I presented the following scripts to Tasmanian government officials, who loved them (they want to produce the scripts with Tasmanian actor Eric Bana, who played the Hulk in Ang Lee’s 2003 version). The scripts revolve around a character I call the Handsome Devil—a suave, sophisticated Tasmanian Devil in a suit who nonetheless can’t quite keep his inner nature contained.

I worked on these with my art director partner at Green Team, Alan Stuart—we were both inspired by Matt Berry’s suited-asshole character on the short-lived UK comedy series Snuff Box (check out this compilation of the “boyfriend” scenes, some of the funniest bits in the show).

(Richard Metzger, my Creative Director when I worked at Disinformation, has the uncanny superpower of knowing exactly what’s worth watching, reading and listening to at any time; he’s been steadily keeping me updated on shows like Snuff Box for the last several years.)

Here’s the scripts:

HANDSOME DEVIL: YACHT

WE PAN IN TO SEE DEVIL NEAR THE RAILING OF A BEAUTIFUL
YACHT WITH PEOPLE MINGLING ABOUT. ASCOT AND BLUE SPORT
COAT WITH GOLD BUTTONS. SHORT SWIM TRUNKS, NO SHOES OR
SHIRT. HAIRY CHEST.

DEVIL
Yeah, I’ve done OK for myself. But what
good is money, women, cars, a personal
meat locker, and a digital toilet that
wipes for you if you don’t have friends?

DEVIL motions to people on the ship.

DEVIL (CONT’D)
Oh these? They’re not friends.

He takes off his Rolex.

DEVIL (CONT’D)
This watch? I paid for this on credit. I
paid for all of it on credit. Who cares?
My species is going extinct!

He throws the watch overboard, as the crowd looks on in
surprise.

DEVIL (CONT’D)
(Throws hands up.) DON’T CARE!

Two of the shipmates in the background put on masks and
dive in to find the watch. DEVIL starts to walk through
the yacht, speaking to the camera.

DEVIL (CONT’D)
Tasmanian Devils aren’t doing so well.
Pretty soon, there won’t be any of us
left to sail the Maldives, or take in an
afternoon polo match, or even just to
fight over a ratty old chicken bone. It’s
just sad, really. What good is today if
there’s no tomorrow?

He swirls his drink, then sits between two beautiful,
bikinied ladies – but clearly bored with it all, and not
happy about the future. One of them feeds him a
drumstick, and he squeals a bit as he snips at the meat.

TEXT CARD
TASMANIAN DEVILS ARE GOING EXTINCT.
SAVE THEM AT FRIENDSOFTHEDEVIL.COM

…

HANDSOME DEVIL: CASINO

HANDSOME DEVIL stands at a roulette table, wearing a tux.

DEVIL
Bet it all on black.

DEALER
And black wins!

Crowd goes wild. HANDSOME DEVIL loudly laughs.

DEVIL
Ah, life. A noble adventure, to be
savored to the fullest. Nobody knows that
better than a Tasmanian Devil. We live
every day like it’s our last, because for
us, it could be. We’re going extinct. And
while I’m here trying to win the money to
save our species, there’s only so much
one Devil can do. That’s why Tasmania
needs your support to keep Tasmanian
Devils from going extinct.

Two women, in blue dresses, of course, slide up to the
HANDSOME DEVIL, having noticed his win.

DEVIL (CONT’D)
In the meantime, I’ll be doing the best I
can. (Turns to girls.) Say darlings, care
to repopulate?

A FEMALE DEVIL puts her hand up on the HANDSOME DEVIL’s
shoulder. In a moment of his true nature coming out, he
twitches and turns to bite the hand. All laugh.

TEXT CARD
TASMANIAN DEVILS ARE GOING EXTINCT.
SAVE THEM AT FRIENDSOFTHEDEVIL.COM

…

HANDSOME DEVIL: WINE

DEVIL IS DOWN IN HIS WINE CELLAR METICULOUSLY TURNING HIS
BOTTLES (CLEARLY A COLLECTOR).

