Perspectives

Public information and education campaign

The principal at Coherent Marketing launched and branded the Biofuels Center of North Carolina and as part of the organization's communications goals obtained and led a federally funded American Recovery & Reinvestment Act public education campaign about cellulosic biofuels in North Carolina.  He drafted the campaign plan and led a small team of contractors to implement the plan between the end of October 2010 and April 2011 and despite a highly compressed timeline, successfully managed an integrated media campaign that generated millions of positive interactions about advanced biofuels. 

The campaign began with a green-screen booth at the NC State Fair that solicited unpaid endorsements about biofuels from the public.  Using talking points, more than 550 videos were generated over the 10 days of the show at an average of one every 10 minutes from the approximately 100,000 people who visited the booth.   Within 24 hours of being shot, the greenscreen videos were edited and uploaded with appropriate metadata to a new dedicated biofuels Youtube Channel and embedded on searchable pages on the NC Biofuels campaign website. 

People who had done these biofuels video endorsements were told where to find their videos and very soon, thousands of views and sharing of these videos began occurring. 

 

Along with the video component, Facebook and Twitter pages were created and video and other content shared strategically on those sites.  Social shares of the videos contributed to growth on these social media platforms.  From the Youtube videos, a series of more than 10 public service announcements were created and some TV ad time purchased during March Madness, when basketball viewing on television sees among the highest audience figures in North Carolina.

Apart from the public reach of the campaign, it also provided the Center with the capacity to continue digital multimedia conversations with the public and other stakeholders afterwards and contributed to a significantly raised search engine results profile for biofuels, North Carolina, and the activities of the Center.

Some of the metrics for the grass roots education campaign include:

  • The campaign reached more that 80% of NC’s motorists with a positive message about biofuels
  • More than 4,95 million people old enough to drive in North Carolina were reached in the first five months of the campaign
  • The Facebook page grew to more than 2,400 followers within three months and the following was retained
  • The video endorsements were viewed more than 10,000 times on the website
  • Videos were embedded more than 4,600 times on other websites
  • The NC Biofuels website had more than 56,000 page views
  • Traffic to the NC Biofuels site came from the entire state
  • Approximately 100,000 people were reached at the State Fair

Considering that the state was not yet producing advanced biofuels and this messaging was competing against a multi-million dollar negative misinformation campaign by the petroleum industry, the impact of the campaign was an extraordinary.

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