Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Business Insider, renowned marketing expert Seth Godin suggested in an interview that “atmosphere cancer” would be a far more engaging term to promote climate action, than “global warming” or “climate change”.
‘Call it atmosphere cancer’ – How the world’s best-known marketer would tackle global warming
Tom Turula 26 Jan 2018 6:03 PM
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Much of Seth Godin’s work – his famous blog; his books and TED talks – convey the following: No product or idea will spread just because of a brilliant technology or rock solid facts. In essence, people will respond to stories that stand out, which creates culture, changes behaviors, and leads to change.
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“Just look at what happened with gay marriage in the US in the last 10 years. It went from being safe and respectable to be against, to something that no one speaks up against anymore.”
“Did everybody change their mind? Of course not.”
“What changed was the culture, and the culture was changed because of the story,” Godin says. “People like us do things like this. That’s it, that’s all we got.”
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“For starters, global is a good thing and warming is a good thing. If [the scientists] had called it ‘Atmosphere Cancer’, they probably would have started on a better footing: because atmosphere is scientific and cancer is a bad thing. There are no cancer deniers. Everyone knows that cancer is a chronic and degenerative disease, and you need to stop it soon. ”
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This has got to be one of the most insensitive climate ideas ever proposed. A few days ago I attended a “living wake” for a friend who has terminal cancer – a final sendoff for someone who probably only has a few weeks to live. To suggest harnessing the pain and loss of a disease like cancer to promote their pathetic political cause is execrable.
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I’m wondering how good a marketer he is. The list of name changes for this benighted campaign shows that the product is a dud. Renaming a dud in search of a winning ad campaign is a disaster in more ways for climate fantasy than it would be for a product that nobody’s interested in buying. Actually, all these changes came about while the climate losers were deeply engaged with Madison Avenue message gurus like Godin.
Has this idiot any idea how this would look in the technical literature. First, there are all those years with technical journals using global warming, then AGW, then CAGW, then Climate Change (the stupidest of them all). I don’t think GRL would want papers on Atmospheric Cancer. Would Lancet publish it, or the New England Journal of Medicine?
Gee this end game with all the hysteria and terminal stupidity has taken me by surprise. I opted for an evolutionary end game where scientists gradually shifted away from alarm. Many have a paper or two which they can cite as them having recognized the possibility that natural variation is greater than thought. They could have jumped on some significant volcanic activity in the future or even made a mega-star out of a tiny smoke from the Canary Islands – at exaggeration they cant be beat! But, no. They speed up like lemmings as they approach the cliff, all for a Bertrand Russell tiny teapot in distant orbit.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/38828-if-i-were-to-suggest-that-between-the-earth-and
Read this quote as the perfect analogy for the global warming issue, especially the last several lines of it.
Libs always push it too far.
Gary,
“Gee this end game with all the hysteria and terminal stupidity has taken me by surprise. I opted for an evolutionary end game where scientists gradually shifted away from alarm.”
It seems to me that would be a shift toward unemployment . . A genocidal shift, in Godin-speak ; )
In the war between reality and narcissists headline seekers, there is often a perception of the headline manipulators winning up until the critical points when they collapse under the weight of their own making. Therefore any and all assistance provided to the delusionists is welcome.
A wounded beast roars the loudest right before it falls down.
Atmospheric Immune Deficiency Syndrome?
“Brain Cancer” — The Latest Name for BELIEF in Human Caused Global Warming
Certainly a brain mal-function of some sort. !!
Actually, no, the culture didn’t change either. Judicial activism took over a social issue that culminated in the SCOTUS declaring gay marriage is an inalienable right, same as for heterosexual marriage. Absolutely nothing in the culture or the electorate changed. Polls still show a strong disagreement with gay marriage.
It doesn’t surprise me that even the world’s best marketer would screw up something so basic and obvious, because marketing isn’t about truth—it’s about inspiring action.