DEVIL
Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.
(Glances back at wine.) A good rule of
thumb is to give each bottle a quarter
turn every six to eight months. That way
sediment won’t collect and spoil the
wine – or its value.

DEVIL PICKS UP A BOTTLE OFF THE SHELF.

DEVIL (CONT’D)
Take this one, for example – a perfectly
preserved bottle of 1936 Chateau Lafitte.
It’s worth a small fortune. It’ll be
worth twice as much next year as it is
now… but really, what’s the difference?

DEVIL IS UNCORKING THE BOTTLE AS HE CONTINUES.

DEVIL
In a few years, us Tasmanian Devils will
all be gone. Extinct. So why bloody not,
I always say!

DEVIL LOOKS AROUND FOR APPROVAL, THEN TAKES A SWIG FROM
THE BOTTLE. A BIT OF A CRINGE.

DEVIL
Could use a bit of breathe.

POURS SOME ON THE GROUND (FOR THE HOMIES).

DEVIL
It’s been a tough few years.

TEXT CARD
TASMANIAN DEVILS ARE GOING EXTINCT. SAVE
THEM AT FRIENDSOFTHEDEVIL.COM

CUT BACK TO DEVIL LICKING THE WINE OFF OF THE CELLAR
FLOOR.

Several months ago, I worked on a pitch for Planet Green, the Discovery Channel’s new partnership with Treehugger. We didn’t win the account—the campaign starting with this ad did—but we had a lot of fun working on it.

Planet Green is a network about going green, for a confused audience. Our brief was to show that it’s OK to be confused about green—we all are—but even though we’re all confused, with Planet Green, we’re in it together.

Included below are some of those script ideas I contributed, just ’cause it sucks saying goodbye to ideas.

1. THE BIGGEST CFL IN THE WORLD
We see a shot of the Luxor in Las Vegas. A team of people are climbing the side of the pyramid towing a giant CFL (compact fluorescent lightbulb). They plug it in to the top. Cut to Times Square losing power. Cut to African villages flickering out. Cut to a world that has gone completely dark save for one giant CFL bulb.

(SAMPLE SCRIPT)

SHOUTING CROWDS. (Begin music. SFX Shouts)

MAN ON MEGAPHONE.

PEOPLE HAULING BIG-ASS CFL
ACROSS DESERT WASTES

HAULING CFL UP SIDE OF
LUXOR WITH PULLEYS AND
ROPES

MAN LOOKING UP WITH HAND (Silent Pause)
ON FACE IS OVERSHADOWED

PAN UP ON GIANT CFL

CU ON HANDS FLIPPING GIANT (SFX Lights On)
BAR SWITCH

GIANT CFL LIGHT GOES ON (SFX THUNK)

LIGHT SEEN ATOP PYRAMID (SFX THUNK)

SEEN FROM ABOVE CITY (SFX THUNK)

IN SPACE (SFX THUNK)

POWER GOES OUT IN VILLAGE (SFX THUNK)

POWER GOES OUT IN KIDS (SFX THUNK)
HOSPITAL

SHOT OF ALL LIGHTS ON PLANET
OUT EXCEPT FOR CFL

TAGLINE: Planet Green. That was different.

2. NATURE IS NOT GREEN
Contrast a perfect green human family with a wasteful beaver family. The human family recycles cardboard. The beaver family fells whole forests at once. The human family takes 1-minute showers. The beaver family floods whole valleys. Etc.

3. THE LONG SHOWER
Chirpy guy in the shower is triumphantly singing WE ARE THE WORLD, overflowing with enthusiasm for going green. But he keeps going, and going. Cut to shots of plants wilting, forests turning to deserts, baby animals crying single tears as he wastes more and more water. He stops. Shots of plants starting to perk up slightly in the silence, baby animals curiously raising their heads. Suddenly… WE AREEE THE WORLD!

4. AL GORE CUT-OUTS
A guy wakes up in the morning. Unbeknown to him, his house has been retrofitted with Al Gore cut-outs. He goes to take a shower, but an Al Gore cut-out glares at him from the corner. He goes to the fridge and drinks the remains of a milk carton, but when he goes to throw it away instead of recycling, an Al Gore cut-out glares at him from the trash. Etc. For extra yuks, replace Al Gore with hovering, ghostly, doe-eyed baby animals that weep profusely every time a non-eco-friendly action goes down.

