Advertising and Sustainability; the way to make sure that the underdog will win

I was lucky enough to secure a seat at the latest Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lectures by Todd Sampson on Creativity - balancing fear & success. 

(I got a spot because I responded immediately as part of my strategy to not double-handle emails!)

If you're like me, you might need to look him up if you don't watch much TV! You can see him on the 'Gruen Transfer' show. As a successful advertising executive, he has also been heavily involved with dreaming up 'Earth Hour' which has recently been popular in the less developed world including China (I felt hope bubbling up inside me as I saw the images and almost cried).

He was delightful, wearing a stupid 'Farmville' T-shirt in bright red and casual shoes. The academics introducing him were all wearing very formal wear and were very careful to follow protocol, although I happen to know that they are lovely real people in person. The contrast was stark and I'm sure that he is very conscious of his personal branding - managing it very carefully.

He regaled us with his stories including flying to New Zealand for work and happening to have tea with Sir Edmund Hillary, climbing Mount Everest solo, his pivotal decision to finally become CEO in his firm and about his kids and the importance of parenting encouraging creativity.

He wants us to be courageous enough to take 5 minutes of being creative, rather than choosing to default to some conservative response as a result of fear.

This struck me. In Australia we have numerous examples of environmental problems being ignored or under-funded. Climate change, salinity and systemic forest and woodland declines to name a few close to my heart. We seem reactive and scared. The Carbon Tax has come about as a sort of stop gap after the larger  Emissions Trading Scheme proposed by Kevin Rudd fell through as a result of the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnball being displaced in favour of Tony Abbot (the economist in favour direct action and any other random insanity that occurs to him). Something that seemed inevitable with bipartisan support fell apart and the Australian carbon market took a heavy blow... several years later we seem to almost have The Carbon Farming Initiative in place, but that too could fall over before the administrative arms are up and running.

We're settling for less than what my heart tells me is possible.

This concept of creativity trumping fear (at least for 5 minutes) must be embraced by those of us in environmental campaigns as the way to make sure that the underdog will win.

So the question goes out to the ether - "How do we use the creativity often shown in the advertising world for good (rather than evil)?"

"How can we inspire others and change our world?"

Your role can be small, or larger than you could ever imagine :)