Comments on: This Video Nails It! Or Does It?

By: Lucy

Lucy — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:28:08 +0000

I think the first step is to help people get to know and understand the body of water in their ‘back yard.’ This is the waterbody that their at-home actions will affect first, so it’s the most obvious conection for them to make.

Once they make that connection, then demonstrate the connection to the bigger picture. In the Samish watershed we are currently coordinating the installation of a series of signs with a consistent straightforward message of the presence of streams and their conenctions to the local bay.

Not many people in Skagit County think of themselves as living on Puget Sound, but I do see the value of sending a consistent message, and I think the images in these ads are doing that.

By: Joan

Joan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:04:29 +0000

I like the slogan ‘Puget Sound Starts Here’ — it’s much more accessible than ‘watershed’ while getting the same message across. The thing I don’t like about the paint one is that it has a strong visual of a behaviour we do not want, and that can backfire. People tend to remember seeing someone dumping paint in a storm drain, but might not remember that was a bad thing. Also, if they dyed the stream for the ad, it must not be such a big deal, right?

It’s the constant conundrum of how to show the impact without providing a norm for negative behaviour.

What about something that starts at the creek and traces it back to the source? Say, a family finding playing in the creek that suddenly turns yellow, and as they leave they walk by a guy about to dump more paint in the drain. They stop him just in time! Yay! You get the cause-effect, but you also work with normative behaviour cues to show that people will disapprove of you if you do this.

By: Chad C

Chad C — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:53:19 +0000

What about combining approaches? Spend most of your effort on connecting people to their local waterbodies but every now and then making the connection to the famous downstream waterbody? I think it’s important that people know what they’re ultimately impacting even if the local connections are what get them to change behavior.

By: John Ulmer

John Ulmer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:49:06 +0000

Thought provoking indeed. I think it is difficult for the “public” to thoroughly make the jump from headwaters to Puget Sound or Gulf of Mexico, etc. A mindset is that something or “someone else” will fix it as it goes downstream. Both videos are powerful, the paint in the stream and little girl would work really well in the Puget Sound one.