I think one can also argue that one reason fewer people say anything remotely “unsupportive” is that they have seen what happens to anyone who does, regardless of how innocuous it actually is. Demonization in the media, lawsuits, fines, threats…
Like far too many issues, only one opinion can be expressed without fear of some sort of retaliation or harassment. The whole mess is actually rather similar to CAGW (in the sense of attacking those who have the “wrong” opinion/belief), except that the legal system was better weaponized. Let us hope that the legal system does not cause more harm to anyone over differences of any sort of opinion.
I guess you’re not thinking of young academic path professionals with these statements. There is already a clear and present danger for them. The legal system that covers them is a separate system.
Seth Godin is the real deal. He IS a well known marketer and he does have an interesting blog. He knows what he’s talking about. Ridiculing him may be psychologically satisfying, but it doesn’t address the accuracy of his analysis. He may look funny, but that is part of his personal “brand” to make him stand out. It works. Ridiculing his looks only says more about you, not him.
The interesting thing here is that to date, the marketing of climate change, or whatever you want to call it, has been remarkably successful. You can’t deny that billions of dollars have been spent because of it. You can’t deny that millions of people believe wholeheartedly in it. The money may be misspent; the belief misplaced. But it’s real. The disaster scenarios that we constantly read about? That’s a form of storytelling. The best ones begin with the impact on an individual or family. That sucks in the reader’s attention, because that’s something they can relate to or empathize with. That’s why these stories are effective. Storytelling began with the invention of language and it’s a universal characteristic of humans. We all love a good story, so we are predisposed to listen. What Seth is talking about is taking that marketing to the next level and making belief in climate change a cultural norm.
The work that people do here is invaluable to point out the weaknesses in the “settled” science. But all the academic papers with their numbers and graphs will not win the culture war. You need stories of your own to fight back with.
CO2 as a trigger of an “atmospheric cancer” …
Sounds like a case of “scientific hypochondria” that has been instigated/encouraged by a “scientific marketing” scheme.
Next thing they will be telling us is that “religion has been settled” and that their belief system is the only viable way to avoid desolation of the earth.
Seth Godin is Marketer/showman that wants to fool people into doing stuff. A lot of people like to be fooled, and led by their emotions. People that enjoy fooling other people in that manner are assholes. Seth Godin is Marketer/showman that wants to fool people into doing stuff.
So why keep changing the name of a product that you feel has been so well sold. You do realize that sceptics doing battle are outnumbered thousands to one (ordinary people aren’t in this battle. They are the target of the campaign), are battling against almost all mass media, every University,
K-12 propaganda/education-lite schools, every research institute, every scientific technical society, politicos of 200 countries, the UN and all other NGOs and all the world’s heavy hitter, cash rich Foundations.
As in the old USSR, dissidents (sceptics) were the 3% and the guys with the clubs, guns and torture instruments are the 97% team. All we’ve got for power like our 3% colleagues is to unremittingly deconstruct scientific fluff and to quest for truth. Fortunately it still seems to be a potent weapon against these global gov Philistines. No Madison Avenue genius could have saved the Soviet Union and they have been spinning their wheels advising how to craft a winning message for the climateers since the turn of the millennium . A good marketer would advise that a product for which you have to keep trying new names is a dud.
“He knows what he’s talking about.”
Not in this case. This is a profoundly stupid idea.
On the other hand, it did help him stay “a well known marketer” and probably drove traffic to his blog, which is probably all he actually cares about.
This guy is a manipulative weasel who reminds me of Jonathan Gruber, who helped “market” Obamacare.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage and, basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically that was really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamacare-architect-jonathan-gruber-fire/story?id=26919286
I’m sure this guy thinks the same way. He must to have come up with this idea.
DeLoss,
“The interesting thing here is that to date, the marketing of climate change, or whatever you want to call it, has been remarkably successful.”
