It's Easier to Get People to Come to a Party Than a Funeral

It’s about time we turn that e-hearse into a party bus.

I have a theory about saving the planet, and it starts with a party.

If you invite a hundred people to a party, there’s a pretty good chance a few dozen will show up. Tell them there will be good music, interesting people, something delicious to eat, and maybe a reason to bring a towel, and they’ll probably bring their friends.

Now invite those same hundred people to a funeral.

You might get a few sympathetic responses. Some people will feel guilty about not attending. Others will make an excuse. And a good number will avoid the invitation altogether because, frankly, nobody wants to spend their precious free time being reminded of death.

I think we’ve made a terrible mistake in the environmental movement. We have seen countless sustainable brands close and the excitement for saving the planet wane. It’s no wonder, because we’ve been inviting people to a funeral when we should have been pitching it as a party the whole time.

…And then we wonder why nobody wants to come.

I wanted to make something wonderful that happened to eliminate a whole lot of plastic bottles along the way.

I also wanted it to be weird & fun. Really fun.

The kind of fun where customers make inside jokes with us, stores become gathering places, and people get excited about a conditioner bar in a way that seems completely unreasonable to anyone who has never tried it.

And yet, every time I open social media, there’s another brand telling me that something in my bathroom is going to kill me: my shampoo, my laundry detergent, my candles, and even my cookware is poisoning me. Apparently, just about everything I’ve ever purchased is conspiring against my survival.

And wouldn’t you know it? The company delivering this terrifying news has a product that can save me.

How convenient! :)

Listen, I’m not suggesting we ignore legitimate health concerns or environmental science. Quite the opposite. I think we owe consumers accurate information, especially when it comes to their health and the planet. But there’s a difference between educating someone and frightening them into opening their wallet.

And I am so tired of watching so many brands confuse the two.

Fear is an embarrassingly easy marketing tool.

It gets attention and creates urgency. It makes people feel that if they don’t buy something immediately, they’re putting themselves or their families at risk. But fear is a terrible foundation for affection. You might scare someone into buying your product once.

You cannot scare them into loving you.

And if the entire premise of your business is that everything else is dangerous, what exactly are your customers supposed to feel when they use your product? Relief? I’m sorry but what a tragically depressing thing to sell.

I want people to feel delight. I want them to smell something beautiful, wash their hair, go swimming, run through the woods, take their kids to the beach, and forget about their shampoo altogether.

I want them to feel like they discovered something cool, not like they narrowly escaped a chemical catastrophe. That’s why I love that people find dip from other people who love it, not some from fearmongery reel or ad.

Since starting Dip here’s the other thing I’ve learned about environmentalism: People are much more inclined to protect things they love than things they’ve been instructed to fear losing.

Think about the places you loved as a kid. Maybe it was a lake or the ocean or the mountains, or a patch of woods behind your house where you built forts and came home covered in dirt. If you grew up in a city maybe you marveled at the plants that could grow through the tiniest opportunities in the cracks of cement.

For me, growing up in New Jersey, nature wasn’t some abstract concept that needed saving. It was our playground. It was where we spent our time, where we made friends, where we picnicked, where we learned the hazards of thorns and snapping turtles, and where some of our best memories happened. It was where I learned that the coolest nature moments happen in the quiet of dawn, and being an observer of it felt like being a guest. Have you ever been to the Jersey shore at sunrise? It’s magical. Or the woods? Or your own backyard? Have you watched birds through all seasons? I can go on forever, but I will spare you…

My point is: you didn’t need to explain the ecological importance of a lake or forest or bird to convince us it mattered. We loved it because it was part of our world. And I suspect that if you asked most people what part of the planet they’d like to protect, they wouldn’t begin with a carbon emissions chart.

They’re more likely to tell you about somewhere they love. A beach where they learned to surf, or a mountain they learned to snowboard on. A creek where they caught frogs or a stretch of woods where they walked their dog every morning. I can still hear my mom in my head sing her little made up song about the frogs in the creek by my house that were extra noisy when the sun was going down.

That’s where environmentalism lives for most people. Not in a lecture or in a guilt trip. And certainly not in a sad puddle.

When I was building dip, there was already so much despair. Every fear marketing tactic of the sustainability movement felt like an attack on “the whole point” to me. I decided that I’d much rather invite someone to have fun at a lake than ask them to sit beside a puddle of pity. Because the lake reminds us what we’re fighting for. The puddle just reminds us how miserable we’re supposed to feel.

And I really don’t think misery is a particularly compelling recruitment strategy, not when we all have something about the earth that is close to our own hearts. I also think we’ve seriously underestimated how much people enjoy a little rebellion. There’s something enormously satisfying about realizing that a small, ordinary decision can be a tiny middle finger to a giant corporation too. I love that Dip has never had to join Amazon.

