Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi, is getting creative with how he sees green.
Martin Luther King didn’t say, “I have a nightmare.” He said, “I have a dream”. I believe that until people feel inspired emotionally with the potential of sustainability, we’ll simply keep running on the spot. After all, sustainability means nothing less than a revolution in how people will live and the biggest business opportunity of the next 50 years. You sure can’t squeeze all that into the straitjacket of known obligations.
In an earlier post, Roberts defines Saatchi’s move from green to “true blue” as imagined by Adam Werbach, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S.
Graphically, the green to blue migration looks like this:
Uh, the ad industry has hardly realized Dr. King’s dream, so it’s a little obscene for Roberts to reference the man. Sustainability actually has a better chance of succeeding on Madison Avenue than diversity for two reasons: clients are demanding green messages and the issue ultimately impacts our lives on a direct level. Finally, the positive qualities in that “Blue” column hardly seem appropriate for a place like Saatchi, where cutthroat politics are the norm.
I’ve decided the world needs a new idea to unite behind too. By taking the best bits of green, and some choice words from blue, I’ve come up with:
brown
well it speaks volumes to me.
This kind of glib non-thinking must really jar with the people around the world who actually have something to offer this debate. Do Saatchi want to solve the problem, or claim the credit for rebranding ‘green’?