I don’t think so, in the general, since “climate change” consistently ranks at or near the bottom of long lists of potential concerns people are presented with. (And that means a great many people at not at all concerned, it seems to me). One could say the marketing of Hillary Clinton was remarkably successful, and for some it surely was . . but not in the general ; )
“But all the academic papers with their numbers and graphs will not win the culture war. You need stories of your own to fight back with.”
I think that was understood and acted upon by some “old school” folks (like the recently departed John Coleman, for instance), who inflicted severe damage on the PR campaign aspect of this (to my mind) globalist power play.
John, thank you for your reply. I agree with you that a lot of people rank climate change near the bottom of their immediate concerns. That doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in climate change. (Sorry for the double negative.) It may just mean that climate change is too far removed from their daily life to worry about, and they are unwilling to make real personal sacrifices for some amorphous gain. We call out the hypocrisy of Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio for their fanatical belief, yet even they do little to reduce their carbon footprint. I see this as partly politics and partly a generational thing. There are two large groups that advocate for climate change: those that are political hard core believers on the left (about 20% of American voters) and the younger generation that has been indoctrinated by the educational system and by pop culture. When you read the media that they consume, climate change is just as much a given as gravity.
I am glad that some like John Coleman were able to fight fire with fire. He will be missed. His work will need to be taken up by others to continue to counter the constant propaganda.
More atmospheric CO2 is causing healthier plants to metastasize all over the body of Planet Earth!
Ohhhhhh Noooooooooo !!!! The planet is in Stage 3 ‘greening’ – Kill It Quick!
This is the first cancer that is not fatal, has no cause and requires no medical cure except getting rid of stupidity.
He makes a good point, Global is good and warming is good, so what’s not to like. I guess that is why the the first name change.
Hey, I know – they should make up a beast, say part man, part bear, and part pig, and call it ManBearPig whenever they want to refer to global warming. People are always going to fear a monster. It would be awesome.
Godin sounds like another parasite looking for a way to sink it’s mandibles deep into the public’s purse.
To be not , or to be…that is the question…!
In any regard, according to this guy, atmospheric climate thingy happens actually to be the tumor, or cancer… not actually the humanity and human activity, so to speak…
Strange, very much so.
Maybe that is where the DJT stand drives at… all these losers … in the end of the day…
The art of the deal..:)
cheers
More shrill, more desperate.
Anybody remember Rumpelstiltskin having a tantrum and tearing himself in half?
If cancer is caused by malignant stem cells that never die, then climate cancer is due to political-advocacy-academic schemes that never die for lack of trying.
Oh, wait!! – Brilliant idea here! Cancer responds and usually succumbs to radiation treatment, right? And seth the know-it-all thinks a marketing campaign for it is the answer, right?
Well, gee whizz, guys! All we have to do is reactivate the Sun, which has gone to sleep on us, and get those radiation-shedding solar flares and sunspots cranking again!
Easy-peasy fix, isn’t it? /sarc/
And yes, seth godin is a colossal jerk, for even suggesting something related to a debilitating and frequently deadly disease.
Let’s see now.
Those who claim to be scientist should have called an inanimate object (a CO2 molecule) a living thing that will kill an inanimate object (the atmosphere).
Sounds like “climate science” to me!
(Or The Weather Channel)
PS
Glad you had a chance to say “Goodbye”.
One of my parents died suddenly. Never got that chance.
PR’s best chance was “Co2 causes global warming” and “see, see it’s getting warmer”.
Again, we await the AGW stall-warts to defend this idiocy.
Come on guys,……
Let’s see how much more idiotic you can make things.
It’s what happens when somebody smokes too much climate crack.
Well, thankfully for the rest of us, California is on the cutting edge.
Somewhere, someone is fashioning a warning label to help us meet the hazards and menaces of daily life. I’m sure that the following warning appeared on a takeout coffee cup just in time on save someone great distress: “Avoid pouring on crotch area”. In California, every fool knows that could cause cancer.
Unfortunately, the proposed cure for Atmospheric Cancer is Economic Chemotherapy.