🍃Create your truth!

VERTIGO 🍃#5 Captivate your audience, capture interest, establish your message

Menu of this edition

• ⌛VERTIGO OF THE WEEK - FOOH, truth and what binds us

• 💚 EMOHACKS - How to create a common truth

• ⚖️COACHING STORIES - Clarity in hard times

• 🗞️ BREAKING NEWS / HOT LINKS - An article and a video

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⌛VERTIGO OF THE WEEK

You can’t escape it.

Have you heard of FOOH? Fake Out Of Home. Marketing visuals creating illusions or fictional scenarios in public spaces. It’s the new kid on the advertising bloc, allowing to engage with your direct environment. Some nice examples here:

Wimbledon invades London through FOOH - july 2024

It’s twisting your physical reality. And it illustrates perfectly my point today.

The great acceleration has brought an endless flow of intel bombarding us on a daily basis. Sometimes I have the feeling I can’t trust anybody.

And yet we have to choose everyday. Define our reality.

We just went through an important electoral campaign in France. As I made a point not to stay in my echo chamber, I could read on both sides the virulent claims and accusations. Who to believe?

In his great book ENGINEERS OF CHAOS, Giuliano da Empoli states that

“in the past decade the criteria for evaluating politicians have become the same as those used for other celebrities. First the ability to attract attention, then the ability to identify.”

It all started in June 2015 when Trump entered the electoral campaign adressing republican senator John Mc Cain, a political institution, saying “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

While facing a rise up in arms from all the political front, he does something unprecedented at the time. He does not apologize. He denies saying that McCain isn’t a war hero and says, “If somebody’s a prisoner, I consider them a war hero.”

One thing. Its opposite. What’s the truth?
This unprecedented attitude opened a new political era.

The 2020 documentary The social dilemna explores the negative effects of social media and hosts a critical discussion on truth.

“If everyone’s entitled to their own facts, there’s really no need for compromise, no need for people to come together In fact there’s really no need for people to interact..” Roger McNamee

The documentary questions the very existence of a shared understanding of a reality among the social networks landscape. What binded us as people, as countries, was a common truth. If that’s gone, what does bind us?

Tristan Harris, founder of the center for humane technology (who developed the concept of « human downgrading ») tells it well:

💡 “If we don’t agree on what is true, or there is such a thing as truth, we’re toast. This is the problem beneath other problems because if we don’t agree on what is true, then we can’t navigate any other problems. ” T Harris

And as an entrepreneur/manager, creating a common truth is a daily challenge. We face the scepticism of our employees, of our clients, our teams, our investers, our stakeholders… and even ourselves. We need to convince.

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💚 EMOHACKS

What can you do about it?

I recently spent 3 days in Rome with Al gore and 1000 fellows joigning the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. 🟢

It was a masterclass on how to mobilize an audience. How to create a common truth. 📈

I’ll use it as a 6 step blueprint to capture interest, appear reliable, make a lasting impression & establish a message. Create a common truth.

HARD TRUTH WITH A SMILE.

Gore shared many figures that by themselves could have left us knocked out. So how should we use figures?

EMOTIONAL JOURNEY

You want your audience emotionnaly involved. You want them to leave the room a different person. Move your audience through the 5 steps of the well known Kübler-Ross model, sometimes applied to ecoanxiety.

• DENIAL: Break through denial. ❌ Gore started to shock us with stats and images. Out of his 535 slide deck, the first 200 showed devastation. Rain bombs and potential ice age scenarios.

• ANGER (and fear): Create a common enemy. 😡 He pointed many fingers, but especially at Big Oil. Gave it a face, with ENI’s headquarters being located 500m away.

• BARGAINING: Highlight inadequate solutions. 🤝 He discarded planting trees as a solution (we’d need a 'treelion' of them). Reduced CCS & DAC to “bright shiny objects” (”capture only a few hours of emissions yearly”)

• DEPRESSION: Address inevitable depression. 😔 From the beginning he said "You'll feel depressed, but we have solutions." Very soon he focused on unity, renewable energy, and actionable solutions.

• ACCEPTANCE: Embrace the new normal. 🌪️ Tornadoes in clusters, some tipping points passed... Arctic now a net carbon emitter... And yet, there is hope. So, don’t deny it, just get in action.

I’m right there, don’t you see me?

SCEPTICISM TORN OUT

Adress Scepticism 🤨 with fun & provoking thoughts. A key driver is humor.

TARGETED SIMPLE MESSAGE

Know your audience and customize the level of detail you go into. Adressing an audience 50% under 30 years, he anchored his solutions in a few solutions, repeating them over and over, mostly focusing on Solar & Wind.

