Marketing the Environment

Amanda Little (Photo credit: ChimpLearnGood)

Want everyone else to buy into environmentalism? Never say “Earth” ( Heather Smith, Grist, Mar. 12, 2014)

Also discussed here: No, we’re not “environmentalists.” It’s more complicated than that

(Samantha Larson, Grist, Mar. 7, 2014)

 

Today we review a report from a source we rarely do- an environmental activist organization, Grist. The article looks at the question of why the public at large is so slow to accept and act on the alarm bells that are rung so loudly by the activists.

The answer seems to lie in several things:

*failure to budget enough for communications (as opposed to fund raising and membership drives)

 *failure to relate the environmental issue to people’s lives

*failure to explain and keep the description of the issue simple

*failure to repeat the message line enough until it reaches the public

*failure to adjust to the common sense outlook of millennials

Bottom line is to stop using the terms, such as “the environment” and “sustainable development”, and to start appealing to what makes sense to the man or woman on the street. Stop talking about “air quality” and start talking about how commuting to work by car harms the health of everyone enroute- and by how much.

Key Quotes: 

 “People working in the nonprofit world sometimes have trouble adopting a marketing mindset....But in the end, the goal is for people to ‘buy’ our ideas — ideas for a better world.”” 

“If you look at the budgets of environmental groups, only teeny tiny portions are spent on communications. And if you remove the portions spent on building membership and fundraising, it’s even less….foundations that support environmental groups don’t tend to value communications, either.” 

“in communications, only simplicity works. Our side doesn’t like simplicity because they view it as manipulative or not capturing the truth. Without simplicity, people don’t remember anything.”

 “too much of the public thinks that environmentalists are people who care about the environment and not about people. So the environment has become a thing apart.” 

“we think because we’ve said something, know something, or done something, that everybody else knows it. We don’t realize the bubble we live in. It’s only when you’ve said something so many times that you’re utterly and completely sick of it that someone has even heard it.”

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