MORE IDEAS:
- Red CFL District
- Slob eating twinkies with single CFL hanging over him.
- CFL idea lightbulb.
- Hicks gathered around CFL bug zapper.
- Wind Turbine Beer Helmet
- House with every appliance running at once blows out and lights shut off. Man plugs in one CFL.
- Painfully overenthusiastic corporate go-green day
- Clean Energy / Carbon Offsetted execution
- Cruising girls from… a bicycle
- Guys in hybrid picking up girls over guys in SUV
- Destroyed forest or city behind eco-conscious mountain bikers (Critical Mass of Evil)
- Polluting company powered by employees on bikes
- Don Quixote v. Wind Turbine
- Magnifying Glass Rampage – The Dark Side of Solar
- Solar Power backfires by leaving annoying toy on all the time
- The Sun: Turn that damn sun off, you’re wasting energy!
- 13-year-old girls talking powers light

Ah, the commercials that could have been. (I’m still here, Planet Green.)

It’s a great show, documenting the palpable stress ad and marketing people experience in struggling to actually get and keep people’s attention. There’s section on the short-lived airline Song, with marketing execs epically failing at creating memes—one exec at a brainstorming offers that “Instead of people saying ‘that’s so cool,’ they’ll say ‘that’s so Song’.” It’s funny and cringeworthy, largely because we’ve all been there.

I saw the show when it came out; four years later, I can see it from the other side of the glass—I’m an adman now, too. And the ad gurus Rushkoff interviews—Frank Luntz, G. Clotaire Rapaille—are guys I’ve since studied intently to learn to use language better, despite the fact that they’re, well, The Dark Side.

Rapaille is a particularly interesting character. His work is to crack culture codes—a psychologist, Rapaille went from working with autistic children in France to consulting on how to communicate to mass audiences for half of the Fortune 100.

Here’s a few examples from his books: In consulting with Jeep, Rapaille discovered through his focus-grouping sessions that the code for Jeep is “horse,” i.e. that “horse” was the unconscious association people made with their Jeeps. So he advised Jeep to make the headlights round instead of square, to look like eyes, and apparently sales picked up. Elsewhere he discovers that the French consider cheese alive, while Americans consider cheese dead, and advises Kraft to emphasize sterility in its cheese advertising (this is why you now see pre-shredded cheese in the supermarket, packaged in re-sealable bags—because placing a re-sealable bag in a fridge creates an unconscious association with placing a body bag in a morgue, and assures the American mind that the cheese is dead and therefore safe to eat!)

So, yes, I agree that he’s on to something there. It’s not that clear how he gets his information, however, and how legit it is—he could be coming up with this stuff off the top of his head. After reading one of his books, for instance, I was working on advertising for the Marriott hotel chain—after about five minutes of insightful thinking, I told my CD “the code for hotel has to be ‘dad’. Think about it—a hotel provides shelter. That’s historically always been the father’s role—putting a roof over the family’s head. It’s also where wayward fathers go to have affairs. It’s both good dad and bad dad.” See, I can do this stuff too, and way cheaper than the millions of dollars Rapaille charges his clients (his “scientific process,” also, seems to consist of getting adults to free associate about products. I’ve got much more advanced techniques, let’s put it that way).

Rapaille’s whole theory revolves around appealing directly to the lizard brain, arguing that nothing is as powerful as primal instinct in motivating somebody. There’s nothing new about this. In fact, it’s the fundamental (and pretty much only) tenet of what we can call Dark Side Communication. Fear-mongering politicians have known this since the dawn of time. The Republican right are the masters of its use—it’s why John Kerry lost the 2004 election. Dick Cheney is an adept in it. But if we continually talk to the reptilian, aren’t we in a sense encouraging retrogression and de-evolution of our brains? Yes, yes we are.

