When we heard about the opportunity to pitch geothermal, our first question was: what’s that?  

Geothermal Heating and Cooling is a revolutionary clean technology that most people have never heard of. Using the natural temperature of the earth to heat and cool homes, it’s been around since the 1970s and is a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. But with less than 1% market share and a low media budget, we knew geothermal would have to do something provocative to get noticed.

Marketing a green technology, when half the country thinks green is a dirty word.

Climate change is the single most polarizing issue in the U.S. The left wants radical action, while conservative leaders call fossil fuels “the future,” and say renewable energy is “dumb energy.”

Geothermal’s target market were the states with the most extreme temperatures – some of which are very red, others very blue. We needed to develop messaging that would appeal to both sides of the political spectrum, and reach even people who didn’t care about climate change.  

We turned to some unlikely advocates: climate change deniers.

If we could convince them, we could convince anyone. We sent a liberal environmentalist on a road trip to try and persuade real climate change skeptics to make the green choice. Unmoved by his environmental arguments, their views change when they learn how much money they’ve wasted by sticking with fossil fuels.

In the end, we learned a lot from this experience. You can find common ground with anyone. People who don’t believe in climate change are actually very nice people. But most importantly, we proved we can all agree on geothermal, even if our reasons why are very different.