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.
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?
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.
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.
“Climate change is so 2050”
Tell that to the people being evacuated in Greece right now.