The most telling moment in the show, I think comes when Doug Rushkoff (who once donated Timothy Leary’s old dinner table to me, but that’s another story) asks Rapaille if what he’s doing is responsible:

RUSHKOFF: What about the environment? If the lizard wants the Hummer –

RAPAILLE: Right.

RUSHKOFF:—then—and the lizard’s not going to listen to the environmentalist –

RAPAILLE: Right.

RUSHKOFF:—then isn’t it our job, as aware people, to get the reptile to shut up and appeal to the cortex, to appeal to the mammal?

Rapaille ignores his comment and continues his monologue, of course. He’s just another Mr. Lizard.

Progressives need to learn how to talk to the lizard, or they’ll continue to be outgunned. However, it’s got to be a means to an end. You can talk to the lizard on the issue of global warming for instance, by turning it into “The Sky is Falling and We’re Doomed!” But you’ve also got to turn that into positive actions that people can take for a positive future. You’ve got to appeal not just to reptilian fight-or-flight, but roll that over into the mammalian need for guaranteed security and the human need for companionship and a better future for their children.

Because you might be able to control people at the lizard level—momentarily—but you’ll never be able to keep the other levels happy if you don’t learn their language, too.

Jamais Cascio is a writer, ethical futurist and co-founder of WorldChanging. He also blogs at Open the Future. He is a Global Futures Strategist for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, a Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future. Jamais was a natural person to ask about the Future of Green.

JL: How do you see cities and suburban sprawl changing to meet the incoming wave of green technology?

Jamais Cascio: I expect three big categories of change, each at different speeds:

* Cross-migration, meaning the re-emergence of the city as the residential center for the middle class and the simultaneous move of lower-income families from the cities to the hollowed-out suburbs. Think gentrification on a massive scale, along with the shift in income and tax base that it provides. This is already happening, and will likely accelerate.

* The rise of the green refit industry—companies and contractors who specialize in taking a pre-Inconvenient Truth home and making it much more energy-efficient. Especially because of the slow-down/slump/collapse in the housing market, the demand for remaking what you already have should outpace the demand for something new. This isn’t happening much, yet, but green building contractors are starting to pay closer attention.

* Redesign of urban/suburban spaces, including housing density and transportation networks. Because of the first category, this won’t happen in the suburbs as fast as it needs to. The cities, conversely, could see a renaissance.

JL: How are new car and energy technologies going to change the way we live?

JC: There’s a reason why cars are so popular, and it’s not just the machinations of the auto industry. Cars provide a set of services not readily replaced by our current models of public and non-auto personal transit. I explore this in some depth here. 

As for energy, I think the big change will come from the proliferation of solar-power polymer materials. Once we can make nearly any product a source of energy—whether or not it becomes entirely self-charging—it changes how we think of both our built environment and our energy usage.

JL: Is the recession going to make this a moot point?

JC: For a while. One under-appreciated benefit of a recession is that, because of the reduced manufacturing and work travel, carbon emissions tend to decline.

JL: What’s the next step for the green movement? As consumers tire of false claims and attention drifts elsewhere, how do we evolve the movement to make sure that it stays, well, sustainable?

JC: I think the next step for the green movement is to get away from the hard-to-define concept of sustainability and focus more on resilience—the capacity to withstand unexpected shocks. Sustainability depends on knowing where your demands and costs are in order to meet or reduce them; resilience is better for uncertain futures, because the concept is predicated on flexibility.

JL: What do you think the next ten years hold for green? What are the changes that we need to anticipate?

JC: In the best scenario, the next ten years for green is the story of its disappearance. Not that it goes away, mind you, but that it becomes nearly invisible in its ubiquity. How often do we take note that our building has electricity, or lighting? We rightly assume that any modern building is going to include such obvious and necessary components. I’d like to see green take that same path, becoming so critical that we start to assume its presence, and only notice when it’s absent.

The most likely scenario doesn’t go quite that far. It’s something of a cycle between “green is a fad” and “green is fundamental,” with public attention triggered by events such as legislation passing, cool new technologies, and major climate/weather events.

