Efficiency First

Advertising executive Suzanne Shelton (CEO of the Shelton Group in Knoxville, Tenn.) has posted an interesting reaction to the recent Wall Street Journal article about the failure of Boulder residents to embrace energy retrofit measures on a large scale (see our reaction here). In a post on her agency’s blog, Shelton analyzes the consumer messaging Boulder used to promote their efficiency retrofit campaign, and shares her theory about why the city’s marketing efforts fell short:

1. It appears the city of Boulder assumed all residents were their target, that they’re all green-leaning and pleas of saving the planet would be a great motivator. The WSJ was good enough to run several interactive graphs with their story. A couple of things jumped out at me: yes, Boulder citizens are generally green-leaning, better educated, higher income folks. According to our segmentation, therefore, the majority of the population is True Believers. Interestingly, though, 32% of Boulderites voted for Bush and 28% voted for McCain. That means there’s a niche population of Cautious Conservatives there as well. Those guys respond to a control/ROI message. And, according to the WSJ’s information, adding insulation to a Boulder home is a $2,200 investment that gets paid back in 2.5 years. That’s a compelling offer to the Cautious Conservative set. So is a $1,500 investment in caulking and air sealing that gets paid back in 3.2 years. These specific measures could be direct marketed exclusively to the Cautious Conservative crowd with an underlying emotional promise of “feel smart/in control” and do quite well.

2. It appears the city made assumptions about the True Believer’s level of understanding about what causes global warming. We’ve tracked this for three years and seen zero change: 97% of the population does not know that the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions is electricity production. Thus, when you say, “reduce your home energy use and save the planet!” almost all of us have no idea what you actually mean. The City of Boulder’sClimateSmart web site makes this same assumption as well. Given that the majority of residents are True Believers a heartfelt story around what’s causing climate change would go a long way. The story then needs to be made personal — by tying back to the limits emissions may one day put on our grandkids and could put on Boulder residents today in the form of poor air quality. In other words, the direct link needs to be made — in an uplifting rather than depressing fashion — that every time you plug in your plasma TV you may be making the air you breathe worse for you today and definitely for your kids tomorrow. I didn’t see any “better health” messaging in Boulder’s communications, and that’s a powerful driver for the True Believer set.

“In short,” Shelton concludes, “the City of Boulder just needs to do a better job of segmenting its citizens and custom marketing the right emotional promise to the right segment.”

Read the full post here: www.sheltongroupinc.com/blog/?p=1035