You’ve heard the phrase “look before you leap.” But what does that mean when it comes to environmental writing and communications?
First, a marketing urban legend about what can happen if you don’t look before you leap: Enjoying healthy sales of its Nova automobile in the U.S., Chevrolet introduced it to Latin America — where it bombed. As it turned out, “no va” — means “no go” in Spanish, and the name was turning potential customers away.
Environmental insiders make mistakes like this all the time, but you don’t have to.
When the stakes are high, savvy communicators pre-test their message before they commit to it. Ad executives invite customers to watch their latest commercial, before they spend millions to air it. Political campaigns test out slogans and speech lines with voters, before the candidates use them on the stump. Trial lawyers practice their arguments in front of pretend juries, before they head into court.
They use the pretesting to avoid mistakes — and to sharpen their message so they get what they want.
In my practice, I help nature protection and pollution control organizations pre-test their fundraising letters, petitions, brochures, webpages, and related materials. I see some mistakes come up again and again. So here’s a short list of our own “no va” moments that you should take care to avoid:
- Mistake #1: “If only they knew.” I hear this one from my clients a lot. “If only they knew they lived in a watershed,” “If only they knew they knew the storm drain went to the creek.” So they produce materials that are long on science education and short on action messages. As you might expect, these materials produce little action.
- Mistake #2: Weak photography.Nature protection groups use a lot of pretty nature pictures. Pollution control organizations show a lot of pipes and oil slicks. No problem there, but when we pre-test those messages, test subjects often ask for photographs that demonstrate what action they can take.
- Mistake #3: Professional jargon. Scientists, engineers, and lawyers tend to use professional lingo that sends the message to the public that your message isn’t meant for them. Pre-testing your materials is great way to uncover words that you thought were plain English, but aren’t.
- Mistake #4: Too depressing. Sure, you have to convince people there’s a problem before they will do something to help solve it. But if you go to far, you will demoralize your audience.
- Mistake #5: It’s all up to you. Let’s face it. Most of the things that everyday citizens can do to protect nature or control pollution make a pretty small difference — and they know it. But when we all do our part, it adds up to something big. So it’s very important to include in your message some words and pictures about the other people who are doing their part: donating, picking up after their dog, turning off their lights, signing that petition, etc.
Learning what the five mistakes are is a great way to avoid them. And another way to avoid these mistakes is to follow some writing guidelines like the Water Words That Work environmental message method. This 4-step method incorporates the findings from many environmental message pre-tests and opinion polls.
Finally, pretesting your environmental message isn’t just for those with deep pockets anymore. I have designed our forthcoming environmental message pretest service — the Due Diligence Test Panel — to make it easy and affordable for you to catch mistakes and sharpen your message, just like major corporations and candidates for high office do. When you simply can’t afford “no va,” pretesting is a “no brainer.”
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In preparing a message and making it motivate an action, with photos that demonstrate an action, without professional jargon, not to depressing, and little steps together produce big actions the science and the more difficult and meaningful actions get pushed out of the way for the actions that are easily photographed, don’t represent the complexity of the professional jargon used to describe and solve the problems, not to depressing, and are really big issues. Just because we all go out and pick up trash in the creeks doesn’t mean we make the water quality better. Generally most trash by the time we get around to picking it up is only an eye sore and the pollutions damage has been done. So although we pick up tons of trash we do little to clean up the water we only make it look better and ourselves feel better. Maybe we keep some of those who pick up the trash from putting more trash back but that is such a small part of what it takes to improve the water. There seems to be a tendency to let the word smiths become the experts and the experts are not consulted for the final message. We also seem to be so focused on “making a difference” that we don’t seem to look at the big picture and put the “difference” into perspective relative to the whole problem because that is too depressing.
We have thousands of years of history and we can’t seem to look more that a day into the future. A child born today has a good possibility of living nearly a hundred years. It seems that we should always look at least a hundred years to the future when we talk about sustainable, or when we look at energy availability or any other consumption of resources. But instead the gas companies claim we have supplies that will last 20 years and are proud of their accomplishments.
We must look to the future (a long time hundreds of years) and we must consider all the ramifications of our actions no matter how complicated or depressing. Not having a pretty picture of an action is not a reason to not focus on a problem and its solution. It isn’t all solvable easily and making people think they are making a difference by picking up a piece of trash tends to give a false feeling of accomplishment and cloud their view of more complex and difficult problems.
Yes we need to make problems understandable. However, sometimes we need to trust that those that have studied an issue and come to conclusions do know what they are talking about and it isn’t a case of simplifying their jargon and making a non depressing action the solution.
I hate to do this to you, Eric…but the ‘no va’ thing is a myth: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
Ahhh, so you do mention that the ‘no va’ thing is an urban legend…and your overall point is well-taken, Eric. Do your research and make a test-run before you make your stand.