I don’t want to see this, but it should be noted that there’s also a scenario where the combination of industry counter-pressure, weak policymakers, and mass media only able to focus on one thing at a time results in the decline of green awareness… at least until the next big disaster wakes us up again, by which time it may well be too late.

With the world entering a recession, how will the green movement fare? Is green, in fact, essential to how business must be done in this century, or is it just another luxury?

With oil headed to $125 a barrel, an upgrade to green energy would seemde rigeur. This is the core issue of green—a replacement for the oil economy and everything that comes with it. The green movement is about finding new solutions for old problems—new forms of energy, transportation, housing and the rest of the infrastructure which makes 21st century life possible, but done more cleanly. Green technology is an upgrade—a way to do life better and (in many cases) more cost-effectively, in a way that doesn’t wreck the scenery. It’s a question of new technological solutions to the problems caused by old technology.

Then there’s the window dressing—the fashionable edge of green, even greenwashing; ways for individuals and companies to show that if they’re not necessarily part of the solution, at least they’re not part of the problem. The green hairshirts worn by the “ecorazzi” probably have less to do with saving the world than they do with assuaging first-world guilt—a smiley-face mask for corporate greed. Yet while rich celebrities spearhead the fashionability of the green movement, Middle America is left in the lurch by exorbitantly priced enviro-friendly food, clothing, cars and other green luxuries. Getting by from month to month is enough of a struggle for most, let alone stressing over one’s carbon footprint. In many ways, worrying about the world beyond your own immediate needs and those of your family is a luxury that comes with surplus wealth and leisure time. 

Yet, ironically, the poorest people in the world are also the most “green,” as they leave behind the least waste and recycle as a matter of sheer necessity. If we truly are in for a global recession, and the first world begins to move closer to the “necessity” end of the spectrum instead of the “luxury” end, we may have a lot to learn from the global poor’s approach to sustainability. 

The question is, will sustainability practices and services become essential by becoming imperative to the conservation of resources—or will they vanish into the woodwork? Or, more succinctly, is “green” a serious issue or a distraction? 

The world faces looming problems—global warming and, more pressingly, a recession and potential shortages of food, water and energy. Will the green movement help us out of these binds by proposing and enacting solutions, or will it be forgotten as people struggle to scrape food and resources together?

The huge amounts of money that have been sunk into green by companies like GE, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart—even in the face of recession—provide for a strong green-collar sector, and suggest that it is in the interest of large corporate powers to keep green on the map at least in the short term. (67% of Awakening Consumersthink we’ll be hearing even more about green than we do now in the space of the next ten years.)

“Things could turn sour of course,” reports the Environmental News Network. “For now the green sector looks solid, but if the credit crunch gets much worse, funding may dry up for all kinds of projects including new renewable facilities. Perhaps more damaging, capital needed to create, build and expand new businesses in the green sector may also disappear leaving good ideas, new technologies high and dry.”

There’s another way to look at things, of course. In times of recession—or even depression—ways to conserve money and resources are of paramount importance, and this is where green solutions may come into their own. A solar-powered house which pumps energy back into the grid and provides for a $400 electric company check for its occupants every month may seem like a fashion accessory now, but may be a survival edge within a few years.

As futurist Jamais Cascio tells us later in this issue, “One under-appreciated benefit of a recession is that, because of the reduced manufacturing and work travel, carbon emissions tend to decline.”

As has often been remarked, environmentalism isn’t about saving the planet—the planet has been through countless ecological cataclysms and upheavals and has survived, life intact. It’s about saving us—and, like it or not, that may not be possible in our civilization’s current hyper-energy-suck form. In a tug-of-war between us and the planet, where we strip the planet of resources past its breaking point, we lose, not the planet. As our environment changes—global warming, Peak Oil, the breakdown of overextended first-world infrastructure—we have to change to meet it. A Prius or a TerraPass is only a token gesture—the real mandate is to evolve or die.

So, will green business evolve past its current form as a clearinghouse of token good-citizen awards, and actually start meeting the challenges of this century head-on? If it provides or assists in the delivery of useful goods or solutions to our most critical infrastructure problems—if it meets people’s needs, especially their needs in times of hardship—then it bears a good chance of not only surviving, but thriving during times of recession. If it’s a frivolity, an image or a way to greenwash a lifestyle, we probably won’t see it beyond another year, as the public sobers up via the short sharp shocks provided by the realities of economic downturn.

