If there is one thing the advertising and communications industry is expert in it’s behaviour. From decades of consumer data, the advertising industry knows what makes people do something, what moves them and increasingly they know what consumers are likely to do next.

Not only that, AI and advanced data analytics tools tell them at what moments a brand can have influence – when it can nudge consumers to do what the brand wants them to do – and what are the conditions for setting up these moments.

And AI is giving these advertising companies all the information they need to truly know their audiences, understand the channels they show up in, figure out the content that performs, and work out what each brand stands for and needs to do to get their audience to buy.

While all of this leads to consumption – more chocolate, more drinks, more fuel, more clothing – it can also lead to more sustainable consumer behaviour if the messages are shifted.

What the advertising industry also knows is that techniques used to influence consumers can also be used on a business audience. Companies are full of people (consumers) and they are moved by emotional topics, emotional language and urgency. Companies also use the same channels as consumers – LinkedIn, X, Netflix, the Super Bowl and so on.

So what we are left with is that much-unexplored route of solving the climate and nature crises – and many other crises such as poverty and myriad inequities – using advertising industry techniques to bring about behaviour change in a way that saves the way we live and do business.

So why are brands using these techniques so much better than our precious assets – our land, air, oceans, health – and how do we go about harnessing behaviour change in the way the advertising industry is? Perhaps we are but it is sporadic. And perhaps the behaviour science around sustainability is not deep enough for us to understand how it is working and how to double down on that action.

It also has an enemy in the guise of greenwashing – which the advertising trade bodies are doing their best to dampen down. But the playing field is wide open for real techniques – that link action with impact – to be developed and delivered to change the behaviour we have around climate and nature. Perhaps we need the advertising industry to teach us how to do it or perhaps we have our own ways of doing it.