It’s risky to open a story about rewriting clichés with a cliché, but here we go: ‘meet your audience where it’s at.’
This six-word manifesto is more important than ever. It is also deployed so frequently in discussions around consumer engagement it often just slides over the ears as “something you expect to hear”. And it is an indicator of a bigger problem.
In advertising, it is known as wearout: ad fatigue or semantic saturation. A message used so often, its meaning is lost.
ESG collectively represents some of society’s most essential and progressive thinking, with the ear (if desired) of a colossal audience. It is also a victim of buzzwords, phrases and reference points impenetrable to those outside the boardroom with the power to drive real world change.
ESG is far from alone. I work in climate journalism, which suffers from wearout too. We use words like ‘crisis’, ‘emergency’, ‘tipping point’. Records smashed, targets missed, all of it spelling doom.
We talk about sustainability and net zero, often without stopping to consider if recognising these terms is the same as understanding them. Good climate journalism is amongst the bravest, most difficult there is. Other journalists are in awe of it. Audiences, meanwhile—exhausted from constant urgency without agency—are stagnating.
It is not just the words.
Simon Ingram is the editor for climateXchange, an initiative of UK community interest company Syli, which works with global newsrooms to enhance their climate reporting. Find out more at climatexc.orgImage search ‘climate change’ and you will be offered, apparently, the best visualisations of the crisis impacting housing, food, sleep, health, insurance, business and technology. What do we get? Cracked ground, Earth cupped in a disembodied hand, a forlorn polar bear. Over and over. Image search ‘ESG,’ and you are in a green world of graphs, icon wheels and many more disembodied hands.
So, the big question: how can our consumers understand their place amidst the planet’s greatest challenges when their vernacular is either depressing, over-used or hopelessly abstract?
‘Meet your audience where it’s at’ means, bluntly, ‘speak their language in the place they play’. Helping them understand how the things you create—whether it is a piece of journalism, a product or a service—intersect with the things they care about.
ESG, as a company’s value system—its soul—should be the antithesis of buzzwords, inside and outside the company walls. Even the most entrenched stakeholders benefit from the inspiration clarity delivers. Anyone can be technical and accurate; the skill is making it engaging, too. Namecheck brands that are famous for their ESG approach—Patagonia, Novo Nordisk, IKEA—and you will find campaigns that recruit direct language, and often striking creativity.
Conversely, opacity can be a shield: thin commitments hidden behind a thicket of intimidating jargon.
These terms of engagement are where industry and journalism’s challenges—and responsibilities—entwine.
ESG marketing has an opportunity to increase climate literacy amongst customers in the gaps journalism misses: the tactility and saturation of everyday products and services.
A small amount of crafted information in the right place can have more impact than a detailed essay in the wrong one, so ditch the jargon and use that opportunity—whether it is on a tube of toothpaste, a carton of milk or shirt label—to say something memorable and relatable about why this particular product has a purpose.
Because the world is listening. An average of 69% of global consumers feel sustainability is more important to them when choosing brands than it was in 2021, with parts of South-East Asia reaching nearly 90%. One of their reasons for not adopting a more sustainable lifestyle? Lack of clarity.
So be clear. Help your customers understand why ESG matters. And not in the boardroom or some press release.
Tell them in the bathroom, the kitchen, the car, the supermarket. This isn’t corporate: it is cultural. The place where that relatability gap can either be widened to a chasm, or skilfully bridged. Democratised, as understanding of ESG brings ownership to the public: transparency that can be applauded, rewarded—and called out if necessary.
Collaborations help, too. For objectivity, but also creativity.
At climateXchange, we team up with local newsrooms to find ways to mine climate relevance from the topics people consume proactively—whether fashion, technology, lifestyle or travel. Our formula for storytelling lies in an acronym we call IMERCS: Inspiring, Memorable, Empowering, Relatable, Credible, Shareable.
They may seem fundamental, but these values often fill the chasms between the challenges the world faces and the motivation to surmount them. Climate change is often written as a problem directed at scientists and governments, but its impacts affect us all.
How can we act on a problem if we don’t want to engage with it, don’t understand it, don’t see its relevance to our lives and are served unappealing solutions? This is as true for progressive storytelling as it is for responsible business practices.
So in a sentence: reject the stereotypes and reboot the vernacular. Use terms of engagement everyone can relate to. Leave the polar bears in the Arctic. Give those disembodied hands faces.
Make your responsibility work mean something in everyday life to everyday people and show them how it benefits their lives.
Recruit optimism to reframe ambition—rather than using guilt to force compromise. Use images of real people living well: nothing changes actions quicker than aspiration.
So in the spirit of moving this needle, go meet that audience where it is at. But let’s also show it a future it wants to be in—and be really, really clear about how to get there.
