Everything Speaks: Introducing the Sustainability Moments of Truth (SusMOT)

The Micro moments in life matter, they form impressions (conscious and subconscious), and make or break what we will do next.

It’s what I believe, it’s what Brand:Lab believes.

Jan Carlzon of SAS – Scandinavian Airlines first called these moments of truth (MOT) in the 1980s, then Procter & Gamble and Google.

The big idea?

Everything that a brand does forms an impression, some of which matter disproportionately more.

MOTs are fundamental to understanding our attitudes and behaviour around sustainability.

Why? Because there is so much noise around the topic that we filter, and we do it at various moments without realising a lot of the time. This filtering (what we pay attention to, what we ignore) impacts what we do next. And these things compound over time.

Everything a brand or business does speaks about its sustainability credentials and authenticity around it.

Everything.

The messages that brands communicate to us, the category they sit in, their heritage and history. It all plays a role in the impact of a new sustainability initiative, product, ad or message and how effective it’ll be.

The challenge for brand owners is that there is no broad brush approach to nailing this. Where you come from as a brand matters.

I find it amazing that so few brands and businesses appreciate this.

Or at least if they do they don’t execute the comms around sustainability of their products, advertising or messaging with it in mind. So many executions feel the same, or they feel wrong for the brand in question.

Wrong in what way?

Tonality (too serious), lacking authenticity (you’re an oil company!) or too patronising.

Sure you can learn from other brands, but it’s just that, learn and be inspired but do what is right for your brand.

Lurpak did a very effective ad a couple of years ago titled “The Kitchen Odyssey”, that made using up leftover ingredients a fun, positive challenge (the carrot) rather than berating people for not being sustainable (stick).

How do you know what is right? Moments-based research. You need to do an audit and then make a bunch of choices on the back of that understanding.

The good news?

Brand:Lab can and does help through our SusMOTs audit. We do this using tools in our moments based toolkit, including Clickscape and then we help you set the strategy and execution plan.

We run every brief and project guided by our moments framework and toolkit. Tried and tested framework, modern toolkit. And for those that read my previous post, Clickscape is at the heart of this.

Get in touch to find out more.