1. Solar Energy: .“If god wanted us to use solarenergy he would have put a fusion reactor in the sky” 😉Solar will soon be the cheapest energy source everywhere. ☀️The amount of renewable energy capacity added to energy systems around the world grew by 50% in 2023, reaching almost 510 gigawatts (GW), with solar PV accounting for three-quarters of additions worldwide.

2. Tech for 2050: International energy agency says we have the technology to reduce emissions as needed by 2050. ⚙️

The blue marble, as AL is waving out. Powerful.

UPDATED AND LOCALIZED

Gore has done his presentation for 20 years. Still it is completely up-to-date featuring visuals and events from the past month, week, or even that morning. 🌟

The meeting took place in Rome. 6 examples on how he adapted to a mostly Southern Mediterranean audience:

1. Europe Warming: Europe is getting warmer twice as fast as the rest of the world. 🌡️

2. “Medicane”: Hurricane-like storms in the Mediterranean, on the rise. 🌪️

3. Storm Daniel: Storm Daniel killed 12,000 people in Libya last year.

4. Dengue Fever: Italy was free of dengue fever until 2020; now it's in 13 european countries. 🦟

5. Solar Capacity: Italy has twice as much solar capacity as Africa. ☀️

6. Battery Storage: he even had a slide on battery storage in Bergamo, just where I live! 🔋

My Italian friend Paola Fiore is awarded the Green Circle by the man himself

The 6th ingredient: ENERGY

💉 It was a shot of energy and passion from 76 years old Al Gore.

Al Gore’s passion was infectious. 💉 That’s the essence of it all, along with 3 spicy additional ingredients:

Catchy Phrases and Wit 🎤: "Sustainability revolution needs the scale of the industrial revolution, speed of the digital one." 🌐

The good dose of irony: when a politician said, "A wind turbine can ruin the landscape for citizens" , Al Gore ironcally replied, "Not like the cloud of pollution!" 🌫️

Humor wins you the crowd: Another politician used the NIMBY acronym ("Not in my backyard") to which Gore opposed the IBGYBG acronym ("I'll be gone, you'll be gone") 😂

💡 Don't forget: forge truth you believe in... for a better world :)

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⚖️COACHING STORIES

💡 Confidentiality is one of the two pillars of my coaching. I elaborate coaching stories to reflect changes that happened during sessions. Names and contextual elements are changed to guarantee anonymity.

This week I went through an emotional and unexpected session.

The client is working for an international NGO. He’s been in Sudan for a few months now.

He had just been evacuated for security reasons, having to cross a border by foot, without knowledge of what would happen next, as often in these situations. 🚶‍♂️❓

He was “unsettled”. Offices vandalized, vehicles stolen, local colleagues having already moved from Khartoum towards Wad Madani, then Kosti… An unbearable journey.. 😢

Truth is I was not sure I was equipped. I told him I am not able to provide psychological care, and he should make sure to ask a professional for help if feeling the need.

But I did listen. Surprisingly the video feed did not work, making it my first session in almost 2 years audio only. And it was extremely powerful. Vibrations in the voice. Huge silences as he was recollecting memories from the evacuation. 🎤🔊😶

The cigarettes, the coffees, the silence. People on their phones. The lines of vehicles at gas stations during the past weeks. The rain, the swamps everywhere. 🚬☕📱🚗⛽🌧️

I listened, I sent him back what he gave me. It allowed him to identify 4 different topics that were at first all intertwined. A blurry mess in his head, turning into a clear space. 🧩✨

Did it solve the issue? No. But he felt relieved to be able to separate the 4 points and give them each their own space. 😌🗂️

This kind of clarity in such moments can be a game changer. It allowed him to express a clear thought on each aspect, an action when possible.

Sometimes it’s not about getting advice. It’s about being listened to. 👂❤️

💡 I followed this psychological first aid training. It’s a 6 hour free experience on Coursera and I believe you should take it! www.coursera.org/learn/psychological-first-aid

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🗞️BREAKING NEWS / HOT LINKS

Read this fascinating article on the coming dangers of generative AI installing deepfakes in the electoral landscape right before the critical november election in the US.

Talking about fake news, have a good laugh with this 2 min extract from the dictator, from genius Sacha Baron Cohen, about quick misinterpretation combined with fears!

PS: Have you taken this 8 question test? You’ll get a free personnalized feedback?
Or even better, why don’t we have a chat? I’d love for you to be listened to like never before.

Last thing, I would not want you to leave without a good playlist you can listen to while reading or just chilling.