Fw: MV ESTF: Outreach/communications

[Bruce England]

Done deal!...

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Mark Gilkey
Sent: Aug 4, 2008 9:17 PM
To: Bruce England
Subject: MV ESTF: Outreach/communications

Bruce,

 

I've had trouble sending email to groups, so I am sending this to you and asking you to forward it to the communication and outreach group.  If that's not appropriate, please let me know and I'll try another way.

 

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Comments on education group:

1) Among the terms "turn-around", "back-flip" or "complete u-turn", I prefer
   "turn-around".  "Turn-around" has positive connotations (e.g. businesses
   losing money hire "turn-around" managers).  "Back-flip" sounds a little
   too much like "flip-flop".  And "u-turn" implies going backwards, which
   is a negative connotation.

 

2) Hiring a professional marketing team seems like an expensive way to
   accomplish little.  People are overwhelmed by the amount of marketing
   that they are force-fed in our society, and people are just tuning
   out for very good reason.  Hiring traditional marketing people to
   make more noise trying to shout over everybody else's noise is
   expensive, likely to have little positive effect, and has the
   negative effect of just adding more noise to an already noisy
   environment.  I personally find that almost all marketing turns
   me off, making me less interested in the message, not more. 

 

   Similarly, I don't think we should put emphasis on logos,
   bumper-stickers, and other things that don't really carry any
   content.  Just because I see a "Bush/Cheney" bumper sticker
   or a "Kerry/Edwards" bumper sticker doesn't mean I'm going to
   change my vote. 

 

   This proposal talks a lot about the importance of "branding". 
   I think this is the wrong way to go.  One of our goals is to
   reduce the importance of knee-jerk consumerism, yet at the
   same time we are trying to build a marketing outreach
   program that tries to sell environmentalism the same way that
   we sell logo shirts and lemon-scented toilet paper.  In the
   long run, we would be more effective if we subtly undermined the
   notion that we should all blindly follow the fad with the biggest
   marketing budget and the coolest-looking logo. 

   Similarly, trying to make a "welcome" sign that is attractive
   enough to distract drivers from driving and persuade them to
   read it is at best unimportant and at worst outright dangerous.

   Of course, if I'm going to say what not to do, I should offer an
   alternative.  But that's difficult to do because practically
   everything is just more noise.

 

   In general, I think that what we need to do is 
      A) Lead by example.  All the force-fed marketing will do
         nothing if we are obviously violating our own
         principles.  Fortunately, I think this group can
         lead by example on at least some issues.  
      B) Since anti-environmentalists have been moderately
         successful persuading people that conservation means
         sacrifice and reducing our standard of living, we need
         to choose changes that make our lives more satisfying
         in some way, and we need to express that satisfaction to
         others so that people feel that we are presenting a
         positive future.  (This is something that I personally
         am bad at, since I tend to dwell on the negative!)
      C) Rather than just telling people what to do ("drive less",
         "eat less meat", "turn off the lights", etc.), we need to
         motivate people, which means that we need to explain WHY
         these changes are necessary (even though most of it seems
         obvious to me), and then hope that once people understand
         the need and the options, they will make better choices. 
         (The "Outreach" quote "..let them know what is going on
         and why" does partly address this.  
      D) I like the "Measure and track progress" point.  Feedback and
         improvement are important.

I think we should start with areas where people clearly don't know
what to do.  I like the "311" idea a lot.  I think people genuinely
don't know how to properly dispose of fluorescent lights, batteries,
etc.  The main problem is that this line could easily be overwhelmed
by the number of questions and by the detail of questions (that 311
doesn't know the answer to).  I still like the idea that I suggested
awhile ago, which is that we use a subset of something like
Yahoo Answers.  Unfortunately, I never found out how to do this (my
one quick attempt failed). 

 

I like your ida of having a group to "mentor and assist businesses who
desired to become green certified but felt the process was more than
they could ... navigate".  Businesses hate more paperwork, so making
it easy for them to become certified by meeting the criteria, without
having to master a paperwork process, is an excellent idea.

 

MINOR
-----

1) "As the most powerful institution in the world today and the engine
that drives economic growth, local government can play a major role
in the creation of environmentally sustainable business communities."

I think you're trying to say that BUSINESS is the engine that drives
economic growth and the most powerful institution in the world, but the
sentence structure says that LOCAL GOVERNMENT is the engine of growth
and the most powerful institution. 

 

More importantly, this sentence somewhat implies that economic growth is
a good thing and we want more of it.  In fact, if we are talking about a
U-turn in our consumption-driven society, we don't want to suggest
that strong economic growth is what we want more of. 

The graphic that shows which areas have 311 service has lost most of
its contrast -- I don't see a clear difference between dark grey
and light grey. 

TRIVIAL
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1) "bet categorized" should be "be categorized".