And what about the Awakening Consumer? It’s easy to go straight back to sleep when you have a $10 shopping budget and are faced with the choice of regular canned chili for $0.59 and organic canned chili for $2.99. If buying in the Awake Space is essentially a privileged activity, what happens when that privilege is threatened? (In the event of a recession, 64% of Awakening Consumers stated that they would still pay extra for organic food, 19% wouldn’t, and 17% plan to grow their own food!)

As we look to the future of the green movement in this issue of g-Think, however, we’re looking past the simple bumps on the road to the long term future. The problems to which the green movement has arisen as a response to are not going away; neither will the response. As we race against the real deadlines—Peak Oil, global warming—little things like recessions shouldn’t slow us down. They should only show us where to shift our strategies, assist us to hone our tactics and goals, and provide the challenge needed to keep this game fun.

It’s a whole new century, and this is just the beginning. Ready?

If pornographers are inevitably the first to take advantage of any new medium, advertisers are often the last, perpetually in a race to discover how to capitalize on new modes of communication just as artists race to find ways to use them to show the human experience from new angles. From the Winston cigarette commercials that pioneered the age of television advertising to the dawn of the Internet pop-up ad, redirecting some of the attention directed at new media towards client interests has been the order of the day. While the “media virus” and “viral marketing” were metaphors developed to align advertising with the age of the HTML, the internet experience is now dominated by peer-to-peer file sharing programs like BitTorrent, and slowly replacing older media—what forms need advertising mutate into to communicate its message in such an environment?

The rush to adapt has already begun—ad campaigns like the Dove Self-Esteem Fund have even taken root in Second Life, a foretaste of what ad-saturated virtual reality will look like. As computer technology improves and high-speed internet becomes more readily available, especially in the third world, there’s no telling what new challenges digital media will pose to older, more entrenched models. While television and movie concerns wring their hands over loss of product to YouTube, and the music industry shrinks before the onslaught of BitTorrent, will the advertising industry be similarly affected, or will it thrive by capitalizing on such an open exchange of information by finding ways to effectively insert its message into the flow. (Could it be any truer, for instance, that the first team to figure out how to advertise effectively on YouTube will become the newest billionaires of the decade?)

In a world of infinite availability of information, context is king. The age-old truism that it’s not what you say but how you say it has never been truer than it is now.

The generals of the language wars are men like Frank Luntz, on the right, and George Lakoff, on the left. Luntz is the Republican strategist famous for rephrasing global warming as the more tepid “climate change,” and changing the “estate tax” to the “death tax.” Lakoff is a cognitive linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who has become a guiding philosopher for the Democratic Party, suggesting that the left has fallen far behind in taking on the persuasive language strategies of men like Luntz.

Though a jello-wrestling match between both men would make for an entertaining and lucrative Pay-Per-View event, the language wars extend far beyond such figureheads and into our daily communicative strategies. The concept of “reframing” has become a regular fixture of political and business discourse. In the world of communication, facts are much less important than the context they are used in.

These are strategies that can and should be used to communicate socially responsible ideas, especially in a time when the socially irresponsible seem to be the most willing to use language to persuade people astray.

The proponents of environmental responsibility, for instance, have long appealed to negative emotions like fear and guilt to push people into supporting green causes. The underlying mythology that “if we don’t all stop polluting, we will all die” communicates little but a sense of hopelessness and the feeling that even positive efforts will have no effect in the long run.

Why not appeal to people’s sense of pride, of belonging, of sense of security? Why frame a healthy environment as an impossibility instead of a baseline reality that should be a universal, and universally attainable, human right? Hopeful people take action; scared people hide.

What are the destructive frames lurking in the communication landscape? How can ecological, humanitarian and other crucial issues be framed in a way that promotes positive action instead of fearful inaction? What advertising firms and campaigns should be particularly commended for constructive use of framing and language for positive change?