In the Green
Climate stories made for the people who could put them into practice.
We weren’t trying to reach everyone. We wanted to reach the people with the biggest levers: CEOs, sustainability leaders, and influential people inside companies who could turn climate commitments into action.
Working with TED Countdown and The Climate Pledge, I produced a short-film series that showed what climate action looks like inside real businesses. The aim was to help decision-makers recognize possibilities for their own organizations, and ultimately encourage more companies to join the Pledge.
Start with who needs to see it
A broad climate-awareness campaign might have reached more people, but that was not the assignment. The Climate Pledge needed to engage a much narrower audience whose decisions could change how entire organizations operate. One committed CEO or sustainability team could have an impact far beyond an individual viewer.
That focus shaped the storytelling. We looked for recognizable business problems, credible people doing the work, and solutions a peer organization could imagine adopting. The films needed to give decision-makers something more useful than inspiration: a practical reason to start a conversation inside their own companies.
Build a format that could travel across industries
As the producer, I worked on the series' editorial approach, subject selection, interview format, scripting, visual direction, and production and editing of the first three films.
Each film needed to be short enough for a busy executive, specific enough to be credible, and engaging enough to feel like a story rather than a corporate presentation. The format had to work whether the subject was buildings, energy, transportation, or another corner of the economy.
Getting the stories in front of the right people
I participated in the collaboration around TED’s distribution strategy, keeping the intended audience in view. A million views from the wrong people would not necessarily move the Pledge forward. We wanted the films to find executives, sustainability professionals, and internal advocates who could influence corporate commitments.
TED offered an editorial platform with credibility among leaders and ideas-focused audiences; The Climate Pledge and participating companies offered ways to reach relevant industries. My primary role was producing the films, but the distribution conversation reinforced the editorial choices we made from the start.
Reaching people who could move organizations
The first three films became a six-part series. People’s Television, the production company, reports 2.2 million organic views. The video series also helped double interest from prospective signatories contacting The Climate Pledge, an outcome more closely aligned with the audience we set out to reach.