If you need a little inspiration for how to activate some concerned citizens out there, look no further than this recent blog post from the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, which is campaigning to get some local natural areas protected as wilderness.
This well-written post doesn’t belabor all the various facts, statistics, and details about the issue. The author knows that the audience is friendly to the cause, so he or she addresses the real reasons a concerned citizen may stay silent:
“Writing a letter to the editor is easy and takes only a few moments,” the Conservancy writes, then explains how to do it. Most importantly, the group paints a vivid picture of elected officials and their staff reading the letter in the paper as they contemplate their eventual vote on the issue. Their straightforward explanation leaves the reader with no doubt hat if their letter gets published, it will, indeed, make a difference. And that is far more motivating than knowing how many acres are at stake here.
Here’s a revealing comparison: Check out the “rough and respectful” attitude that the WV Highlands Conservancy shows its supporters with “slick and stifling” attitude that The Nature Conservancy of Illinois displays towards theirs with the ”Start One Conversation” campaign.
Which group would you rather be a part of? I thought so.
In my last few posts, I have tisk-tisked some environmentalist marketing communications for being self-absorbed and aloof. Today I’ll heap some praise on a piece of work from a group that shows how it should be done: It’s a web video from the Save Our Springs Alliance in Austin, TX.
Local nature protection and pollution control groups should study this video carefully — the script and the images work together to empower the viewer with feelings that the springs matter to them and they can do something to save them. Plenty of images of everyday citizens, enjoying the springs with their families AND working together to persuade the city council to save the springs from upstream overdevelopment.
After you watch this video, take a second look at Environment America’s “it’s all about us” attitude marketing efforts. The difference in the attitude these organizations have towards their supporters is pretty striking.If every nonprofit green group was as quick to share credit for its success with their supporters as the SOS Alliance, the movement would have a lot more supporters… and a lot more political clout.Good job, SOS. Best of luck down there.
Last week, I took a fellow eco-blogger to task for falling into the self-indulgent habit of trying to shock people into action with bad news alone.
The blogger ignored my provocation. He did not take the bait. Hellooooo?? No response. Deafening silence.
Oh well, a Water Words reader weighed in:
From my own point of view and experience, “alarm” and “outrage” have been grossly over-used in recent years, especially when it comes to the environment. Yes, there are some situations in which a person *should* react with both alarm and outrage, such as direct pipelines of raw sewage into a watershed. I think the stress should be on information and education, with a strong emphasis on doing something rational and effective with long-term positive effects.
Rational. That’s a word I have some views about. It’s a mighty fine line there between rational and clinical. And trying to cost-benefit-analyze everyday citizens into action with a boring presentation of scientific and policy facts is a failing of ours, too. You may get (some of) those everyday citizens to agree with you with this kind of approach (if they understand you), but most won’t DO anything.
A group of people I really respect, including Kristin Grimm at Spitfire Strategies and Marty Kearns at the Green Media Toolshed, recently spent some time deep-thinking this conundrum, and wrote a paper called Discovering the Activation Point. It’s way better than the usual self-serving self-published white paper that consulting firms all pump out these days, so I encourage you to read it.
If I was to summarize the report findings in a single phrase, it would be: agreement comes from the head, but action comes from the heart.
It is my own view that negative emotions get people’s attention, but these feelings are abundant. We all experience a glut of bad news as we go through our day. It is the opportunity to feel positive about doing something that makes some problems stand out from all the rest.
Everyday citizens want to feel positive, virtuous emotions like accomplishment, confidence, belonging, generosity, camaraderie, charity, resolve, frugality, etc… Opportunities to feel this way are rare, and if they can experience that by doing something about your problem, they will. So don’t make them guess — come right out and tell them how great they’ll feel, using words that work like:
Jack Stern from Ocean Champions wrote an interesting post on the Shifting Baselines blog about the frustrations of trying to mass mobilize citizens to pressure Congress to do right by the ocean. He said:
This to me is our biggest problem in getting people activated on ocean issues: they have a hard time seeing or feeling most of the destruction that happens in the oceans, and so no matter how much we squawk about it, it’s a “problem for the future.”
Ponder that quote for a minute. He’s right about two things, but still misses an important point. It’s true that everyday citizens have a hard time personally relating to problems in the open ocean. It’s also true that they tend to view environmental problems of every kind as manifesting themselves in the future rather than today.
But like many of us, Jack seems to believe that outrage leads to action, and that’s just not true. At least not by itself. Alarm is just one ingredient in the recipe for action on the part of everyday citizens.
“Now matter how much we sqawk,” most of the citizens who hear us lack the knowledge and confidence to act on the outrage we provoke unless we tell them what they can do. If we don’t paint a clear picture for how their actions make a difference, they won’t see it, and most won’t bother. And because they think their individual sacrifices are of little consequence, we need to tell them and demonstrate that others are doing their part and we are all working together towards a common goal.
And Americans’ tendency to think their individual efforts aren’t worth it is particularly pronounced when the necessary action is civic or political in nature. Check out this excerpt from Belden Russonello & Stewart’s landmark Communicating About Oceans: Results of a National Survey report. Note how citizens perceive that writing Congress is one of the least effective things they can do to protect the ocean.
You can shock people all you want, but unless you help people overcome the sense of futility about their actions, that outrage won’t get you much.
That’s why Secret to Success #4 is to both Warn and Encourage.
Thanks to Mark at Blogfish for the tip.
