Climate Tech's Story Problem
What climate tech can learn from Formula 1, UFC, and Apple's MLS Gambit
👋 Hello to 945 climate buddies - a lot of you joined recently 🌳
What is this? This newsletter explores topics in climate, energy, and everything in between.
Today, we will explore the world of professional sports marketing and see what climate tech can learn.
You will learn:
The fundamental tension between communicating knowledge and emotion
How professional sports leverage emotional narratives to their advantage
How technology companies can utilize a similar playbook to advance their cause
It is the first piece in a series about storytelling:
Climate Tech’s Story Problem
By Art Lapinsch
Dear Climate Tech,
I love you but I think you have a story problem.
Your struggle is the closest we can get to an existential boss fight. Your technologies are indistinguishable from magic. Your entourage consists of the brightest and most well-meaning people I’ve ever met.
All the ingredients are there for a human epic. The greatest adventure ever. The best story ever told. Yet, somehow you cannot rally the masses.
They know. But they don’t feel.
Let’s change that.
xoxo,
Art
Knowledge vs. Emotion
Bill Grundfest - Golden Globe winner, Emmy nominee, and founder of the legendary Comedy Cellar in New York - once held a 60-second MFA in Screenwriting.
He said that every story revolves around a single question 👇
"Who wants what and what stops them from getting it?"
If you think of your favorite books, TV shows, or stories, you might recognize that all of them share three fundamental elements:
Subject 🙋 = Who?
Desire ❤️ = Want What?
Conflict ⚔️ = What’s in the Way?
Knowledge vs. Emotion Spectrum
To simplify, we can think of communication as a spectrum between the brainy stuff and the touchy-feely stuff:
The “mother of all models” breaks communication down into three main components:
🗣️ Sender = Individual; brand; organization; government)
✉️ Message = Information
👂 Receiver = Audience
We communicate to interact with the world around us.
World-leading sports organizations have mastered the message/information bit of this model. Let’s look at how they are doing it.
Building an Emotional Base: Communication Masterclass in Professional Sports
Professional athletes are different from most people.
Their skill capacity, their mental fortitude, their knowledge, their training regimen, their biological capabilities are so far removed from the Average Joe that one might think they are a different species all together.
Yet, many people take interest in them. Why?
For the sake of this argument we can map fans on the knowledge vs. emotion spectrum:
💪 Expert Fan: An expert fan is interested in the technical/strategic aspects of the sport. They understand what is going on frame-by-frame. They get excited about the knowledge.
🍿 Average Fan: An average fan is interested in the spectacle and entertainment. They understand the basic tension of the competition. They get excited about the emotions.
If I’d have to bet, I would say that less than 10% of sports fans have acquired a technical understanding either by practicing or studying the sport. This leaves the vast majority of fans without deep technical understanding.
Here comes the similarity to climate tech: I’d also wager that less than 10% of our population has acquired a technical understanding by either practicing or studying climate-affiliated challenges.
The coming case studies will show how professional sports leverage this insight.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
Growing up in 90s/2000s Europe, F1 was the perfect activity for a lazy Sunday.
1pm CET you’d turn on the TV to catch pre-race interviews and at 2pm sharp the race would start. Miraculously I’d nap away for 2 hours just to wake up for the champagne showers at the end. Not more. Not less.
Regular viewers were mainly from Europe, Latin America, and Asia, since this is where most of the races took place and where most of the drivers were from. Yet through the 2000s, the sport was losing its appeal and viewership numbers started dropping.
Fast-forward to today, F1 is back in full swing and and every second new fan is from America. What the hell happened?
TL;DR: Netflix uncovered the storytelling potential of the sport.
Monstrous machines, cocky characters, and glamorous destinations make for an explosive mix. The streaming company created a reality-TV-esque documentary series called “Formula 1: Drive to Survive”.
To get a taste of why people started loving Formula 1, just watch this trailer 👇
Wow! Not sure why, but every time I watch these types of trailers something happens to me. Heart rate up, body temperature up, adrenaline up.
And it seems like I’m not alone 👇
As my friend and former teacher Andrew said you have to earn the right to educate. First, you capture someone’s attention before teaching them something. And this is something that Formula 1 has done masterfully.
💡 Lesson Learned: Entertain to Educate.
You can see this play out in the comment section of the F1 trailer. People share how this show resonated (= emotion) to such a degree that they started learning about the technical aspects (= knowledge) of the sport.
