A digital view of the world

Communicating science can be done without long texts full of facts, figures and footnotes. My colleague Jack Byrne shared this example of Hans Rosling telling the complex story of increasing human health and well being in a very simple but compelling way. For more of his statistics turned into stories see TEDtalks.

Influencing politicians

Gasland is a consumer's campaign for a moratorium on new gaz drilling methods. My colleague Keith Wheeler just made me aware of this movie and campaign. Energy producing methods like fracking have a heavy polluting impact on water and air. Existing legislation in the US allows it. The campaign for a moratorium targets consumers. A website offers tools to inform politicians with arguments they care about: health and financial costs. A map shows drill sites and watersheds. Animation illustrates the impacts of fracking and invites you to click for elevator speech basic facts and figures. Postcard size stories show people telling their personal experiences in a few sound bites. Immediate action towards politicians is a button away. Screening the movie in your community is a means to create word of mouth. In short a perfect example of strategic communication.

A message of awe and wonder

How to make a tiger roar? My colleague Ana Puyol shared this Traffic video on her facebook page. It is a good example of branding biodiversity by appealing to our awe and wonder for the tiger. It has a simple action perspective that supports awareness raising. Traffic and WWF CHina should put the video on YouTube to get to a global audience.

The Art of Dialogue

Conceptual change is an emotional as well as an intellectual process. During the Sharing Power Conference, the Te Hau Mihi Ata team of the university of Waikato gave an interesting presentation on the dialogue between indigenous Maori knowledge and modern science. They analyze the negotiated space needed for this process and I noted their the criteria for facilitation: language, environment, attitudes, relationships, negotiation, tolerance, let people contextualize the issue, influence through integrity, be solutiuon-oriented, have time to process, set rules for engagement, have concept translators. They also stressed that the framing of the issue is key.

Body language

“Sit as the horse driver of the mail coach. Don’t lean back in your chair. The way you sit communicates. The mail coach driver communicates you are interested, enthusiastic, you are on top of the issue. If you lean back in your chair, your body communicates the opposite. When one of you is doing the talking, nod from time to time, it shows the whole team is on board. Make eye contact with the client and make notes when he speaks. It 'tells' you listen and take good notice of his or hers ideas.” My colleague Gillian Martin Mehers and I are advising the team that has to present their approach of a project at the inception meeting. Gillian offers the team a link to a very recent learning resource on body language.

Biodiversity begins with a B

Communication works when it is simple and has a clear message what you can do. "Biodiversity begins with a B and ends with a Y or You!. To find out more about biodiversity and what you can do to help, go to www.snh.uk.!" So far so good: a message that sticks and is action-oriented. The tone of voice is good, memorable and reliable. There is appealing humour and a good story line. Maybe the Scottish Natural Heritage can in the next version focus less on threats and extinction, but more on awe and wonder, as explained by Futerra in Branding Biodiversity and demonstrated in the video Love not Loss.

Season's Greetings

Sending season's greetings is one of the tools to keep relationships alive. At the same time it can also be a way to update and clean the relation management system. About ten percent of my three hundred 'electronic best wishes for 2011' bounced back, as addresses were not anymore correct. I could immediately update my address book. Another twenty percent of immediate response were people thanking me and sending me their best wishes. Around five percent reacted on the photo, mostly asking where it was taken. I took the picture at a small Tibetan monastery that looks after the Pragbodhi cave where the historical Buddha practiced austerities and asceticism before attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. It is situated on a mountain range overlooking dry forests and deserts, an hour by car from Bodh Gaya, India. One cave contains a statue of a very skinny Buddha. Another cave a more traditional Buddha statue. We put up prayer flages, lighted candles and incense in the late afternoon.

Bush meat message

‘Imagine it alive. In the Amazon Ecuadorians eat ten tons of bush meat each year’. The proposal for the pay off was: ‘Be a responsible tourist’. It does not refer explicitly to extinction, however it is a loss not a love message. We are discussing the campaign of an IUCN/TRAFFIC project in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve aimed at small road side restaurant clientele in the Amazon region of Ecuador. They are American and European backpackers, oil company employees and middle class citizens of small cities in the region. The back packers are only 1% of the clientele. So forget about them for the moment. Ecuadorians love bush meat. That’s why the small restaurants still supply the demand. But how to communicate behavior change to the demand side? Appealing to rational weighing costs and benefits of behavior change often does not work. Better to appeal to emotions of national pride and love for the Amazon region and the people living there. And add a real action perspective: ‘don’t eat bush meat’ or 'try this time something else than bush meat'. Maybe explore whether 'solidarity' associations would stick: ‘so the tribes who depend on it, won’t go hungry’. As long as communication is not fully alligned with enforcement, we may influence attitudes and maybe the behavior of a small segment of the audience, but no big changes. Therefore it is worthwile to invest in a parallel dialogue with the police, local authorities and restaurant owners how to work together for positive change. In any case pre-test draft messages.

Communication plan to establish a PA

The communication strategy is based on getting support through a participatory process. The assignment asks students to write a communication plan to get support to establish a protected area.
Before I read their assignments, I do the assignment myself. I realize the communication objectives are to inform opinion leaders about the idea of a dialogue, get them interested to participate and help create word of mouth based on the outcomes of the dialogue. My plan focuses on internal and external communication.
Internal communication to clarify:
1. What the initiators really want (elevator talk) - message to use externally
2. Degree of flexibility of initiators with regard to the idea of a PA
3. ToR of the stakeholder dialogue process
4. Available time of the other initiators to engage in dialogue
5. Budget for stakeholder dialogue process
6. Procedure for reporting and decision making based on stakeholder dialogue.
External communication to get support of local stakeholders:
1. Identification of stakeholder groups and their opinion leaders
2. Establishing relationships with opinion leaders and get a first idea from them about local situation and previous (communication) interventions; knowledge, attitudes and practices of local stakeholders; motives and obstacles to change.
3. Engagement in a stakeholder dialogue process: identification and invitation of participants; planning and facilitation of the process; prioritization and objectives of communication interventions to wider audiences.
4. Creating supportive word of mouth: implementing communication interventions to wider audiences; monitoring and evaluation; positive feedback to opinion leaders and wider audiences.

Exhibits in information markets

Often we participate with an exhibit in an information market because we feel we have to be present. Presence can be an objective. But it is more strategic to formulate specific communication objectives: e.g. expand the relation network with at least 50 people. It means collecting business cards and doing a mailing or other forms of follow-up afterwards. It helps when the stand has one clear message and not too much information. It also helps when you have some trinkets, sweets or fruits that make passers-by slow down to pick it up and provide a reason to start a conversation, surf the product (songs) on the computer or take interest in the hand outs. Have an action proposal, e.g. "come to the concert tonight". These were some of my lessons learned when representing my wife at the Dutch Jazz and World Meeting Information Market ten days ago - along with another hundred suplliers of jazz and world music in Amsterdam, where she did one of the showcases in the evening. I collected 50 cards of international producers and organizers of a festival. And today I received the first response on the follow-up mailing I did last week.