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Transcript

Does 'climate tech' need (another) re-brand?

Comms guru Art Lapinsch on the naming of things and why it matters.

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We Start at the End

Exit music today is “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants, from their 1990 album Flood. A song about, among other things, the weirdness of name changes. All will become clear.

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How do things get names? Who decides? What happens if they’re contested? Does it matter?

A brand, a label, a name, the words applied to people, places, or things change how an audience feels, and influences outcomes.

Refuse to “call me Ishmael”, “deadname” a trans person (or pope), or try using the wrong place-name depending on what bank of the River Foyle in Northern Ireland you find yourself, and see how that goes. On the other hand, if your company so dominates your category that your brand becomes a verb, like Hoover. But in the internet age the process happens much faster — see Google1, Uber, Tinder.

As for people and companies, a tricker object is a whole category. Successfully dominating a category - even if you have to invent one - is, according to Silicon Valley investors like Peter “Competition is for Losers” Thiel2, the only type of strategy worth pursuing. And often that will involve getting the name of the category right - some magical combination of things already in the zeitgeist, something that chimes with the audience/customer/media without them consciously knowing why.

The idea of whether businesses are in a category called “cleantech” or “climate tech” or “defence tech” or “fintech” does matter, I’d argue.

So I asked

, a startup founder with a successful exit turned climate communications guru and energy lawyer. Now writing a lot of smart stuff on the subject in his new consultancy , I wanted to return to the “is ‘climate tech’ dead?” debate.

But Lapinsch’s bio itself would be enough to want to hear him - going from fleeing civil war in the former Yugoslavia to adtech startup founder to turning to climate solutions ventures and how they should tell their stories. You’re going to enjoy getting to know him. I certainly did. And he was a good sport when dog-related imminent disaster required putting him on hold for a minute. Don’t worry. There’s good interval music for the occasion.

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In this Conversation

00:00 Introduction to Climate Tech Narratives

01:17 Meet Art Lapinsch: Background and Mission

02:36 Personal Impact of Global Events

03:03 Delving into Energy Security

04:28 The Evolution of Climate Tech

08:32 Communication Strategies in Business

17:49 The Role of Neologisms in Industry

21:38 Ethics and Communication

22:05 Defining Neologisms and Ethical Communication

22:41 The Venn of Profit, Legality, and Ethics

23:50 Ethical Communication Techniques

25:36 Political Communication and Climate Founders

27:15 Common Mistakes in Branding and Communication

30:11 Navigating Venture Capital Challenges

35:32 Personal Reflections on Risk and Resilience

40:46 Final Thoughts and Future Projects

All the Outros

But don’t sleep on our entrance music, which is as always provided by our good friends at Suncharmer, the up-and-coming UK band that will be living rent-free in your head sooner than you think.

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1

Google for a long time fought a rearguard action to dissuade people from using the brand as a generic verb for search. I once got such an email from their PR in the mid-oughts written by a marketer who’d read a law book or two - commanding me to ‘desist’ its use in our newspaper’s copy. I presume they’ve stopped sending out those sorts of notes by now.

2

Still working on the longread Thiel essay, following on from the stupidly long Musk essay.