The Hillary Symposium

From the programme: Hamish commenced his career in marketing with Pepsi Co in 1990 followed by NZ Dairy Group and then Groupe Danone. In 1999 Hamish was transferred to Danone head office in Paris and latterly, London. In 2005 Hamish moved from client to agency-side to assist with the establishment of Saatchi & Saatchi’s London based sponsorship consultancy. Hamish founded his own business, WaypointOne, in 2006. Hamish became interested in environmental sustainability that same year and has since experienced a great ‘awakening.‘ His view is that sport and the world’s sports heroes have a role to play in transforming culture. “Sport touches the hearts of billions of people every day; people listen to their heroes and act upon their lead. It is through sports leaders that we hope to inspire change for the better.” Hamish moved to New Zealand from London in July 2008 in order to launch Project Litefoot – an environmental awareness and action campaign jointly founded with Michael Campbell. Seven prominent sports people lead Project Litefoot. Together, Project Litefoot Ambassadors hope New Zealanders will rise to the challenge by following their example, and in doing so, inspire people in other countries to do the same.

In 2006, Hamish and Michael Campbell experienced an abrupt environmental awakening after they saw Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. Project Litefoot was their response to that cathartic experience. It’s a communication campaign to raise awareness and provoke action on climate change. They plan to launch the programme in partnership with TVNZ later this year, and they’re very much going to be targeting Mom & Pop.

So how about Mom & Pop?

It’s difficult to say how much carbon Mom & Pop are responsible for — some sources say 50%, and some say it could be as much as 2/3 — but one powerful statistic is that half of China’s 45% growth in emissions between 2002-2005 came from creating goods to export to the developed world. Those goods are being purchased by Mom & Pop.  The big questions is what role can Mom & Pop play in reversing us out of this predicament?

Hamish spent a lot of time in marketing for large consumer product organisations, and he grew to understand the power of the consumer. Nothing else was of consequence to their business other than generating more consumer demand. If their consumer insights worked, it wasn’t difficult to surprise people with ideas about things Mom & Pop just had to have.

This isn’t surprising because we absolutely live in a consumer-led world. Should that paradigm prevail, Mom & Pop could represent a continuing threat to the environment — or they could represent the solution.

We hope that governments will take unprecedented action in Copenhagen, and we hope businesses will follow the lead of Ben & Jerry’s and Walmart and we hope that the collective actions on all of these fronts will come to our rescue. But all of these organisations on their own are simply not wired to make the changes we require — individuals also have to be drivers. Compounding that challenge is that we have less than 10 years to make the changes we need.

We also know citizens can be smarter. We can reject the notion of limitless expansion. We can move from well-having to well-being. Transformative citizen action could be the model for a solution to climate change.

If businesses see citizens transforming, their consumer-led culture will be forced to follow.

This virtual cycle means putting faith in humanity. We must put our faith in humankind, and believe that with raised consciousness Mom & Pop will make better choices that their children will be proud of.

Citizen-led transformation — the beginning of the virtual circle — is underway around the planet. So if you’re with him so far, you can see that the great challenge of climate change is one of communication. How do we reach middle America, and middle Australia, and how do we reach Mom & Pop?

Like thousands of others before him and with him, he suffered a period of panic and confusion about climate change. His epiphany came when he fell back on the power of consumer insight. He had recently established a business in London providing marketing advice to professional sportspeople — and Project Litefoot is built on a series of insights that they hope will drive mass transformation.

Emotion leads to action, while reason lead to conclusions. The issue with climate change is that it has all been too rational, leading people to draw conclusions, not take actions.

Project Litefoot’s mission is to inspire deep loyalty to the cause through emotional engagement.

It’s very easy to separate your own life from the life of Mom & Pop, but the reality is that each one of us represents Mom & Pop. The challenge is with us; if all of us do a little, together we’ll achieve a lot.