamber
I recently attended SXSW 2023 with Laura Fernandez from the Goldman Environmental Prize, an Allison+Partners client for nearly two decades, and Nalleli Cobo, the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for the U.S. and youth activist recognized for her efforts to shut down a toxic oil site in Los Angeles that was harming her Latinx community’s health.
Nalleli’s inspirational story didn’t just stop there – her organizing efforts were instrumental in convincing the L.A. Board of County Supervisors to ban all future oil exploration and phase out all existing sites in L.A., which is home to the biggest urban oil fields in the U.S. Her huge and historic win helped right some of the systemic wrongs of environmental racism, now widely recognized and understood to cause severe health outcomes such as cancer and respiratory illnesses.
As we continue to think of ways to be creative for our clients and bring their stories to different audiences in new ways, we pitched a session within the civic engagement track at SXSW, focused on how grassroots mobilizing can achieve environmental justice and what we can all learn from the stories of inspirational grassroots leaders such as Nalleli. The festival was an interesting place to bring this conversation given the intersection of several different industries, including film, media, music, tech and innovation. When we seek to create change in society, it’s important to storytell across sectors, demographics and interest areas to ensure we reach beyond our typical audiences and avoid bouncing around in the echo chamber.
Oftentimes, we can focus too closely on messaging to resonate with those already aligned with us, forgetting we can broaden movements by speaking to those whom we might see as adversaries. And in doing so, we should focus on what connects us, rather than on our differences. We put a last-minute call to action at the end of Nalleli’s talk at SXSW asking the audience to take action on stopping the Willow Project, an oil-development project in Alaska. Unfortunately, we learned soon after President Joe Biden had approved the drilling. While there were nearly 3 million signatures on a Change.org petition against the project, it still perhaps wasn’t a big enough part of the broader cultural and societal conversation – again underlining the need to translate these environmental stories across different spaces.
Sometimes in climate storytelling, we focus too much on the data (for example, the Willow project’s drilling for 600 million barrels of oil leading to 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads). When you’re not a scientist or working in the climate movement, these numbers don’t necessarily translate. We need to start centering people in these conversations as a storytelling tactic to reach broader audiences. Nalleli did this in her work, using her own experiences to fight for that historic, legislative change in L.A.
So what’s the takeaway here for us as brand storytellers working in climate issues? We should keep showing up in places like SXSW – and continue to get creative to get outside of the echo chamber. Examples include experiential pop-ups like the Ben & Jerry’s and Clean Creatives ice cream truck – an Inconvenient Scoop – advocating for the end of fossil fuels by bringing ice cream and insights to both SXSW attendees and passersby. We can bring flash-dance protests to streets, and tell climate stories in joyful ways through art and music. And within these techniques, we should continue to center the people on the front line, the indigenous stewards, the communities of color and every day heroes fighting for justice.
During her eight years at Allison+Partners, Katy has worked with startups to mid-sized and global Fortune 500 companies across the London and San Francisco offices. With a background in the non-profit world prior to agency life, she has a keen interest in purpose, sustainability, social impact, DE&I and the outdoors, and applies her passion to deliver impactful storytelling for the brands she works with. In her role as vice president, she leads initiatives within the agency’s Purpose Center of Excellence, seeks out climate-focused new business opportunities, builds strategic thought leadership platforms and oversees teams to drive impactful results for brands committed to building a sustainable future. She holds a BA in psychology and fine art from Newcastle University.
