In one of Doug's sessions, I remember him talking about the benefits of having consistent branding for behaviour change tools relating to different behaviours. I think the example was stickers indicating participation in a variety of environmentally friendly behaviours on garbage or compost bins. Our municipality is working towards a more defined brand and I am curious if any other municipalities have developed consistent branding across their social marketing initiatives? If so what are the benefits? Were there any downsides? How was the transition handled when there are ongoing programs? Is there any research on the topic? Thanks.
Myles Curry
Canada
Developing a brand for municipal social marketing initiatives
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A number of years ago Maine's regulated MS4 communities, Maine DEP's 319 program, Maine's Pesticide Control Board, Cooperative Extension Water unit and a few others started a collaboration known as Think Blue Maine. We were attempting to do just what Doug encourages, come up with a common brand and have it 'everywhere'. We realized we were all encouraging the same behaviors but none of us had the staff or budget to go big or do a thorough job. Our hope was by working together and using the same images on both materials produced together as well as our own materials the effort would appear bigger than it was and increase the odds that someone would hear or see a message multiple times. We used focus groups and phone surveys to track some of our impact. Check out both www.thinkbluemaine.org and https://cfpub.epa.gov/npstbx/. The EPA site has some of our survey results and materials.
In my opinion our success (and we do have it documented) was based on a number of factors (1) we started with the target audience and used focus groups and surveys to understand them and develop messages and materials based on them not on us, (2) the collaboration allowed for leveraging different talents, funding, and coverage/distribution, and (3) people saw and heard similar messages and images from a variety of sources in many different places.
Have fun and good luck with your effort.
Kathy
Kathy Hoppe
Maine Department of Environmental Protection
United States