After much deliberation, I come up with a thesis: Marketing Sustainability to the Masses. It seems like so much green advertising isn’t directed at those who most need to hear or see it. I don’t know any of my regular joe friends in the Midwest who’d pick up a copy of Mother Jones or Utne Reader, much less use it to line their bird feeder. I think also of Michael Moore, who I believe to be our most mainstream left-advocating speaker, and his use of humor and “regular guyness” to achieve a point without coming off as a Tiva-wearing hippie. He breaks the left’s stereotypes. I like that. For the left to succeed in their goals, they’ll have to reach out to a wider audience by offering solid alternatives to business-as-usual. I hear a lot of complaining, but not much offering. James Carville calls it “framing the debate”. The debate for sustainability needs to be framed in such a way to favor the left, but come off in a new and better context in which to discuss these issues.
Mortie, Mortie: He's no shorty, Mortie.