Last weekend was my 5th wedding anniversary. Now I know what you are all thinking: How the hell has my lovely wife put up with me for five years and what did she do in a past life to deserve this fate? In fact, that’s something we talk about almost every day.
Anyway, to celebrate, we left the little tyrant otherwise known as my adorable 2 year old daughter at my parents’ house for the weekend and took off for a lovely trip up to New Hampshire to relax and take in the sights. One of the highlights of the weekend—and more exercise than we’ve had in a long time—was a 3 mile hike straight up a mountain. It was a significantly more ambitious undertaking than we set out to do from Crawford Notch that day. But we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way and refused to swallow our collective pride to turn back. The culmination of this knee-destroying hike was arriving at the top, at a rustic cabin operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club. We’re definitely not members, but it seemed they were willing to let us take a rest—and willing to sell us some mediocre potato soup (which tasted really good at the time, since we set out on the hike with no water, food or any of the other equipment sported by all of the other hikers we saw along the way). What I really wanted to buy from them was one of the really yummy looking loaves of bread, just out of the oven, teasing me from their prominent perch on the counter. They refused. Some kind AMC party that night for all of the crunchy hiker types that we were most definitely not invited to. I offered the cook $20 for a loaf of the bread, and she did not take me up on it. But I digress. This entry is not an economics lesson for the AMC—which I am sure they need—but a marketing lesson.
We sat down and started eating our soup—and our eyes were immediately drawn to a large poster on the wall. The headline said:
“Migrating New Hampshire: Earlier Springs, Milder Winters”
The wife and I turned to each other and said: That’s awesome! Where do we get us some of that? It’s too fucking cold in New England, we want to move back to California where it’s warm. How can we pitch in and help make this happen?
The poster then went on to explain that New Hampshire was on a path to have a climate like North Carolina by the year 2100. That sounds great we thought, but perhaps we could help move it along so that we can enjoy this warmer weather in our lifetime! But then we read the fine print and realized the poster was trying to tell us this was a bad thing. Something about how we all needed to stop driving Hummers and start using those goofy looking squiggly light bulbs that don’t light up right away and are not as bright as real light bulbs. Well that didn’t sound like fun. Maybe if we bought a second Hummer we could speed up the migration of New Hampshire to a place that isn’t so fucking frigid in the winter?
OK. Let’s be clear. Grumpy MBA and Mrs. Grumpy (who is actually quite cheerful and not an MBA) obviously realized—eventually—that this poster was about the threat of global warming. And I’m not setting out to debate or solve the global warming issue in this post. At some level, I understand that global warming is bad, and that there are probably things I could be doing better to pitch in for a solution. However, none of the things identified seem like they are a lot of fun (although recycling is OK because it saves me money at the dump).
But the real issue here is a poorly-executed marketing campaign. These folks at the AMC need to understand how to write good headlines and content that not only convinces themselves to take action against global warming, but more importantly convinces selfish schmucks like Grumpy and Mrs. Grumpy to care. The folks from the AMC all work there for a common reason: they care about the environment, appreciate nature and want to make sure the beautiful earth is around for future generations. That is a great and seemingly noble cause. But given that, they do not need to spend time convincing themselves to stop driving Hummers and start using the goofy light bulbs. They DO need to convince people like me. They need to think about:
How can they get my attention so that I even listen to what they are saying?
What can they say to help me understand why global warming is a problem?
What can they say to convince me to CARE about this problem?
What’s in it for ME if I change my behavior and conserve?
The AMC has not answered these questions.
The wife and I thought of some other headlines that may have won us over:
Migrating New Hampshire:
No more skiing! Hot sticky nasty summers!
UV rays to give your babies skin cancer (even when they wear SPF 158)!
Coastal flooding to sink affluent New England coastal communities!
Although we did have mixed feeling about the last idea, since we do live in an affluent New England coastal community—but we are about a mile from the ocean, so if the ice caps did melt, maybe we would end up with more valuable waterfront property!
We’re not sure what the right campaign is. But we do know that the AMC needs to work a little harder. The next day, we drove up the Mt. Washington Auto Road. I’m guessing all of the SUVs driving up and down in low gear at 6,200 ft. is great for the environment. Not to mention the train that burns 1 ton of coal each trip, filling the clouds with black soot.
Moral: In marketing you need to know your audience. Just because you think something is cool enough for you to dedicate your life to it, remember that not everyone thinks that something is as cool as you. If you really want to make a difference, figure out how to convince this (bigger) group of indifferent people why they should take the actions to promote the goals your (smaller) group really cares about.
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