COMMUNICATIONS AND CONSERVATION

23 June 2000
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Austin, Texas

Andy Goodman warned that even worthwhile messages could get lost in the "data smog" (read David Shenk’s "Data Smog"). He explained that we were operating in a time of information overload or glut (he noted that the average office worker gets 189 messages within a 8-hour day, including phone, email, voice mail, snail mail, faxes, post-its, pages, etc.). Also, public interest messages must confront increasing competition with commercial advertising (including ads on coffee jackets, grocery conveyor belts, light poles, hockey ice, gas pumps, etc.), only to reach:

• People who don’t have time to care

  • many time-saving devices, only allow you to do more, not save time

  • Read James Gleick’s "Faster" for more examples

• People who don’t want to know

  • Like a camera, people pre-select what they want to see, hear, and learn

  • Most people are not interested in most public issues most of the time

  • We are "wired-in", but "tuned-out"

• People who feel helpless and come away with "compassion fatigue" and resentment about pleas - most societal problems are seen as:

  • Too big (hunger)

  • Too complex (biodiversity collapse)

  • Too far away (Indonesian forest clearcutting)

However, some messages do get through to people. Mr. Goodman thinks that the messages that pass through fill several basic criteria:

• Appeal to people’s highest core concerns

  • For instance, the "Don’t Mess With Texas" campaign appealed to people’s core pride in the state, not more peripheral concerns about littering).

• Keep the initial message simple

  • Remember that "abstractions are obstructions"

  • Use plain English - say "whales and dolphins", not "charismatic marine megafauna"

  • Read "Diffusion of Innovations", by Everett Rogers

• Emphasize local concerns that affect individual, family, neighborhood

• Stress immediate impacts

• Give people a specific action they can take to respond

• Let them see measurable results within a reasonable time

• Allow people to act together with other people

Questions and Answers

Q: How does one adjust these strategies for a particular target audience, not the general public? Mr. Goodman said that the real fight is always for the mass in the middle, between the already-converted and the dyed-in-the-wool opponents.

Q: How does one overcome pervasive A.D.D.? Mr. Goodman said it was important to recall that learning is demand-, not supply-driven – that it is controlled by the audience.