In 2021, Gigantic Idea Studio began producing short videos for the Clean Water Program Alameda County, featuring the popular mascots Fred the Frog and Izzy Egret. A study by the University of Delaware found that, “while mascots may be great at inspiring action through their cheers and high fives, the biggest impacts of mascots may come through displays of disappointment with a negative outcome”. With this in mind, we focused on messaging that showed the impact of pollution on Fred and Izzy.
A key strategy was to distribute the videos through paid promotion on platforms that were popular with younger audiences. At the time, TikTok was becoming a popular platform with Gen Z, so in addition to producing the short videos in the traditional horizontal format, we created vertical versions to allow an optimized experience on TikTok. Gigantic Idea Studio created a TikTok channel for the campaign, and also posted the videos on Instagram Reels.
Fred & Izzy on TikTok
The results were impressive. The vertical version of the Dog Poop video had a CPM of $2.36, compared to $7.12 for the horizontal version on YouTube. Although views are counted differently depending on the platform, the TikTok version of the video also received more views than on YouTube, despite having double the budget.
Gigantic Idea Studio also found success with organic content on Instagram Reels. Its first reel received 3,059 views, compared to the average of 26 views for its previous horizontal video posts. On Earth Day 2023, we posted another reel that received 1,318 views.
To date, Gigantic Idea Studio’s TikTok channel has received 1,720,973 views of 8 videos, through 14 campaigns, and 9,543 likes with 482 followers.
Takeaways
Gigantic Idea Studio’s success teaches a few important lessons about reaching younger audiences with short-form videos:
Use humor and creativity. Younger audiences are attracted to content that is entertaining and engaging.
Keep it short and sweet. Younger audiences have short attention spans, so aim for videos that are 30 seconds or less.
Use vertical video. Younger audiences are more likely to watch videos on their mobile devices, so make sure your videos are formatted vertically.
Promote your videos on the right platforms. TikTok is a great platform for reaching younger audiences, but other platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are also gaining popularity.
If you’re looking to reach younger audiences with your marketing content, consider using short-form videos. Just be sure to keep the above tips in mind to create videos that are engaging and effective.
This image – generated at Fotor.com – supposedly illustrates the use of AI for environmental behavior change campaigns…!
Everywhere we look these days, we see both excitement and warnings around the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution. How will the use of artificial intelligence impact our outreach? Will it make it easy to select the best way to communicate about environmental behavior change? Will it put environmental behavior change agencies out of business? ARGH.
While we don’t think we’ll be out of a job any time soon, we all know that change is the only certainty and that we will all need to adapt to this new ‘entity’. Let’s look at the current state of AI with a couple of examples from Google’s Bard chatbot:
I asked Bard:
“Write a Facebook post that will incorporate food waste messaging and Livermore’s Binny.”
Bard responded:
Sure, here is a Facebook post that incorporates food waste messaging and Livermore’s Binny:
Headline: Livermore’s Binny is Helping to Fight Food Waste
Body:
Did you know that one-third of all food produced for human consumption is wasted every year? That’s enough food to feed 2 billion people!
Food waste is a major environmental problem. It contributes to climate change, water pollution, and deforestation. It also wastes resources that could be used to feed people.
Livermore’s Binny is helping to fight food waste. They donate food to local food banks and soup kitchens. They also compost food scraps, which helps to reduce methane emissions.
If you’re looking for ways to reduce food waste, there are a few things you can do:
Plan your meals ahead of time so you don’t buy more food than you need.
Cook only what you need and save leftovers for later.
Donate food to local food banks or soup kitchens.
Compost food scraps.
By taking these steps, you can help to reduce food waste and make a difference in the world.
Call to action:
To learn more about how you can help fight food waste, visit Binny’s website or follow them on social media.
While the information is not totally incorrect, it seems as if Bard could not distinguish a Facebook post from a 185-word blog post. Despite having instant access to the entire Internet, Bard did not know that Binny is a mascot for Livermore Recycles, representing the Organics Cart; Binny himself does not “donate food to local food banks and soup kitchens.” While this post draft gives some ideas, it certainly requires human intervention.
