For my persuasive campaign, I decided to look into recycling and all of
the positive and negative attributes that come along with it. In our society,
each American produces an average of 4.4 pounds of trash per day. One example
of public advocacy is from an organization called Keep America Beautiful. Their
goal is to make everyone envision a country where every community is a clean,
green and beautiful place to live. A specific campaign that is out right
currently is called "I Want to be Recycled". This campaign has
brought in $68 million dollars for Keep America Beautiful and currently ranks
among the Ad Council's top preforming campaigns. These ads show a variety of
objects from soda cans to water bottles and basically any item that can be
recycled. Then in the background, it shows what this item could be. For example
a park bench or a bicycle and even a hair brush. A cereal box and become a
board game. Tin cans can be turned into bicycles. And glass bottles can be
recycled into glass countertops for your kitchen counters.
This intrigues consumers and makes them curious about the entire
recycling process. It shows that any thing that someone considers
"trash" can be given a new life and turned into an object that people
will get a lot of use out of. By showing them what they could have, it
encourages them to care more about recycling. For me personally, I never really
cared that much about recycling until I saw how things that I though were trash
could be used in so many different places in the world. Opposing sides argue
that they don't have time to recycle and that their trash will never be turned
into something useful. Here, the public is directly targeted and showed what
exact products their old trash can be used for.
There are a lot of other forces that are impacting how this issue is being
debated. For example, Call Two Recycle is a great organization that collects
old cellphones and batteries to be used and recycled. They even take old
computers and printers. The Carton Council works to recycle old milk and other
cartons. These cartons can be used over again to cut down on the amount that
needs to be made. The Environmental Protection Agency works with each state individually
to work on making recycling more widely know across the country.
Overall, the strategy for this campaign is to show people
what could be. What their old trash could one day be turned into. There really
are no negative effects to recycling. So by just taking that extra time to put
a cardboard box into the recycling over the trash bins you could be making the
world of a difference. I think that this campaign does a great job of showing
people how simple it really is while still pulling at their heart strings and
making them feel bad for not starting to recycle sooner. It also targets the
people that already recycle to start to recycle a wider array of items.
About Us. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2015.
EPA. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2015.
For your term paper project, you are supposed to identify a specific campaign being waged by a specific organization. Here, you identify a broad idea: recycling, and then briefly discuss a number of efforts being made by various organizations that seem consistent with raising public awareness, or convincing the public to engage in individual efforts to recycle. Please choose one of these efforts to become the basis of your analysis.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.call2recycle.org/, for instance, would appear to be an effort to create a profitable enterprise through recycling of specific sorts of materials and waste. They would appear to have a presence in multiple states - likely states with diverse regulations. Do they advertise? Do they seek to engage the public? Do they engage in public outreach, as well as political lobbying efforts?
This group would be an appropriate choice for this project - as would the efforts of the Carton Council or the EPA. Remember that the goal of the paper is to analyze the strategies and tactics of a particular campaign - NOT the multitude of efforts being made toward the reaching of a broad goal.
Let me know if you need help.