Art has been used throughout time to reflect political and social changes. Images, colors, graphics, and designs have always been “high touch” (coined in 1980's by John Nesbitt meaning high human interaction) and therefore have always had the ability to move people. How can brands use art to raise awareness of the lifestyle changes we all need to make, to help the ecology of our planet, and make it cool to adopt these new behaviors?

New behaviors often need a catalyst to tip them into the main stream.
The magnitude of Al Gore's Live Earth Event calls for all of us to see what we can do to help out our environment: http://www.liveearth.org/crisis_solutions.php. Brands can help inform us of ways in which we can make these changes. Using reusable shopping bags is one of them. Worldwide, 4-5 trillion polyethylene bags are manufactured every year. Americans use over 380 billion polyethylene bags per year and only 1% is recycled. This one simple change in behavior from throwaway to reusable by millions of people worldwide could have a significant impact on the earth's ecology. A website that is devoted to the education and eliminating the use of plastic bags by offering a wide array of alternative reuse bags is: http://www.reusablebags.com. With people now trending toward concern for the environment, reusable shopping bags will soon be a standard sight in shopping carts everywhere. What a practical yet great communication container to play with.

Great communication graphics could be the tipping point to change our behaviors.
About a year ago big supermarket chains, to their credit—and perhaps their pocketbooks also—began seeing an advantage to offering reusable bags to their customers who where increasingly pushing for more and more organic foods. Nothing snazzy or design-y, just functional reusable bags for around 99¢ with their store logo on them. Stores initially gave away the reusable bags in store promotions. This began to seed the idea. Slowly people began using the reusable shopping bags. Of course they still had to remember to bring them along on the runs to the supermarket and not to leave them in their cars once they got there. Ikea has a very clear policy that makes the decision of plastic vs. reusable very easy. They charge 50¢ for each plastic bag one uses or 59¢ for a very large reusable tote in Ikea blue. Okay, so that's 50¢ to pollute the earth or 59¢ to be earth simpatico with a generous reusable tote one can feel good about using in any number of ways. Ikea knows something about helping its customers to make the right decision.

A little bit of art goes a long way in moving people to embrace change.
While initially the reusable bags were all about function, more and more artful bags keep popping up, provoking the questions, "Hey,where did you get that bag?" Recently, Whole Foods offered their reusable bag by designer Anya Hindmarch. The chic sturdy bag with the tongue in cheek message, "I'm not a plastic bag," in script, is pricier than most, at $15. That did not stop the shoppers lining up outside Whole Foods stores in New York and New Jersey to get their hands on this limited edition eco-friendly bag. The timing, one week after Live Earth, gave the bag an extra wave of consciousness to ride on.

A&P offers bags for 99¢ with a portion of the proceeds going to the Elizabeth Haub Foundation. The bags come in several styles, all of which have large graphic images of wildlife, making them billboards for global conservation and environmental awareness.

Trader Joe's also has put some fun and art into their reusable bag. They offer 3 different bags, a plain canvas one, and two others rich in design, graphics, and colors. Now all of a sudden some of the standard supermarket reusable bags, with only the company logo, look a little nerdy. The interesting thing about this new reusable phenomenon is that people have been seen with their Trader Joe's bags in a Stop & Shop supermarkets. Given a choice, people appreciate more artful things; it seems to be hard wired into our senses. Of course the Anya Hindmarch bag will go just about anywhere. This is the great thing about using art to help do the heavy lifting of shifting our behaviors. Part of the job here is to make it cool to…well, change the way we think and behave.

How can brands use the power of art and design to move people to choose better for our environment and earth?
Companies can start building eco-education into their marketing budgets, then design eco-education content that relates to their brand's purpose and their brand's style. Why would a brand do this? To lead awareness in actions that we all can take, and when added up, they will have significant impact on stemming environmental pollution. Americans are not a culture that in recent times has had to think about curbing consumption or living more tuned-in and responsibly with the earth. We are being called upon to shift our perspective and lighten our impact on the environment wherever we can. Brands need to think about what they can do today to help people in their brand communities make changes in their lifestyles to help the global environment. Then apply some art, lightness, and even humor in how they communicate all of this. South Park had an episode in 2006 called "Smug Alert" referring to a suffocating form of pollution from the new hybrids called "smug" instead of "smog". Take the education about environmental issues seriously then create a brand communication style that is creative, compelling, innovative, and fun.

Imagining how brands might eco-communicate ways to help the environment.
Say you're T-Mobile, you might design cool recycling bins with graphics that educate people about why it is important to recycle cell phones. Hire a design firm or pay a recognized artist or designer to come up with something unique. Every time a customer buys a new phone they can drop their old unit into this communication recycling bin. T-Mobile could put these same bins into major supermarket chains to make it easy for people to throw in, any brand, of old cell phones, chargers, etc. Whether the cell phones are recycled or reused to help third world people to communicate, both assist in relieving the environment of tech waste. This goes for TV's, computers, and other electronic equipment.