I tried to push the AI to make decisions about which content to include in a short format, asking:
“Please write a tweet with the most important action an individual can take to combat the climate crisis.”
Bard’s response was very big-picture – for whatever reason, it did not focus on recycling or reducing individual carbon footprint, but on political action:
The most important action an individual can take to combat the climate crisis is to vote for climate-friendly candidates. Vote in every election, from local to national, and let your elected officials know that climate action is a top priority for you. #ClimateAction
So far, these responses are reasonable but not earth-shattering. Can AI provide the spark that really grabs attention? I tried to elicit some more creativity from Bard, asking:
“Please write a limerick about sorting waste at home.”
Bard responded with:
There was a young lady named Sue Who sorted her waste into two. She said, “I’m a bit green, But I’m doing my scene By recycling and composting too!”
Well, Bard, I think “doing my scene” is a bit weak, but this has a spark of life in it.
Finally, selfishly, I asked Bard, “When will AI replace the need for environmental outreach professionals?”
Part of Bard’s reply was appealing:
Here are some ways that AI can be used to support environmental outreach professionals:
Create engaging and informative content:AI can be used to generate content that is tailored to the needs of different audiences. For example, AI can be used to create infographics, videos, and articles that are both informative and engaging.
Track the effectiveness of outreach efforts:AI can be used to track the effectiveness of outreach efforts by measuring things like website traffic, social media engagement, and donations. This data can be used to improve future outreach efforts.
Connect with people who might not otherwise be reached:AI can be used to connect with people who might not otherwise be reached by environmental outreach efforts. For example, AI can be used to create chatbots that can answer questions about environmental issues or to create personalized email campaigns.
Some interesting promises here that we will explore further. But, we also like Bard’s conclusion:
Overall, AI is a powerful tool that can be used to support environmental outreach professionals. However, it is important to remember that AI cannot replace the human touch. Environmental outreach professionals are still essential for building relationships with people and communities, and for creating lasting change.
Amen!
P.S. Bard does not yet create images, but I asked Fotor.com to “Create an image for a blog post about the use of AI for environmental behavior change campaigns.” The result (see above) is, well, interesting!
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a magic brochure template? Something that we could just pour your content into and, voila! outreach campaign launched. Just stick it in the mail and all will be well. We wish effective environmental behavior change worked like that, but, unfortunately, one “size” of outreach plan, not matter how magical, does not work for all. Each situation is different and requires a custom approach that takes into account the problem, the environment (cultural, social, political, and yes, natural) and the desired and feasible solution.
The Gigantic team’s presentation at the 2018 California Resource Recovery Association Conference gave examples of outreach campaigns that provided tailored approaches to the challenge at hand. Outreach aimed at “everyone” will effectively reach no one. If you want to maximize impact, do your research and start with the best “low hanging fruit” — this will provide immediate results and data for future phases.
Choosing the Right Style for THAT Guy
Kas described our work with a concerned citizens’ coalition in Marin County with a mission of reducing the use of environmental toxins – pesticides – by county residents. The group’s call to action was to encourage the uptake of Integrated Pest Management practices (IPM) to replace toxic chemicals. IPM requires knowledge, planning, special tools, and yes, awareness to become a workable solution. Our survey indicated that the people most likely to use chemical pesticides were males who valued speed and effectiveness over safety. See the presentation below to see how we targeted THAT guy to raise awareness of this smart, if challenging, alternative.
Butting in on Cigarette Butt Litter
Meghan presented two litter-reduction case studies that highlighted the challenge when the desired environmental solution – providing a safe and easy way to dispose properly of cigarette butts – clashes with the public health solution – discouraging smoking by not providing ashtrays at transit shelters. No easy answers there!
Finding A Well-Cut Solution
Nancy presented on Gigantic’s ongoing work with the City of San Rafael to understand and address the very specific needs of a district of the city where illegal dumping had become a big and expensive problem. What at first seemed like a simple brochure need turned into a research project to understand the real barriers that this low-income, high-density community experienced when faced with what to do with a bulky item that was no longer needed.
Here is the CRRA presentation covering the above topics. Please let us know if you have questions or would like to talk about how we can custom-tailor an outreach campaign for you.
Can we re-frame enviro issues to make them palatable?