Ultimate Fighting Championship: UFC Embedded
A while ago, my friends who had been training combat sports invited me to hang out and watch some UFC fights.
“Offf… that’s a nasty arm bar.”
”Did you see his takedown defense?!”
”I’m not sure how the judges scored this round. It was a close one!”
I was amongst the combat sport nerds. True expert fans. It was very educational to get their live commentary.
Then, one day, I found out that another friend of mine was a massive UFC fan. Is he a combat athlete? No. Is he an athlete? Even that is debatable. But he has a good heart and is interested in UFC for the entertainment value.
Before the most recent UFC 290 he sent me a couple of YouTube videos to get me hyped up. Their format is called UFC Embedded and it’s a daily Vlog series covering what is going on behind the scenes.
There was one particular video that stood out: it started with a segment on UFC Flyweight champion Brandon Moreno. Look at the thumbnail, does this look like a documentary about fighting? 👇
If you’ve watched the video, you’ll know that Brandon Moreno is not only a world class athlete but a father who gets excited about his daughter’s Pokemon cards.
You’d think that a sport where sweaty humans beat the shit out of each other might not be palatable to a wider audience. But instead, my non-expert friend regularly watches UFC events with his wife while their kids are in bed.
Why? Because it’s good entertainment that resonates on an emotional level.
Not only does he know what a rear-naked choke is he is further advanced on the knowledge curve than people like me. It gives him an edge and he can guide others on their journey.
And the cherry on top is that with more knowledge one can appreciate the information in higher fidelity. It gets better the more you know.
💡 Lesson Learned: Knowledge Creates Advocates.
You ask me: “Art, how the hell does this apply to climate technology companies?” 🤷♂️
I’m glad you asked. For the next act, follow me deeper into the communication strategy rabbit hole 🕳️
Expanding from an Emotional Base: Apple’s MLS Gambit
Apple’s bread and butter is the development and commercialization of technology.
iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple Silicon…
My theory is that Apple is leveraging emotion to prepare the rollout of their newest technology: Apple Vision Pro 🥽
This is the chronological sequence of what I’m seeing:
Ted Lasso: Winning Hearts
Apple TV+ produces and runs an original TV show about a Professional Football/Soccer.
The show catches average audiences with a simple premise:
Ted Lasso (subject) has the goal of successfully coaching a British football team (desire). The problem is that he thinks it’s the American kind of football (complication).
Bill Grundfest’s structure worked like a charm and the show has quickly become a crowd favorite with an 8.8 IMDB rating. Soccer is suddenly not only a whacky game from Europe but also something that my American friends would consider watching in their spare time.
Think of Ted Lasso as Apple’s equivalent to Formula 1’s documentary and UFC’s Vlogs.
It’s the gateway drug to the real deal.
Apple’s MLS Gambit
Apple TV+ subscribers are now a bit more familiar with the sport.
Apple signs a 10-year exclusive rights deal with the Major League Soccer (MLS) where they pay $250 million a season to distribute all MLS games on the Apple TV+ streaming platform.
The product is called MLS Season Pass.
On top, Apple helped recruit the greatest football player of all time - Lionel Messi - to play for Inter Miami (worst team in the MLS).
Apple was reportedly instrumental in bringing the Argentinian superstar, who is reportedly set to earn $50 to $60 million a year, to the U.S. As part of the profit-sharing agreement, Messi will get a cut of the revenue from new subscribers to Apple TV's MLS Season Pass, according to ESPN.
Apple TV+ subscribers who got hooked on Ted Lasso now potentially “graduate” to signing up to MLS Season Pass where they get access to more technical content.
Professional sports formats know exactly how to guide viewers through the experience with pre-game shows, in-game commentary, post-game interviews, technical analyses, and so on. The progression from average fan to expert fan begins.
This is yet another gateway drug to the even realer deal.
Apple Vision Pro
A new technology brings new opportunities.
In the case of Apple Vision Pro - an Augmented Reality (AR) headset - two killer use cases seem likely:
🏟️ Stadium Experience: Experience a professional sports match as if you were sitting front-row. The difference is that you can do it from the comfort of your living room and don’t have to travel to the stadium. Think of how many Real Madrid fans have never been to Spain. Now think of how many New Yorkers would like to watch the Knicks at Madison Square Garden but either (a) don’t want to pay thousands of dollars to get court-side seats or (b) don’t have access to the tickets in the first place. It’s an unlock of epic proportions.