And I really love the people that think that’s cool :)

Buying something that lasts instead of something designed to be thrown away. Walking into an independent store instead of automatically ordering from a massive online marketplace. Refilling a container. Repairing or borrowing or trading something. Buying one excellent thing instead of five mediocre ones.

These are NOT acts of heroic sacrifice: these are small, achievable, counter-culture decisions that can make life better. The rebellion can feel like a party, I promise you. And when enough people make these small changes, they start to matter…and a community starts to form. That is what happened with dip.

I love the idea that someone can buy a dip shampoo bar because it smells incredible, discover that it lasts for months, become friends with the woman who owns the little store where they bought it, and eventually realize they’ve stopped throwing away plastic shampoo bottles. It’s so amazing to me.

No guilt required or frightening statistics at checkout. No suggestion that they’re a bad person for having used bottled shampoo for the previous thirty years.

…Just a better experience that leads to a better habit. That’s the kind of environmentalism I want to participate in. And it’s the kind of capitalism I believe in, too. You’ll never hear me say "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism". I absolutely can’t stand that phrase, because it just is not true (and please don’t try and explain it to me, I know what it means). I see ethical consumption every day. Buying what you need, making sure you actually want what you want, and choosing to shop locally first. That doesn’t mean not shopping ever on big box or Amazon or sucking the joy out of anyone that does. It just means checking in with the alternatives first.

I believe businesses have a responsibility to make things better, not just extract as much money as possible from the people who buy from them. I believe we can build profitable and generous companies while taking responsibility for what we produce, what we waste, how we treat our employees, and the communities we affect.

I also believe consumers are smarter than we give them credit for.

They don’t need to be manipulated into caring. They need to be given something worth caring about. And I certainly don’t think every environmental decision needs to be presented as a moral referendum on someone’s character. Most people are trying their best.

They’re raising children, paying bills, going to work, caring for aging parents, dealing with grief and life, and trying to find a little happiness in the middle of it all. They don’t need another brand showing up to tell them that the soap they’ve been using is secretly destroying their family.

They need someone to make the better option genuinely better. I genuinely tried to do that for our customers.

Make it work beautifully, affordable enough to be accessible, convenient….and make it last. Make it something people are proud to share with their friends. And for the love of God, make it enjoyable.

People who love swimming in clean water and hiking through beautiful forests, who love music festivals, camping trips, farmers markets, neighborhood shops, and summer afternoons that stretch into evenings. People who are willing to do small things differently because they want those experiences to exist for their children and grandchildren.

Not because someone frightened them into compliance. But because they absolutely fucking love the world they’re living in. And most importantly: I want the companies that make enormous profits while treating our shared playgrounds as disposable to understand something:

We don’t have to participate in every system they’ve built for us. We can choose differently and can support the businesses that give a damn. We can keep things longer and repair them. We can buy less and make our own rules. We can create a culture where wasting less feels clever, satisfying, and maybe even a little rock & roll.

There is serious work to be done. Real pollution, habitat destruction, environmental damage, and real corporate accountability that can’t be solved by individual shopping decisions alone. I realize that. That is not my point.

But seriousness of purpose doesn’t require misery of spirit.

We can demand accountability and still be joyful. We can be angry about destruction and still be delighted by the world and we can care deeply without making caring feel like punishment.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life attending the planet’s funeral. I want to throw a giant party in its honor. I want everyone to come and feel welcome because last time I checked, 100% of us live on this beautiful spinning rock. I want them to bring their friends—even the ones I don’t like. I want the music to be loud, the lake to be clean, and the people who have never thought of themselves as environmentalists to feel completely welcome and embraced. As we used to say in New Jersey, “let’s throw a rager”…for the planet.

It’s so hard to not get swept up in the energy of a fun party. Maybe I’m one of those really annoying hopeful millennials. I just want everything to feel like a good time and I want to wake up the next day laughing and recounting all the fun we had. Most importantly: I want people to just WAKE UP.

What if people joined the sustainability movement and they leave having made one small change that makes the world a little better?

Isn’t that the goal? Maybe they’ll make another. Maybe they will associate the small things they do with fun and happiness instead of with duty and suffering. That’s how you build a movement people actually want to belong to. Not by making them afraid of their shampoo, but by reminding them how much there is to love.

So to the brands building their businesses on fear, guilt, and the endless suggestion that ordinary people are doing everything wrong: please stop. You’re sucking the joy out of the room…and some of us are trying to throw a party.

Make it joyful, or seriously get out of the way.

 

xx,

Kate