How do you make environmental activism look as hip as an iPod?
Cathy Zoi says you do it by borrowing a page from the product advertising playbook.
Zoi, CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection, outlined her organization’s marketing strategy yesterday at the Aspen Environment Forum.
“We can solve this,” she said during a panel discussion at the Aspen Institute’s Doerr-Hosier Center. “Truth is on our side. But sometimes truth needs a little marketing help.”
Melding the tactics of successful product campaigns (the ubiquitous iPod silhouette television spots, the Geico gecko) and classic advocacy offensives (the “Your Brain on Drugs” frying egg ad, the seatbelt awareness crash-test dummies), Zoi’s Alliance is dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into an advertising blitz. They hope it will sway public opinion on global warming, drive citizens to action and — eventually — get the laggards in Washington to do the same.
Sharing the stage with Zoi, former Colorado Rep. and Sen. Timothy Wirth said “policy will change with pressure from below,” while he bemoaned the relatively small number of Americans engaged in the warming fight. “There is a huge gap between the relevant scientific community and those that need to know: The general public and the policymakers.”
Zoi, who previously served as chief of staff for environmental affairs during President Bill Clinton’s administration, said polling indicates that about 85 percent of Americans are generally aware of the effects of global warming. But people do not have a grasp on its urgency or “solvability,” she said, and it remains a low priority for Americans when they enter voting booths.
To change that, Zoi said, they are not targeting typical demographics sorted by age or race. Instead, they’re going after a group of Americans she categorized as “Influentials.” The Influentials are people who communicate with five times the number of friends and acquaintances each day as the average American — the rampant text-messengers, e-mailers and coffee shop conversants among us.
They’re also targeting religious communities and sportsmen — like hunters and skiers — who see the effects of global warming firsthand.
Zoi said their aim is to strike a balanced tone, informing the public of global warming’s threat, while not laying the gloom-and-doom on too thick. A recent advertisement for the unrelated advocacy group fightglobalwarming.com personified the global threat by showing a young girl about to be hit by a train. That ad was too caustic, Zoi said, shocking people and turning them off.
Advocacy advertising has succeeded before: Zoi pointed to the iconic 1971 anti-littering “Keep America Beautiful” commercial showing a Native American weeping on a trash-covered roadside.
“That ad shaped a generation,” she said. The challenge she faces, however, is that unlike 1970s pollution, rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere don’t smell or look bad — and their effect is harder to communicate.
More recent examples of effective advocacy, she noted, are the truth.org anti-smoking ads, which led to the first declines in teen smoking after years of unsuccessful attempts by anti-smoking groups.
“What they figured out is to say to teens, ‘You’re being duped by adults,’ ” Zoi explained.
To find the proper tone, Zoi said the Alliance is shaping a campaign that combines “facts with feelings.”
Former Vice President Al Gore, who thrust global warming to the forefront with his book and film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is the chairman of the board for the Alliance of Climate Protection.
Their first TV spot uses black balloons to quantify the carbon emissions created by electric household appliances. It shows black balloons inflating from lights and washing machines. Eventually, hundreds of them rise into the sky above a suburban landscape. The ad is promoting the Alliance’s Web site, climateprotect.org.
They also launched “60 Seconds to Save the Earth,” an online advertising contest, won by a 28-year-old cartoonist.
Zoi is hoping the new campaign will yield an iconic image — such as the crying Indian or the frying egg — that burns into the general public’s consciousness and conscience.
But so far, she admits, the most effective awareness-raising tool for global warming has been news coverage of catastrophic floods, storms and heatwaves.
“We hope we don’t need five more Hurricane Katrinas to do this,” she said.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