A constant challenge in environmental outreach is how to portray an issue in a way that reaches people with varied worldviews. Neuroscientist George Lakoff and the concept of framing has been much in the political news lately, as opposing sides try to create impressions (also known as bias) in their listeners’ minds. Lakoff notes that all communication has frames:
“The elements of the Communication Frame include: A message, an audience, a messenger, a medium, images, a context, and especially, higher-level moral and conceptual frames.”
We know that facts alone don’t change behavior; to succeed, a message needs that emotional element that reaches the deeper parts of our brain. How can environmental outreach frame important issues in a way that reaches, convinces, and persists to make long-term positive change in behavior?
Lakoff gives one example in his blog, suggesting that instead of talking about environmental regulations, we reframe laws as environmental protections.
Framing a concept like food waste should be simple – no one likes “waste,” right?
The message of buying only what you need, using leftovers, and composting what is left is quite straightforward, but we have a long way to go to tackle the huge amount of food that is wasted. Two recent examples show how framing the issue, while acknowledging the facts, can show success.
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Activist Selina Juul has worked for years on a multi-touch approach to reducing food waste in her adopted country of Denmark. She recognized that change had to come from all sides: business, government and, most of all, consumers. In this video, she reframes food waste as disrespectful to nature, farmers and to the individual’s own time and money.
Ugly? No, Beautiful! A more local success story focuses on our friend and colleague Jordan Figueiredo. Jordan’s Ugly Fruit and Veg campaign aims to reframe frequently wasted, less than perfect produce with humor and heart, in order to make what had been rejected, acceptable and even coveted.
Jordan couches his multi-touch campaign work as Funactivism, which counters the view some hold of activists as overly serious or shrill. Jordan successfully uses many of the tools of activism and behavior change: touting simple individual steps, assurance that individual actions make a difference, use of pledges and norming, combined with a top-down approach to companies. He has used charming photos spread via social media to challenge people to change their attitudes about what is “ugly,” reframing ugly fruit and vegetables, and by extension, reframing our view of what is beautiful.
Choosing the most effective way to frame an issue takes research, patience and testing. Most of all, it takes creativity and always remembering that change comes from within, and people act because of what they feel even more than because of what they think.
Are you planning an environmental outreach campaign that includes social media? I hope so! As you probably know, social media is a great way to spread the word about your organization’s activities and to encourage public participation. But “social media” is not a single, uniform bucket. Just as you would plan a different print ad for a publication that reaches high school students than for one that focuses on businesses, so your posts in social media should be guided by who you are trying to reach and why.
How to get started with a channel-specific strategy?
To start, try creating a mission statement for each channel. The mission statements should be based on your organizational goals and the audience you are most likely to reach with each channel. For example, are you trying to reach young people? Snapchat (60% of Snapchat users are under 25) is a good channel to consider. If you’re trying to reach Baby Boomers or businesses, not so much.
Here are some sample mission statements by channel:
We will use Twitter to raise our profile with influencers in the U.S. and beyond.
We will use Facebook to keep our fans updated and informed about our organization’s activities and to provide calls to action to the public.
We will use Instagram to promote the joy of a waste-free lifestyle with the local community.
Our blog provides detail and a personal voice on our organization’s issues and activities for those who already know about us.
Next, tailor your content by channel. Some organizations, looking to save time, make all of their Facebook posts automatically post to Twitter. This may undermine your efforts when your audience and mission are different for each channel.
This doesn’t mean you should not cross-post the same topic in different channels. But it is a good idea to structure the content for your target audience: customize the language and images to achieve your mission.
Measure, Measure, Measure
How do you know if your channel strategy is working? Measure the results and compare your progress to your goals. For instance, your Twitter feed may be focused on reaching influencers. You can then evaluate your Twitter efforts by the number of key influencers who follow or retweet you. (In other words, it may be that the quality of your followers is more important than the number of them.) If your goal is to raise awareness of an issue, then the metric of reach/impressions is key. If your goal is to have users respond to a call to action, you will want to look at both click-through rate and number of clicks.
There is so much more to say about social media strategy, but starting with a channel mission statement is a useful guide when you are creating and customizing your communications. Happy posting!