If you're Tide you might offer an edu-sticker to put on washing machines to remind people that washing in cold water will save energy. Maybe the sticker uses the art of an indigenous tribe from the rain forest. Old Navy could design icons for a "save some energy for the earth, wash me in cold water, again and again and again and then give me to someone else". Then put these icons on an apparel hang tag, sticker, or printed directly on their bag somewhere. GE, which is the brand that all US consumers connect to light and energy, could produce an eco-education campaign that informs people how simply replacing their incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), will save millions of tons of CO2 emissions. Or how turning off the power strips in their houses when they go to sleep at night or when they go on vacation could save a lot of energy. Timed power strips for "off use" times could be a really useful new product concept. The idea here is to connect brands to a "one cause" mindset, that is helping change our behaviors in order to help our planet and making the companies one of the good guys

Environmental policies are part of being a good corporate citizen in the world.
Companies now are expected to have programs that address being a good environmental citizen in the world. This is the right of passage to people choosing which brands they want to be connected to. Staples, the company that sells a substantial amount of office equipment, has a strong recycling policy. Currently any customer can recycle their old office machine waste by simply bringing in their used computers, monitors, laptops, printers, faxes and all-in-ones to any U.S. Staples store. Actually I would recommend to Staples that anyone should be able to come in and recycle their stuff. Then design some simple graphic e-communications to get the message out with about their program. How about a Staples Green Recycling Easy Button that says, "That was easy".

Timberland has had a long history of being ecologically responsible. The company prints a "nutritional label" onto every shoebox so people know exactly what went into making the shoes. Its label also communicates what footprint they will leave behind by walking in a Timberland. The graphics on their shoebox label mirror those familiar nutrition labels found on products in your supermarket so it quickly makes its point. It is innovative graphics like this that get people to notice.

Starbucks has design departments that create ongoing customer communications rich in illustration, graphics, and color. They have several in store communications about their environmental policies as well as the "environmental affairs" portion of their website that offer many links and downloads.

Starbucks also runs an ongoing full page newspaper campaign that informs people on global warming as well as other issues impacting the earth's environment. Their websites devoted to eco-education are: http://www.starbucks.com/whatmakescoffeegood/ and http://www.planetgreengame.com/

If you have an environmental policy, talk about it. Make it easy to find out about it.
Steve Jobs from Apple recently had to re-think his corporate communication policy after he found out that there was a perception that Apple wasn't doing enough to remove toxic chemicals from its new products and not aggressively recycling its old products. Actually Apple's environmental policies, in most cases, are leading their competition; they just hadn't told anyone. Coldwater Creek a leading women's apparel retailer has made the decision to offset 100% of its energy consumption with renewable energy certificates in order to dramatically decrease its impact on the environment. By 2009, the company has committed to buy more than 217,000 megawatt-hours of wind-generated electricity. The effect of this will be the prevention of more than 299 million pounds of CO2 -- a key greenhouse gas -- from entering the Earth's atmosphere. This is a substantial commitment. Yet, this information was buried in their website in their Social Responsibility link at the bottom of their homepage. Good policies like these need to be broadcast, flagged, and made easy for people to find. They can be translated into branded eco-communication vehicles designed to quickly inform people through the use of highy engaging icons, color and images. Many companies such as Trader Joe's, Aveda, Sub Zero are rated very high on the green chart however, again, their environmental policies often not so easy to find on their websites. Brands need to keep an eye to the future to make to make sure that their policies, strategies, products, and services continue to be ecologically respectful. Ongoing communication about environmental policies, with high touch graphic appeal, in downloadable formats for information sharing, are very important.

Once you've committed to an environmental strategy keep rolling it.
Of course brands that take on this environmental responsibility strategy will have to make sure they do so with a high degree of integrity and have a plan that delivers. You want to keep the momentum in moving your environmental strategy, policies, actions, and behaviors aligned to supporting and sustaining the earth's natural eco-system.

To sum up, have your brand lead by developing responsible environmental policies. Make sure your brand community knows about these policies. Put light on ways that lifestyle changes, like using reusable bags, can have in helping our environment. Communicate with engaging graphics, images, illustrations, icons, and colors.

By the way have you thought about the printers around the world, who because of the emphasis in environmental awareness, are using much more green pigment in there printing than ever before? Ah, a call for environmentally safe printing inks to produce all these new, artful brand eco-communications.

High touch: Coined in the early 1980s by John Naisbitt in his best-selling book "Megatrends." Naisbitt pointed out the importance of human interaction and felt that there is no substitute for "the personal touch." High touch is in direct contrast with high tech.

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Patt Cottinghan, founder of Genuine Imprints, LTD., and www.workforcetobrandforce.com, is a brand communications strategist and speaker living in the USA.