Marketing Global Warming: A Small Child Shall Lead Them

By B.L. Ochman Asi Sharabi of No Man's Blog sent a bunch of marketing-focused bloggers an email this morning asking us to contribute "marketing, creative, media, branding, strategy, simply ANYTHING" to create a great common pool of marketing ideas for every ethical/environmental issues/campaigns."

Let's start by not calling people "stoopid" Asi. It's the governments who make lousy policy decisions that contribute to global warming the most. People will do what's right, given the chance.

Seth Godin notes that Global Warming is a terrible name, and he's absolutely right. "If the problem were called "Atmosphere cancer" or "Pollution death" the entire conversation would be framed in a different way."

Teach the children
As any marketer knows, you have to engage the hearts and minds of future customers long before their habits become ingrained. Little children will lead the action on environmental issues, because we adults have certainly blown it.

- As I watch my neighbors with children standing outside smoking because they don't want to expose their kids to second-hand smoke, I realize that the kids learn about the dangers of smoking in school and come home and ask their parents not to kill themsleves by smoking. Many who don't stop smoking at least stop smoking in the house. I think education about global warming has to start in elementary school.

- Kids need to be taught what they and their parents can do to help prevent global warming They'll go home and bug their parents. Kids are smart, they get it, and they want to do the right thing when issues are explained to them in terms they can understand.

- Environmentalists need a whimiscal, non-threatening mascot, like Smokey the Bear, who can encourage kids to do the right thing.

- Producers of products and shows aimed at kids need to feature that mascot in their advertising, on their packaging, in public service messages, online in instant messaging and blog ads -- so kids are saturated with the message.

- Tell kids 10 things they can do now, and reward them with product discounts, badges, t-shirts, etc. for accumulating points each time they do something to save the planet.

Comments

Posted by: Asi at June 26, 2006 1:47 PM

Posted by: Shawn at July 18, 2006 12:49 PM

Posted by: Phil at May 15, 2008 4:10 PM

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The Problem with Global Warming from Splintered Channels
In a recent post, B.L. Ochman echoes the concerns raised by Asi Sharabi about global warming and why it continues to fail to motivate broad-based social action. Asi issued a challenge on his blog for marketing professionals to step up [Read More]

Tracked on June 26, 2006 8:06 PM