We’re excited to introduce Nicole Greenspan, our new Associate here at Gigantic Idea Studio! An East Bay native, Nicole comes to us most recently from Stanford University, where she worked for several years in the University’s award-winning sustainability program after completing her undergraduate and graduate degrees in the interdisciplinary Earth Systems Program with a focus on Sustainability Communication and Education. At Stanford, she designed and managed a wide range of projects and programs, spanning waste, energy, water and agriculture. One key project, the now annual Give & Go Move Out Donation Program, diverts over 100,000 pounds of reusable materials from landfill each June. Another, the Sustainable Stanford Internship Program (formerly HSCI), has provided dozens of students the opportunity to work on projects applying their educational background directly to improving campus sustainability. From working with the government in Brazil on climate change education, to promoting best practices in campus sustainability with U.S. Green Building Council, Nicole has a diverse range of experience and skills to inform her work with Gigantic. She recently received her Four Seasons Permaculture Design Certificate from the Regenerative Design Institute.
For the last year and a half, Nicole’s curiosity took her around the world, volunteering and exploring in Costa Rica, Panama, Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia and Australia. This experience helped her learn to communicate, empathize and build relationships with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures. From experiencing the April 2015 earthquake and aftermath in Nepal, to hearing the first hand stories of survivors of the Khmer Rouge, she truly appreciates the importance of community resilience and collaboration in order to solve the wicked problems facing our world today. She is particularly passionate about working with communities to co-create a more just and sustainable future, using tools such as design thinking, community-based social marketing, anti-oppression facilitation and regenerative design. She’s excited to collaborate with such an incredible team and clients, offering her perspective and skillset to an organization that makes such a positive impact on the world. When she’s not at Gigantic, you can find her dancing, backpacking or digging in her backyard garden in Oakland.
The (bruised) bananaphone connects the Gigantic staff at CRRA
It’s easy to fall into a rut with environmental outreach tools (websites, brochures, bill inserts, how-to-recycle guides, etc.) But even the smallest touch-up can really help make a piece become more effective. In preparation for the recent California Resource Recovery Association (CRRA) annual conference, the Gigantic team put out a call to our email list, asking for samples of outreach materials that were ready for a makeover. We selected two submissions – the City of Fremont’s multi-family recycling guide and the Conservation Corps North Bay’s services flyer, and got to work.
See the results in the presentation below. In doing these makeovers, a few key takeaways emerged that we’d like to share:
1) Tailor by Audience – Often agencies and organizations don’t have the resources to make separate pieces for each audience (for example, multi-family building residents and property managers), but you can use visual cues and wording to clarify to whom you are speaking within a piece.
2) Give a Clear Call to Action – Laundry lists of do’s and don’t’s can make people’s eyes glaze over. Single, clear action steps are more likely to get results.
3) Use Clear Instructions – There are some best practices for information such as waste sorting guides: use color coding, group images by type, and don’t overlap images – the brain takes in the shape of an uncluttered image and retains it better.
4) Tell Your Story – Stories stick. Make your messages come alive with vivid words and images, and beware of jargon and “internal speak.” Investing in custom photography with “real” community members pays off, as people see themselves in your outreach and are more likely to respond.
5) Be Consistent and Multi-Touch – No single brochure, no matter how well designed, can do all the work. Your message will go farther when all communication pieces work together visually and verbally, reinforcing your message across channels.
If your organization needs an outreach makeover, feel free to contact us and let’s see what we can do together!
It is with great pleasure and pride that I announce my new position as Principal at Gigantic Idea Studio! I am now co-leading the company with founder Lisa Duba. I feel I have truly landed in my professional home, as we collaborate with our clients to create positive environmental change.
It’s been a wonderful journey. As many of you know, I’ve been a regular contributor to Gigantic projects since 2009. What you might not know is that in 2009, I found myself at a point of personal reinvention: I was finishing my Green MBA degree; ending 14 years with a previous employer(the recession “eliminated” my position) and mourning the passing of my mom from cancer. All occurred within weeks of one another. After all that I realized I did not want to work full-time for anyone again …unless I was an owner.
