Is viral marketing a key to our planet’s health?

The speed of climate decline is reaching an alarming tipping point. And it’s social media influencers and creative artists who are helping hold the big companies to account, and going viral.

In this episode, we explore how the art of viral marketing can influence science for good.

Climate scientist Professor Will Steffen reminds us that we’re at a very critical fork in the road now.

“We’re at a point where we are approaching the first of these tipping points. In the last five years, we have seen three mass coral bleaching events, and with temperatures certain to rise for the next couple of decades, it looks like we will see the end of the Great Barrier Reef,” he says.

Author, science writer and artist, Margaret Wertheim and her sister Christine Wertheim led a project that crocheted a coral reef with thousand of other artists from all over the world, displayed at the Venice Biennale. “The project brings together mathematics, science, reflections on global warming, and handicraft,” Margaret says.

Harnessing global action can also be achieved through a marketing ‘tipping point’ explains consumer psychologist and lecturer of marketing, Professor Brent Coker.

“This effect began with Greta Thunberg, the environmentalist from Sweden, when she started advocating for climate change. In marketing we call this the ‘Greta effect’, because we’ve really seen a strong flow-on effect from that in the way that brands are behaving,” he says.

This episode features:

Margaret Wertheim, Australian-born science writer, curator, and artist; Dr Brent Coker, consumer psychologist and lecturer of marketing at the University of Melbourne and Professor Will Steffen,Emeritus Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University.

This podcast was made possible by the University of Melbourne and the Centre of Visual Art.

Your hosts were Dr Andi Horvath and Dr Suzie Frazer, audio engineering was by Arch Cuthbertson, with production assistance from Silvi Vann-Wall.

This episode was recorded on the 11th of August 2020.

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Banner: Margaret Wertheim’s crochet coral reef/ Supplied