Advertising Campaigns & Sustainable Behaviour

Alexis,

Suggest you check out the Bert the Salmon campaign for healthy lawn care. It was a high-profile, media-based project using Bert the Salmon as the spokesfish, and tying in the Seattle's MLB franchise. You can Google it, but I would start at the Tools of Change website: http://www.toolsofchange.com/English/CaseStudies/default.asp?ID=162

It was fairly successful, but the cost was not inconsiderable: around $17 per person by my calculations.

Cheers!
Michael

Michael Bergman
Reducing Toxics
and Southwest Region Environmental Educator
Washington Department of Ecology
360.407.6243
[email protected]

One of my favorite examples of success is the St. Johns River Water Management District in south Florida, United States. They have been conducting several years of a successful, water conservation campaign. To see some basics of their campaign go to http://www.floridaswater.com/. The campaign has been successful such that they are noticing a drop in water usage in meter readings, local municipalities are enacting lawn watering ordinances, and they have seen an increase in their partners and subsequent funding sources. 
 

As I understand it and as Doug explains in the guide, the evidence for the effectiveness of large-scale advertising campaigns, in the absence of complementary interventions, is not strong (in other words, you can't rely on information alone to change people's behavior). You might take a look at the following article for guidance on how to develop effective PSAs: Bator, R. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2000). The application of persuasion theory to the development of effective proenvironmental public service announcements. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 527 - 541 (it is linked from the conservation psychology website, which also has many other useful references: http://www.conservationpsychology.org/resources/articles/).

As with CBSM, the authors of this paper recommend researching your audience and pre-testing the messages. If you are going to invest in such upfront research, then it's certainly worth investigating people's barriers to the target behavior and developing a campaign that effectively targets those barriers--whether through advertising or other means, to be decided once you know more about your audience.

Based on your email signature, I assume you are working in transportation demand management? I've come across quite a bit of literature in that area as well as other programs you might draw upon (see the city of Portland, Oregon for one notable example of social marketing applied to TDM). You might be particularly interested in the research of Sebastian Bamberg (see the paper you can request for free from Icek Ajzen's website: http://people.umass.edu/aizen/publications.html).

Good luck, and please report back if you find anything interesting!

Allegra

Here's a report on a TV campaign a few years back to encourage people to cut back on fertilizer use. http://www.epa.gov/nps/toolbox/surveys/Final_Chesapeake_Club_Report.pdf

*** Eric Eckl

Water Words That Work
P.O. Box 2182
Falls Church, VA 22042
(703) 822-4265
[email protected]
Skype/AIM: ericeckl
http://waterwordsthatwork.com

I am also interested in this, and know someone who would like to take it on if it can be done effectively. 

Gael Entrikin
1508 28th St SW
Rochester MN 55902
507 288 3948

I know the field of public health has many examples of marketing campaigns that have resulted in significant behavior change. One set of examples that comes readily to mind is the work of three separate states, Florida, California and Massachusetts, in reducing tobacco use through media campaigns. Florida was especially successful in lowering youth tobacco use rates and rates of initiation of use with its "Truth" campaign. California achieved somewhat smaller reductions but across a broader age group, and Mass got good results in reducing youth smoking rates. You can also look at the history of reducing rates of alcohol impaired driving. MADD and the feds have used a combination of media campaigns coupled with policy and legislative changes leading to a large drop in the number of alcohol related traffic fatalities. It took a decade or so, but cultural norms regarding drinking and driving have shifted and alcohol involved fatals dropped from about 65% of all fatal crashes to 40%. (roughly speaking, and yes there is a bit of an issue of measurement) Since total fatal crashes also declined in that time period, the absolute # of alcohol involved fatals fell quite rapidly. But marketing ain't magic and there have been marketing flops as well.

 

It is important to keep in mind that it is nearly impossible to isolate the impact of a media campaign on people's behavior, because you cannot control for all of the other things going on in the environment. Take Michael's example of the Bert the Salmon campaign. I work on water conservation in Seattle, and I know that there were any number of other programs going on at the same time in addition to this media effort, not to mention changes in norms about things like the importance of having a green lawn (what would be called "historical" variables in evaluation terminology). While the campaign probably contributed to the observed changes in people's self-reported behavior (actual behavior wasn't measured), you can't say that it was the only or even the main reason for those changes. The difficulty of attributing behavior changes to a media campaign may be one argument against using this strategy, especially where funders or the sponsoring agency require rigorous evaluation and documentation of results.

I was actively involved in creating and carrying out the Bert the Salmon campaign (actually, it was part of the Natural Lawn Care Program). The program was not just an advertising campaign but also included lots of outreach to the news media, a model neighborhood, a widely distributed brochure, etc. Allegra is right that a number of agencies in the Seattle area have been working on various projects related to changing lawn and garden behavior for many years, so the advertising campaign is only one small piece of the puzzle.

Annette Frahm

We and some partners are about to embark on a large scale personalised behaviour change program for water conservation in Melbourne, targeting 100,000 households.This builds on 2 small trial programs run in Melbourne, Australia in 2002 and 2006.Our pilot program for the big 100,000 program is commencing this week. Our provider is a company called Village Green.Try Doug Smith - Village Green [[email protected]]

Melbourne water retailers have run some large scale advertising/communication programs in conjunction with our State Government to reduce water use in the face of drought, low water storages and water restrictions. The overall water savings have been very good. I understand the McKenzie Mohr theory has been applied to the program.The government brand is Our Water our Future and there is a web site with info. Try www.ourwater.vic.gov.au/ The personalised water program is based on some big successful programs run for public transport. We received a presentation from  Bruce James,Director Transport Planning in Queensland, Australia which has helped us develop our program.Try [email protected] for a copy of any presentations he has.

A key supplier in this field is a company called socialdata which operates around the world.Try Helen Grey-Smith [[email protected]].

Hope this helps
Ray Beaton

Manager
Sustainable Resources Strategy
Yarra Valley Water
(03) 9872 1481 0418 99 22 58