It’s risky to open a story about rewriting clichés with a cliché, but here we go: ‘meet your audience where it’s at.’
This six-word manifesto is more important than ever. It is also deployed so frequently in discussions around consumer engagement it often just slides over the ears as “something you expect to hear”. And it is an indicator of a bigger problem.
In advertising, it is known as wearout: ad fatigue or semantic saturation. A message used so often, its meaning is lost.
ESG collectively represents some of society’s most essential and progressive thinking, with the ear (if desired) of a colossal audience. It is also a victim of buzzwords, phrases and reference points impenetrable to those outside the boardroom with the power to drive real world change.
ESG is far from alone. I work in climate journalism, which suffers from wearout too. We use words like ‘crisis’, ‘emergency’, ‘tipping point’. Records smashed, targets missed, all of it spelling doom.
We talk about sustainability and net zero, often without stopping to consider if recognising these terms is the same as understanding them. Good climate journalism is amongst the bravest, most difficult there is. Other journalists are in awe of it. Audiences, meanwhile—exhausted from constant urgency without agency—are stagnating.
It is not just the words.
