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‘Puget Sound Starts Here’... The Real Poop
The Puget Sound Partnership today unveiled their new campaign to mobilize public support to save the Sound. I had hoped for a good, kick-ass campaign. It's not.
The Puget Sound Partnership today unveiled their new campaign to mobilize public support to save the Sound. I had hoped for a good, kick-ass media campaign.
It's not. 'Puget Sound Starts Here' is nice, well-meaning public service messages aimed at changing individual behavior, much like what we've seen government agencies put forth in the last 10 or so years-- without much success.
That's because public service advertising and colorful posters and brochures don't change behavior. Removing barriers, providing incentives and disincentives, and long-term efforts at the community and peer-to-peer levels are, according to practitioners of behavior change social marketing, what constitutes a successful campaign.
Sadly, the Puget Sound issue over the last two years has lost much of its drama and momentum while the Puget Sound Partnership has been spending its time planning.
According to recent public attitude research, people’s awareness about the state of the Sound hasn’t changed much from research done by the Partnership three years ago: People care about Puget Sound but don't see the damage so don't feel the urgency to make the Sound healthier.
But that attitude about Puget Sound has been the case over much of the last 20 years. What's different now is that, because of population growth and increased development, dealing with storm water has become an urgent concern. Affecting public attitude towards dealing with the storm water problem is the main task at hand.
I had hoped ‘Puget Sound Starts Here’ would get real: Showed we can’t continue business as usual with pollutants poisoning the Sound and its critters every time it rains. I had hoped for a campaign that showed how cities, businesses and developers can reduce and eliminate storm water pollution. I had hoped to see a campaign that showed real people calling out for leaders to take real actions for the Sound.
Puget Sound needs a hard-hitting campaign that raises public awareness about the urgency of dealing with the storm water problem and builds a public constituency that will demand we change the ways we handle the water that falls on our land before it flows off to the Sound.
Picking up dog shit isn't going build that sense of urgency and public constituency to save the Sound; cutting out the bull shit and getting down to the hard business of funding storm water programs and changing land use practices will.
Let the public judge
Just Which Beginning?
When you say "300 organizations have signed on to help move the Puget Sound Starts Here" [PSSH] campaign, do you mean that 300 orgs have signed up for the ECO Network? It's understandable that you equate the two, since that's a part of the plan. But as a member of several organizations who have signed up for ECO Network I see it a little differently.
I think that joining ECONet was an expression of hope -- that the Partnership would use some of its financial leverage and its amazing collection of scientific and political minds to help with crafting meaningful messaging that organizations could add to what they are already communicating to their constituents. But with the rollout of the PSSH, it's not obvious that there is really much for us "to move." I'm saying this not to diminish what you have done, but to contribute to future improvement.
I have looked over the PSSH materials, and as someone involved in broadcast, interactive, and face-to-face media I understand the notion that there are different levels of presentation: something simple for the less interactive media, and more details where motivated people can find and discuss them.
I was looking forward to including some branded pointers from the PSSH campaign into my media, and then leading my audiences to more detail backed by a deep understanding of the issues coming from the scientists working with the Partnership. I am so far disappointed.
The public messages are pretty fluffy. That alone doesn't dismay me. I can imagine the ECONet members connecting the dots between the simple media messages and the details, each from their own area of specialization. That's what I was expecting. But when I looked to see what details the Partnership was making available for me to tie in with the PSSH campaign, I didn't find much. The PSSH web site had a rather generic list of organizations web sites to visit, and the PSSH Style Guide contained Key Messages that were not the "underpinnings" promised, were actually pretty shallow.
I understand that there are severe budget constraints. All the more reason to explore ways to leverage the real power of ECONet.
Here's what I think could fix the PSSH rollout from my point of view:
1) The Partnership has organized some of the best scientific minds of my generation to understand the complexity that is Puget Sound. Yet scientists are not the best people to be explaining these things to the public. Nor are PR firms. The ECONet members are. The Partnership should facilitate information flow between the ECONet members and the scientists. Augment the "Key Messages" with some really useful links to detailed summaries of the problems and solutions at a level that motivated, intelligent people who aren't scientists can understand, and that also have links to sources and real data. Let the ECONet organizations translate this into a form that their constituents can understand.
For example, in my talks, my web site, and in my TV series, I try to connect the dots for the public between what we see and do in our daily lives and the things in our waters that are invisible but important. I am not an expert on all of those things, but I am pretty good at translating scientific gobbley-gook into something ordinary people can understand. Other organizations might connect the dots between daily life and their restoration programs or their guided beach tours, or their educational programs, ...
But we all need access to the "best available science" without having to become scientists ourselves and read the reams of studies being published every year.
2) Access to science "vetters" so that when we come up with an interpretation of the science, we can bounce it off of someone (or somethree) knowledgeable to make sure we're not misrepresenting something. This process should be simple and fast.
3) More specific information for the public on your web site that is keyed to your 4 key messages. You needn't write the complete detailed story about each key message (#1 above), but you could have links to the explanations that the various ECONet members have created for the public. This might work as a matrix: aspects of an issue in one dimension (e.g. scope, metrics, consequences, solutions, ...) vs. types of people who might be interested (e.g. tourists, home owners, students, divers, nature lovers, developers, drag-race enthusiasts, ...) Each intersection in the matrix could contain links to ECONet members' pages that provide information about that specific thing.
4) Eventually add to the 4 key messages, this time adding the backstory (#1, 2, 3 above) BEFORE the public media rollout so that the ECONet members can have their public-oriented detailed information already in place and ready to serve the public at the time of the rollout.
5) conspicuous by its absence is the benefit of traditional knowledge. When I attended the Georgia Basin Puget Sound Research Conference in Vancouver a couple of years ago, I was impressed by how the Canadians managed to comfortably seat traditional knowledge and science at the same table. The benefits of this level of integration are yet to be seen in the work by the Puget Sound Partnership.
Again, I realize that $$ is tight and choices about tasks must be made judiciously. But unless you get some muscle behind that nicely branded fluff, I fear your budget may be like dust in the wind.
I hope this helps.
Just the beginning
I am sorry you couldn't find anything positive about all of the effort being put in by 300 organizations that have signed on to help move the Puget Sound Starts Here campaign. As we said at the event yesterday, this is only the beginning. We will be working hard to add more elements and take on the tough issues as we move forward. In this era of limited funding, we needed to get going with what we could now and will be working hard to move on all the critical issues as we get more funding.