The Weekend Mumbo: Where Mumbrella360 failed
Welcome to the Weekend Mumbo,
It’s hazy town today after three big days at Mumbrella360. You can hear the tumbleweed slowly blowing through the Mumbrella office, and likely the brains of most of the Mumbrella staff, including myself.
Hopefully you were there and soaked up the 60-plus sessions on the menu.
I would rather be in hazy town today than certain parts of Europe or the US as they swelter through heat waves. Let’s spare a thought for Phoenix, Arizona.
On Thursday, it set a record high for temperature at 119 degrees fahrenheit, or 48 degrees celsius. Thursday marked the continuation of record highs at 110 degrees or hotter – 21 days in a row. That’s 43.3 degrees celsius. And the forecast for the weekend will see that streak continue.
The Phoenix forecast
So what does that have to do with the media and marketing industry?
In February this year I wrote in the Weekend Mumbo about the biggest topics submitted for spots at Mumbrella360. For those that don’t know, Mumbrella360 is powered by industry session submissions.
It’s a great way to get the industry buying into a big event as well as to get a read on what it wants to talk about. Who better to decide what to put on at an industry event than the industry itself?
One of the most popular topics submitted was sustainability. It makes sense, right? It’s at the top of the list of cultural talking points at the moment and the media and marketing industry is a massive driver of what gets talked about.
I wrote that there were eight session submissions, and that it was promising to see that a number of them drew it back to business opportunity and revenue growth, not just greenwashing. There was substance in the submissions.
Of those, I pulled out three great ones and created the Green Stream on Day 2 of Mumbrella360. I also added Hawaiian Airlines’ marketing boss Avi Mannis to the program who is leading the sustainability drive of the airline and then finished it off with James Greet and Steve Pollack (flying in from the UK) to discuss a new business called The Payback Project, which Greet will lead locally and could be key to our industry’s sustainability push.
But here is the thing. While the attendance of Mumbrella360 was great (the official numbers aren’t through yet but there was an immense buzz and a packed crowd all the time), the Green Stream was, by some margin, the least popular of all the streams.
Warning that this is an opinion of just a few that I spoke to, but it wasn’t down to the quality of the content in that stream. There was a core group of industry professionals that camped out in that stage for the day, but outside of that, it didn’t really get to more than half full.
By comparison, other stages were standing room only at times.
What gives? Why are we so happy to talk about sustainability but not so keen to listen about it? And what does that mean when it comes to the industry taking real action?
Pollack and Greet
Genuine questions. Comments welcome.
Over the last year we have seen multiple new sustainability offerings from well known agencies. We’ve also seen a number of studies around the positive sentiments that brands achieve from backing sustainability initiatives. But we also know that the media and marketing industry in general is not doing enough. Nowhere near it.
Speaking to a number of industry leaders I bumped into at Mumbrella360, most thought the challenge with the Green Stream is that investment in sustainability is still too strictly connected to cost rather than return and therefore people don’t even bother walking into the conversation.
It’s fine to be seen promoting your views of it, not as good to spend time in the audience listening to those views. That’s a sad indictment on the industry, quite frankly. Considering the circumstances, that stream should have had the most people and the biggest networking conversations.
At some stage our industry, and society in general, has to admit that we are stuffing this up and not only need to do something meaningful, but big as well.
Ball’s in our court.
Rest of the week
Surprise… it was all about Mumbrella360. If you didn’t manage to make it to the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the Mumbrella editorial team had your back with extensive coverage of Mumbrella360.
Simply click here for all of the articles.
Alright, I’m going to go and pass out in a corner now with the rest of my Mumbrella colleagues.
Got a tip?
topics
green stream
Greet
JAMES
Mumbrella360
Steve Pollack
sustainability
The Payback Project
weather
As a first time attendee who had an absolute ball at Mumbrella 360, I think a real challenge for me was choosing between the green stream and the diversity and inclusion stream. I’m working on a lot of material in both at the moment, but more on diversity and inclusion so tended to opt for more of those sessions.
I also wonder if, with a lot of great content on other stages and at a time of increasingly tight budgets, many of those who came may have felt a need to attend sessions that have a more immediately easy explanation back in the office of what they did at the event.
Interestingly the Scope 3 masterclass on media buying and carbon emissions was totally packed! That says to me that there is hunger and that it may be about the curation issue (see above for my challenge).
Wondering if there are other ways to test the appeal of those sessions e.g. as a stand alone digital session or pay per view?
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I attended two of the green stream sessions and I agree some of the numbers could have been better but likely competition between more immediate marketing/business needs and other sessions. But that’s the problem isn’t it – we’re too short term focused? I did however manage to get a sustainability question into the Gary Vee session and watch him massively struggle with all his insight and ‘ability to see what others don’t see’ bravado with a simple question on why he was on a mission to deploy vending machines with plastic toys across the world and how he thought the climate crisis could be addressed. The Hawaiian airlines presentation was well attended, and it was an amazing case study of how a business taking a broader approach based on long term strategic thinking could address the problem head on. If they started with the objective of – “if we do more to be sustainable will more people book our flights” they would have never achieved any of their amazing outcomes – instead they started with the long-term objective is being a viable business and industry in the future. We have the opportunity for more long-term thinking from business as they have a longer tenure than government. Thanks Mumbrella and Damian for putting focus and attention on this area – I wonder if there could be a more future focused Mumbrella conference so sessions can get the focus they need and more speakers have the opportunity to provide solutions. Marketers can step-up and do more to be the storytellers to create the climate OF change we need.
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“Climate change is so 2050”
Tell that to the people being evacuated in Greece right now.
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Framing environmental sustainability as an investment with an expected financial return is where you lose before you start. Ask any industry leader why they are not sacrificing substantive aspects of their own uber-delivered, plastic-wrapped and air-conditioned lifestyles in order to mitigate anthropogenic climate change, and you’ll get no further invitations to their dinner parties.
‘Why are we so happy to talk about sustainability but not so keen to listen about it?’ Because one’s virtue signalling is louder when one talks than when one listens.
Besides, people have only limited bandwidth to deal with catastrophisation. AI is the more proximal threat. Climate change is so 2050.
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