Is it better to ask citizens to stop bad behaviors or start positive ones?
Posted: January 18, 2012 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: activism, campaigning, environmentalism, slip slop slap, start campaigning, stop campaigning, sunsmart, Winter B-icicle Challenge, world carfree day 1 Comment »Yesterday I talked about ‘positive vs. negative messaging‘ in activism, but today I want to talk about something I’m not exactly sure the terms of. But for now I’ll just name it ‘start campaigning’ and ‘stop campaigning’.
‘Stop campaigning’ is all about asking people to stop or reduce how much they do something. ‘Start campaigning’, as you can guess, is all about asking people to start doing something. I’ll use a few examples to illustrate:
Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer incidence in the world, and accordingly also an ongoing skin cancer awareness campaign for over thirty years now. Back when I was a kid in the 80s SunSmart Australia had a super-catchy decade long campaign with the line “Slip! Slop! Slap!”. Even now I can remember what those three words meant – slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen, slap on a hat. It’s a great example of ‘start campaigning’. Thanks to this successful campaign Aussies around the country started wearing sunscreen, hats and other protective gear.
According to the SunSmart site, “as the public became more aware of the Slip! Slop! Slap! message, SunSmart began to focus on telling people how they can reduce their skin cancer risk and how to identify changes to their own skin that may be a sign of skin cancers.”
And one of their most recent television ads is a good example of ‘stop campaigning’, with the message being ‘stop tanning because it’s unsafe’.
The environmental movement is a big fan of ‘stop campaigning’. The entire simple living movement is all about reducing one’s possessions, ecological footprint, energy usage etc. While it’s a message that works well with people who feel overwhelmed by modern day materialism and conspicuous consumption, there’s also the danger you’ll come off as a kill-joy.
Recently Emily and I launched ‘The Winter B-icicle Challenge‘, in which we encourage citizens around the world to bike to work or school every day throughout winter. We’ve employed ‘start campaigning’ and I guess the ‘stop campaigning’ equivalent would be World Carfree Day which asks drivers on September 22 to leave their vehicles at home.
While both the ‘Winter B-icicle Challenge’ and ‘World Carfree Day’ have similar goals: stop climate change by reducing the number of CO2 emitting cars on the road, the methods in which we achieve that goal is different. Our ‘start campaign’, I believe, is more fun, and much easier to create content or engagement with the challengers. But at the same time, it’s very specific (we exclude those who might walk or catch public transport) and the environmental messaging isn’t as clear as ‘World Carfree Day’.
In the end, as was the case with the SunSmart campaigns, you need both. You need people to reduce harmful activities (and know why they need to reduce) but they also need to be informed and encouraged to take up positive alternatives.
Positive vs negative messaging in campaigning
Posted: January 17, 2012 Filed under: BLOG | Tags: activism, campaigning, negative messaging, occupy wall street, positive messaging, poster Leave a comment »Here in activist land, we often talk about ‘positive vs negative messaging’.
Quit smoking ads and skin cancer ads almost always make use of ‘negative messaging’. Sad ads featuring puppies in the RSPCA or starving children in Africa are others examples. It appeals to people’s inborn fears – fear that they’ll die, fear of pain, fear of losing one loved ones, fear of poverty, fear that their life in undeservedly more comfortable than that of others. The hope here is that people become so sad, so guilt-ridden or so afraid that they’ll get up and do something.
It’s a powerful tool because it has the power to move people deeply, but it can be dangerous if overused. People can become ‘turned off’ and thus discouraged.
Environmentalists used negative messaging at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit. Their platform was “it’s now or never” and “this is our last change”. The sense of urgency was meant to instigate change. Of course, nothing miraculous happened at COP15. So with all their chips spent what were environmentalists to say at this year’s climate change talks in Durban? “Um, you know how we said Copenhagen was our last chance? Actually, THIS is our last chance. For reals this time.”
These days most campaigns try and use positive messaging. Positive messaging tries to inspire people to strive for a better and more beautiful world. One of the best examples must be the recent and incredibly successful GetUp! campaign ad. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should.
It’s simple, beautifully made and leaves you feeling all gooey inside about how awesome love is. No wonder it’s garnered over four million views in less than two months. The campaign for marriage equality usually relies on ‘negative messaging’ – the tone is normally one of indignant anger, or sadness, about the injustice of a homophobic law that bans same-sex marriage. So I think this ad is unusual in that is uses ‘positive messaging’.
In truth, both positive and negative messaging have their place. (Note, when I use the word ‘negative’ that doesn’t mean bad, it’s just a technical term.) And sometimes great campaigns make use of both. Take the Occupy Wall Street poster:
The rioters at the bottom is ‘negative’ – they represent anger against an injustice system. But the ballerina is ‘positive’ – she inspires us to prevail and create something wonderful.