⛹️♂️ Player Experience: One step further would be the first-person experience of seeing what’s going on during competition. Just watch this recent bodycam footage of a Premier League football professional 👇
Why do I think this is possible? There are rumors that Apple has been shooting its content with VR-/3D-enabled technology all along.
Edit (9/12/2023): Apple announced that iPhone 15 Pro is capable of “Spatial Video Capture” → simply put: You can record 360 videos from your phone.
This type of content is a dream come true for knowledgeable expert fans.
Vertical and Horizontal Expansion: World Cup & NBA
If this bet pays off, Apple has created the perfect platform for expansion:
Vertical Expansion: Expansion within Professional Football into other leagues (Premier League; La Liga; etc.) and competitions such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which is hosted by the US, Mexico, and Canada 👀
Horizontal Expansion: Expansion into other sports such as basketball, Formula 1, and so on. In the specific case of basketball, Apple has already produced a couple of original shows and has expressed interest in streaming rights for the NBA.
In this case, we have the confluence of audience knowledge and new technology:
Audience: The audience is building up their level of understanding about a certain technology (i.e. the technical understanding of professional football).
Product: The company is rolling out a new technology (i.e. product) that has a new set of capabilities.
New technology markets are created when the needs of the audience and the capabilities of the product overlap.
I bet Apple was building the needs and the capabilities of its technology concurrently. If this is true, then I would call it Apple’s MLS Gambit.
Climate tech companies are dealing with novel technologies all the time. So I’m curious, what’s Climate Tech’s Gambit?
[Side Note 📘] If you are interested in diving much deeper into this topic, I can recommend the fantastic book “Kellogg on Branding: The Marketing Faculty of The Kellogg School of Management” (1st edition). In particular Chapter 11 titled “Branding in Technology Markets”.1
Flipping the Script on Climate Tech’s Story Telling
Climate is at least as awesome as professional sports, yet I can’t remember the last time a random person was telling me about progress in precision fermentation or creative ways to deploy new climate tech.
Let’s change that!
To do so, let’s recap some insights:
🏎️ Formula 1: Entertain to Educate.
🥊 UFC: Knowledge Creates Advocates.
⚽️ MLS: Leverage an Emotional Base to Create New Markets.
If you think that this playbook is not applicable to high tech and only works in sports, then look at what DeepMind has been doing. The AI company shot a documentary about their teams quest to build an AI system capable of defeating one of the best Go players in the world.
It is as emotional as high tech can get. My guess is that this documentary has inspired a whole generation of kids to get into hard sciences.
Climate Tech’s Story Opportunity
If you take away only one thing from this essay then I hope it is this: Leverage emotional stories to your advantage.
There is a place beyond IPCC reports. What that is depends entirely on your company and problem space but just use it as an impulse to re-think how climate tech is currently being communicated.
In the spirit of Bill Grundfest:
Subject: Who are the courageous people working hard to save the planet? 🌎
Desire: What are we fighting for? What lies on the other side of net zero? 🏞️
Tension: What are the obstacles and how are we fighting to overcome them? ⚔️
People might care more than you think 🌳
Dear Climate Tech,
I love you and I think you have a story
problemopportunity.Your struggle is the closest we can get to an existential boss fight. Your technologies are indistinguishable from magic. Your entourage consists of the brightest and most well-meaning people I’ve ever met.
All the ingredients are there for a human epic. The greatest adventure ever. The best story ever told.
Yet, somehow you cannot rally the masses.Let’s rally the masses.They know. But they don’t feel yet.
Let’s change that.
xoxo,
Art
🙏 Thanks, Patrik, Philipp, Tomas, Guillermo, Kevin, Ray, Bastian, Sara, and Finn for inspiring and discussing.
Why do I write about this stuff? Because it’s probably the thing I know best.
If you want to dive deeper, check out my previous essay about constructing consistent brand narratives for climate tech brands 👇
If you want to reach out, collaborate, or discuss, ping me via mail or Linkedin.
If there’s interest, I’m happy to write a series of posts about specific applications and case studies from climate tech.
Lovely read and great personal affirmation that almost everything we do is bound so closely with entertainment. Excited to find out how emotional leveraging could be utilised for our climate issues. Feels like it would be an easier task than sentimentalising consumer products. After all, EVERYTHING is tied to how we treat the planet. Cheers Art.
Brilliant insights. Thank you for connecting the dots in ways I never would have, but now seems obvious. I particularly love the F1 example - tapping into emotions in a universal way through story is easier said than done. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