STAMFORD, CONN: Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit organization, aims to roll out a national prevention education campaign called Littering is Wrong Too, following a three-month pilot in Cincinnati that finished October 15.
Developed by Hill & Knowlton, the pilot campaign connected littering with other socially unacceptable behaviors such as “networking at a funeral” or “breaking up on Valentine's Day.” Through multimedia ads that encouraged consumers to visit a dedicated website www.LitteringisWrongToo.org, consumers could share their own “wrongs” through text, photo and, video for a chance to win weekly prizes.
Rob Wallace, VP of communications at Keep America Beautiful, said the campaign performed well. “Littering is one of the most basic concerns for the environment but probably one of the most forgotten about,” said Wallace. “This campaign was successful in sparking a dialogue about littering that wasn't confrontational.”
According to a post-campaign survey done by Opinion Research on behalf of the organization, one in three respondents of the target market (18-24 adults) recognized the campaign slogan. Of those people, four in 10 said it caused them to be more aware of others' littering habits as well as their own.
As well, the percentage of young adults who considered reducing litter to be extremely important jumped to 32% from 19% pre-campaign.
Keep American Beautiful will introduce the campaign to its local affiliates at its national conference December 8 in Orlando, said Wallace. “We'll be showing it to about 600 communities around the country and providing a turnkey system for them to pick it up and run with it locally. We're looking forward to getting their feedback on it.”
Heather McNamara, SVP for Hill & Knowlton, told PRWeek some tweaks may be made to the campaign. For instance, she said the pledge portion of the website (in which visitors promised to, among other things, participate in a clean-up event and ask their Facebook friends to take the pledge) will likely be more intertwined into the rest of the site.
“You could do a lot of different things on the website—post your own wrong, vote for a wrong, share a wrong or, separate from that, just pledge. But the pledge numbers, while fine, were not as impressive as we had hoped,” said McNamara. “When we revisited it, we realized the act of submitting a wrong is really like a pledge. So I think we'll remove the separate pledge part.”
Keep American Beautiful is also seeking sponsors to help fund national media support, added Wallace.
