the power of culture and social norms

Ovens "big enough for a Christmas turkey". 

Freezers "with enough room so you always have food for unexpected guests".

Just two examples of clever marketing, using extreme events (once a year Christmas and let's say twice a year unexpected dinner guests) with latent cultural and social stigma's that still work on the (post)modern human beings decision making proces.

In each case they were used to sell us more. But the principle can also be used to change behaviour towards sustainability.

So ask yourself: what extreme situations with cultural resonance, and the possibility for social failure do you have within your particular business? 

These types of situations and this type of approach will allow you to change behaviour by make the unlikely (yet when it happens very socialy uncomfortable) become a focus point, thus making acceptance of the new behaviour seem obvious.

Perhaps a bit evil, but given the fact it worked the first time around, I am betting it would work again. 

the era of High Concept returns

"High concept often has themes based on an existing area of popular fascination—such as sharks, dinosaurs, flying saucers, the Titanic, and so on— thus having a ready-built foundation of subsidiary issues and ever-ramifying facts that can feed the machine, on levels ranging from the superficial to the intellectually or factually exhaustive".wikipedia

Better go and read this. Now that (at breakneck speed) technology enables us to belong to, and interact with likeminded people from around the world, the art of doing stuff that is: 

"easy (flows naturaly with needs and wants, instead of creating them artificialy) to sell (cash is king again) to a wide audience(facebook being an example: more and more oldies instead of just kids) because it delivers upon an easy to grasp idea that is original, interesting, colorful and sometimes humorous (pull people together and give them something to do)", is a skill marketers need to get reacquainted with.