ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY: Promotional Strategies

ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY: Promotional Strategies

by Antonio C. Antonio

September 30, 2014

There are two basic promotional strategies for an environmental advocacy that specifically promotes to mass adopters or individual adopter: (1) Mass and (2) Individual.  These strategies are also known as the Shotgun (for mass) and Rifle (for selective and personal) strategies or approaches.

Mass Media are media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience.  Examples of mass media are: (1) Broadcast media (film, radio and television); (2) Print media (newspaper, book, pamphlet and comic books); (3) Outdoor media (billboard, sign, placard, flying billboards, blimps, mobile billboards and skywriting); (4) Public gatherings (forum, rallies, masses, etc.); (5) Internet and Social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email, etc.)  Mass media remains to be the most effective, but costly and expensive, means to propagate and popularize an environmental advocacy.  We should consider that mass media outlets, such as ABS-CBN, GMA and TV 5, are business enterprises too and (to them) nothing comes for free.

Selective Communication was born out of the fact that mainstream media is expensive.  It is a cost-effective strategy as it is designed to inform and persuade a predetermined set of target adopters which are more likely to heed the cause but have yet to be tagged or poked.  Simple hard-copy mail or email is a good example of selective communication which is not too expensive.

Personal Communication is closely related to the IEC (information+education+communication) Approach.  Please check on this link: http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-iec-approach.html.  I have also written an article on The Ripple Principle last April 22, 2014 that could provide additional information on how effective personal communication could be.  Please check on this link: http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ripple-principle.html. 

There are no hard and fast rules in popularizing an environmental advocacy.  In fact, a simple weekend street corner “inuman” among friends could always be a good occasion to talk about environmental matters and concerns.  Any event or occasion can certainly be a part of a wide array of promotional strategies.

Just my little thoughts…

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