We make sense of the world in two ways: cognition and emotion. And most sustainability messaging leans hard on stats, charts, carbon offsets by the decimal. Rational, yes. Memorable? Not even slightly.

If you want to actually move people, you need to make them feel something. What sets you apart isn’t how many facts you get right; it’s how you make your audience feel about themselves. Then, maybe, the world.

It’s never about your brand or your noble intentions. It’s about how interesting you make their Monday morning feel.

So far, I’ve told you what’s not working. Now let’s talk about what does:

Don’t tell, show.

You planted trees. You cleaned oceans. Great. No one cares; unless you show them why it matters to them. Forget the planet, focus on them.

That means one thing: tell a story they’ll remember. Not some bloated metric about trees planted in Zambia. Make it personal, visceral and unforgettable.

In the Middle Ages, the Church sold salvation through guilt. Today, sustainable brands sell virtue the same way.

That old trick worked because it offered something concrete; heaven and forgiveness. Sustainable brands, on the other hand, dangle a hypothetical future you’ll never live to see. It’s not even your future; they’re selling hope to your unborn grandchildren. They promise an alternative lifestyle to the very species that once domesticated wolves and turned wild plains into farmland. We are not wired for restraint; we conquered nature.

The intent is noble, sure, but the execution lands like a Barney-and-Marshall debate on environmentalism: well-meaning, painfully awkward, and utterly missing the point.

In How I Met Your Mother, there’s a scene where Marshall; sweet, earnest and utterly clueless, keeps pitching new personas to prove his value at work:

Marshall Eriksen: “Hey, Barney. I thought of a thing to make me more essential here. I’m Eco Guy, ’cause everybody loves a guy who recycles, right?”
Barney Stinson: “Fired. What else you got?”

That exchange didn’t work on the show, and it doesn’t work in real life either. Every brand with a green label is screaming the same recycled gospel through the same tired megaphone. Worse, they’re convinced you lie awake at night worrying about zebras in the savannah.

Spoiler: most people don’t. They care about the price tag.

Let's see what else they try on media.

Marshall Eriksen: “I thought of a few others: Wacky Tie Guy.”
Barney Stinson: “Fired.”

Patagonia can get away with it. You can’t. Slapping on recycled materials and quirky branding doesn’t make you ethical, it makes you a lawsuit waiting to happen. Copyright is still a thing, even if your mission statement isn’t.

And let’s be honest: beautiful things work better. Period. Ask Don Norman. Emotional Design is a manual for anyone trying to build something that actually moves people.

Next ?

Marshall Eriksen: “Daily Fun Fact Guy?”
Barney Stinson: “Did you know that you’re fired?”

This media playbook is exhausted. It worked back when “we plant a tree for every unit sold” still felt novel. Now, there are a hundred nonprofits and ten thousand badges that’ll do it for you, they are automated virtue on demand.

But here’s the truth: data doesn’t move people. Surprise does. Daniel Kahneman.

He didn’t win a Nobel by boring anyone into better behavior.

I originally designed this campaign for a sustainable brand with an ambitious vision: to turn Africa into the next green continent.

They passed. Their exact words: “Thanks for the idea, I’ll feed it into ChatGPT and create the campaign without you. I’m sure you’ll do the same and bill me.”

Charming.

They ran it for three months. Then they called me. The campaign had fizzled, the story had collapsed, and now they wanted me to pick up the pieces.

But here’s the thing: I’m not a wizard. And I don’t finish someone else’s masterpiece. I prefer to run a modified version somewhere else.

Omar lives in rural Zambia. He’s a farmer, and this year, for the first time, he’s hiring. Why? Because he has more animals than ever before. Why? Because he has trees.

Mini-forests planted near his land now provide enough shade for grazing even during brutal heat. His livestock thrive. His business grows. And Omar? He stays. He didn’t get on a boat to Europe. He didn’t risk his life crossing borders in search of opportunity. He found it at home.

Thanks to your support, we didn’t just plant trees, we created jobs, reduced illegal migration, gave a goat some shade, and yes, lowered carbon emissions while we were at it.

That’s how you tell a sustainability story people remember. It’s not about numbers, it all about the choice your customers made.

The campaign runs for a year. Throughout that time, I drip-feed the audience small, surprising fragments of a larger story, each one quirky, emotional or serious, and just absurd enough to stick.

“You gave a goat in Africa a place to nap. Thank you.”

These signature posts become your calling card, they are mysterious and endearing. They build intrigue, spark conversation, and train the audience to anticipate the next one. Then, on Foundation Day (or whenever the spotlight suits you), I stitch it all together into a coherent narrative. That’s when the curtain lifts, and the full picture is revealed:

From Omar to goat, I use all those posts to surprise the reader. To show them what happens when they chose you.

Why does this work? Because it doesn’t preach. It doesn’t guilt-trip. It never points a finger to politicians, immigrants and evil. It praises you, the customer and It dignifies Omar. It keeps the tone human, grounded, and strangely charming.

And most importantly: it taps into something real.

Immigration isn’t an abstract issue. It’s a daily reality in the industrialised West. People see it on the news, feel it in streets and argue about it at family dinners. But this story doesn’t get tangled in the politics. It doesn’t blame dictators, governments, or traffickers.

It simply shows the chain of impact:
You bought.
We planted.
A goat thrived.
A man stayed.
A system was built.

It’s elegance in action.

And yes, “you gave a goat shade” is quirky. Deliberately so. But you don’t have to be.

That’s the beauty of the model. Whether your brand tone is playful, poetic, deadpan, or dead serious, the mechanism still works. You choose the voice. I make it stick.

Because it’s not about being clever for the sake of it. It’s about embedding meaning in moments, unexpected, short-form flashes that lodge themselves into memory and make people feel like they were part of something before they even knew what it was.