Building a Movement

Sizzle has been painstakingly building our first campaign  https://enrichtheearth.co.uk conversations have helped to refine the ambitions, feedback has shaped the message and local partner involvement has been secured.  Now we need to deliver impact with a limited budget on a subject that is peripheral to mainstream media.  Building on previous experience this is what we are planning.

Finding the ‘Singers’

Cultural Diffusion is a model describing how social change spreads in a community.  Imagine a communal singing event.  A pianist might first strike up a tune, initially a few brave souls will start singing loudly (and possibly off-key) this will give the wider group the confidence to join in.  There will always be those at the back miming their way through the whole thing literally providing lip-service to the event.  In essence this is how cultural diffusion operates.

For our campaign to succeed we need to those who are brave enough to start singing and who have the credibility to persuade others to join them.  The singers could come from any part of society.  They might be an influential leader within their local community, a social media influencer, a representative of a respected organisation or a great communicator.

We have been working hard to find these singers and to give them the support, encouragement and guidance they need to make their voice heard.

Tiller Tapping

Finding the messages that resonate with our target audience will take time.  We will run small social media experiments testing one message against another.  These AB tests will help us to see which message lands most effectively and from which sources.  Once we are confident of the approach, we will seek to amplify them through all our communications.  This constant testing and adjusting or tiller-tapping will help to ensure that resources are carefully targeted.

Relatable Content

We are acutely aware that environmental campaigns can feel distant and not relevant to everyday lives.  To ensure our approach feels relatable we are recruiting a diverse group of local people helping them to make some of the changes we are recommending.   Their experiences will be captured on video and shared through social media.  Crucially we will share things that have not gone so well alongside successes as we realise that things don’t always go smoothly.

Media Catnip

We are aware that we need a great headline or image to attract the attention of press and social media.  Public polling has already been undertaken to find an unexpected statistic that can be used in a media release and on infographics.  Efforts are underway to create a large interactive wormery as a strong photo opportunity and to engage with the wider public.  Creating this wormery is proving somewhat challenging as worms hide from daylight but we are persevering.

Changing the rules

We are acutely aware of the danger of creating a brief ‘firework moment’ with the campaign shinning for a short period and then being forgotten.  To overcome this long-term structural change is needed to make the transition easy.  We are developing a new sustainable compost that will provide a cost-effective and viable alternative to peat.  We are also identifying what legislative changes are required overcoming some of the barriers that currently exist.

These are the plans that we have in place.  The campaign will launch in September and I will let you know how things develop.