Action! Kas at a photo shoot for StopWaste
I’ve been preparing to be an entrepreneur for a long time. I grew up with a family business—John Neteler Auto Sales and Service—and I went to grad school to learn triple bottom line business management. So when I found myself at a crossroads, I was prepared to strike out on my own as a freelancer. Within six months of launching my independent business I was working with an extensive list of clients across several industries: sustainability, tech, healthcare, education and more.
Gigantic Idea Studio was one of my first, and proved to be one of my best, clients. Over the years, Gigantic allowed me to fully exercise so many of skills: creative brainstorming, strategizing, designing, photographing, facilitating, and engaging communities.
Fast forward to fall 2015, when Lisa Duba and I began a conversation about co-ownership of Gigantic. We took our time and thoroughly discussed the opportunities and challenges of partnership and how best to co-create a successful path forward for Gigantic. Now it is official! I look forward to many years of collaboration with Gigantic’s fabulous team and our amazing clients to make the world a better place. Please contact me if you would have questions.
Food waste prevention gained mainstream traction this past year, and deservedly so. Different from the effort to recycle food scraps, eliminating food waste before it happens is an issue that that most people—even those across stark ideological divides—can agree makes sense to tackle.
Approximately 25% to 40% of food grown and processed in the U.S. is wasted. That statistic alone is staggering, but considering that over 20% of all children in the county live in food-insecure households, it becomes even more astounding that this waste exists.
Fortunately, thanks to inspired individuals, nonprofits and private companies, there is new effort to combat the problem.
In the fall of 2014, our colleague Jordan Figueiredo launched the Bay Area’s first Food Waste Forum and helped sponsor a local Feeding the 5000 event in Oakland. It was at the Forum that many of us saw “Just Eat It,” a documentary made by a Canadian couple, which vividly shows just how much food is wasted by farms, supermarkets, and restaurants.
The food waste issue went viral in 2015, with Jordan Figueiredo’s @UglyFruitAndVeg, a clever social media campaign using amusing, shareable images of funny-looking produce—perfectly good to eat, yet discarded by most farms and supermarkets as unsellable. @UglyFruitAndVeg even garnered coverage on Fab Life with Tyra Banks!
But more than just an awareness effort, private companies and nonprofits are working on hands-on, innovative solutions to the food waste problem. Our client StopWaste is working with private company LeanPath to help reduce avoidable, pre-consumer food waste from commercial and institutional kitchens in Alameda County as part of the Smart Kitchen Initiative. Lean Path’s technology helps track pre-consumer food waste as it occurs, giving management and kitchen staff the information they need to make better buying and planning decisions.
The EPA had already taken note of the issue and in 2012 launched the “Food Too Good To Waste Campaign,“ which provides a ready-to-go campaign toolkit, to reach out to residents on the local level about wasted food.
This movement has even inspired start-up businesses such as Imperfect Produce and Hungry Harvest that market unsellable fruit and vegetables by providing delivery of “ugly” produce boxes, similar to CSA subscriptions. Trendy chefs in New York are creating entire menus from excess food waste at pop-ups. All, in all, 2015 has been a “tipping point” for this important issue.
We applaud everyone involved in the food waste reduction effort, and look forward to continuing our support of this important work in years to come.
Last Thursday, October 8, we opened our Gigantic doors to host a diverse group of visitors interested in learning more about us and our work as part of the NewCo Festival. NewCo engages companies with an innovative mission to share their vision and ideas with festival attendees. This year, the event expanded from San Francisco to include Oakland for the first time, and we are so proud to have been selected to participate as a host company. Host businesses include small, specialized groups like us, along with big players like Twitter, Pandora, Uber, and everything in between. NewCo is an inspiring event, and a great way to share ideas across business disciplines, as our attendees were from well-known tech companies, a university, an online retailer and more.
Surprisingly, preparing this presentation became a bit of a trip down memory lane for me. I realized the history of Gigantic’s founding and early development is intertwined with the advent of recycling, the tippingpoint of green as mainstream, and the rise of social science research on how to change behaviors related to environment and sustainability—and this made a cool story. It was great to meet people interested in taking the latest ideas and techniques back to their workplaces to inspire change. Here is the presentation:
