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Collection: Flashcards

Sightline Flashcards are quick reference tools for effective communications strategies. They’re messaging memos distilled from experts and savvy communicators—to help you do your job and save you time.

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Sightline Flashcards are quick reference tools for effective communications strategies. They’re messaging memos distilled from experts and savvy communicators—to help you do your job and save you time. The Flashcards focus on values-based communication: strategies for talking about important policies or issue solutions in terms of shared values. Browse the Flashcards to gain insight into particular sustainability issues or simply to hone your values-based communications strategies.

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Global Warming and Monster Wildfires

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Editor’s Note 8/3/2015: Welcome to another summer of record-breaking heat in the Northwest. From rain forests to wheat farms, thousands of acres have been burned. The Lake Chelan wildfire in Washington quadrupled in size; there have been 1,390 wildfires in BC this season; and more than 800 people are working to contain the Southern Oregon wildfires. Here’s a popular Flashcard from last summer with a few quick and easy ways to talk about how climate change is fueling these monster wildfires.

This week, the LA Times reported on the wildfire raging in Washington State, describing “tornadoes of fire” engulfing a small town. It’s a scary picture and a bleak reminder that global warming is amplifying certain kinds of destruction here, now, right in our backyard:

The Carlton Complex fire will probably go down as the biggest conflagration in Washington state history, torching about 240,000 acres and counting. Pateros, one of Washington’s littlest towns, was no match for its fury. An estimated 20% of the buildings in the city, population 600 or so, have been destroyed. There is no electricity, no drinking water.

Speaking about the fire, President Obama said, “A lot of it has to do with drought, a lot of it has to do with changing precipitation patterns and a lot of that has to do with climate change.”

Climate change is making for wildfires in the American West that are more severe and more difficult to fight. Some are calling the new climate-fueled wildfires “monster” or “mega” fires. It’s important to put wildfires into context the way Obama has. So, we’re reissuing our talking points on global warming and wildfires.

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5 Elements of Good Stories—5 Deadly Sins

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Story Wars? That’s right. Sometimes today’s fast-paced, 24-hour, digital media landscape can indeed seem like a battlefield. Every time we lob a new message into the fray, we hope it’ll win hearts and minds, but we aren’t surprised when it “bombs.”

Jonah Sachs, author of Winning the Story Wars: Why those who tell—and live—the best stories will rule the future, says that either our stories inspire participation and evangelism by audiences or they wither.

Sachs knows what he’s talking about. He’s the brain behind some of the most popular, viral, for-good-not-just-profit messages of our time, including Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, The Meatrix, Grocery Store Wars and many others. He’s a co-founder and CEO of Free Range Studios.

But you shouldn’t just tell any story, any which way.

There are common pitfalls to avoid and best practices to employ.

Climate Messaging, McCarthy-Style

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…US EPA chief Gina McCarthy, that is.

Yesterday I reported that a new poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC found strong support among Americans for new Environmental Protection Agency standards proposed for coal-fired power plants to cut carbon pollution—The Clean Power Plan. A promising part of the story is that Americans increasingly embrace the reasons Gina McCarty and others (including President Obama) give in support of those rules, and that they increasingly reject claims by opponents against them.

Now, McCarthy isn’t really the type to deliver a stem-winder—and that’s probably not really in the US EPA Administrator’s job-description anyway. But her announcement about the new policy was rousing nonetheless. She was clear about the threat of climate change, pointing to impacts that affect Americans personally, from our health to our pocketbooks. She framed EPA’s role in cutting pollution as part of our moral responsibility to our kids to act. But she didn’t dwell on the problem or give us a guilt-trip. She balanced the dire urgency of the problem with hope and optimism, making the economic case for climate and energy solutions—including myriad opportunities in clean energy and efficiency and the high cost of inaction. And she roundly dismissed the naysayers and foot-draggers for standing in the way of our progress.

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Messages Made to Stick

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A few years back, Chip and Dan Heath discovered the secrets to “stickiness.” They examined hundreds of naturally successful messages—from urban legends, wives-tales, and proverbs, to advertising slogans, conspiracy theories, and corporate mottoes—and identified a handful of characteristics that the most shared, talked about, and enduring stories shared. They distilled these into Six Principles of Stickiness in their bestselling book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

Here’s an example that may stick in your mind.

Back in the 1990s, movie theater popcorn was often drenched with artery-clogging saturated fat. But simply telling people that a medium-sized bag contained 37 grams of fat didn’t keep many from stuffing their faces with the stuff. The number alone just didn’t mean much, even when compared to the USDA’s recommended daily allowance (less than half that amount).

But when people heard in a Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) ad campaign that a medium-sized bag of “buttered” popcorn contained more saturated fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings—combined—they paid attention. In fact, the story took off. It was featured on all the major news networks and got coverage in major newspapers across the country. Even Leno and Letterman cracked jokes about popcorn on late night television. The message stuck. Movie theater popcorn sales plunged and, in short order, just about every major theater chain started making healthier popcorn.

So, what made the message so memorable? Here’s how the Heath brothers break it down—and tips for making your messages stickier too:

[flashcard]

6 Principles of Stickiness = SUCCES(S)

1) It’s Simple: It strips what’s complex down to the essentials.

2) it’s Unexpected: It’s surprising. It jolts us from our preconceptions.

3) it’s Concrete: A vivid picture jumps to mind. It’s an uncomplicated comparison.

4) it’s Credible: It’s factual without too many numbers. It taps into what we already know.

5) it’s Emotional: It makes us feel something—joy, disgust, fear, sadness, pride.

6) it’s a good Story: It’s the kind of message we could easily recount at a cocktail party.

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Your True Colors

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We’re often told that our messages should appeal to middle-of-the-road voter, that we should try to be palatable to the widest possible audience. But according to strategic communications researcher and consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio, when we run to the so-called “middle” we actually wind up holding back, distorting, or watering down the very values we hold … Read more

Talking Government? Say It Like Elizabeth Warren

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Because the term itself has been so systematically loaded with negative connotations, talking about government can seem like tricky territory to tread. So tricky, it means that many American communicators shy away from it—even those of us who believe most deeply in the role of government in protecting our health, safety, security, environment, and economy, and upholding and safeguarding our core values and principles—freedom, opportunity, and justice for all.

This Flashcard is one in an occasional series meant to help NW communicators talk more effectively about our government, examining, in particular, how communications experts and some of government’s most outspoken natural defenders define its role.

Elizabeth Warren, US Senator from Massachusetts, has gained recognition for consistently championing government policies, regulations, and taxes, as our tools for working together to build ladders of opportunity into the middle class and to protect ourselves from corporate special interests, especially Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail banks.

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Users’ Guide: Climate messaging

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There are lots of resources available on communicating about climate change—sometimes it seems like too many. Of course, that’s a good thing. There’s ample research and expertise to guide us and I see that it’s making for smarter, more compelling, and more effective messages about climate and energy. Still, sometimes, with all the tips and recommendations swirling around, a well-meaning climate communicator can feel a tad overwhelmed.

Happily, ecoAmerica and partners have boiled down the latest and greatest research to a manageable set of guidelines. They give us 13 messaging principles to live by, and, as I’m wont to do, I’ve distilled the list even more.

The top takeaways are nothing new, but good to keep in mind: Keep it personal and say why it matters and balance messages about the problem with hope and optimism about solutions that are ready to go, accessible, and meaningful.

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Breaking the Climate Fear Taboo

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Over the past decade, we’ve seen a huge proliferation of research, workshops, conferences, strategy sessions, and articles about climate change communications. Why? Because how we communicate about this issue will determine how effective we are at mobilizing people to take actions.

We know about the barriers ranging from how the issue itself is complex and abstract, to the ways in which political ideologies may inform how people perceive the problem from the fields of behavioral and social sciences devoted to climate change communications. To date, we have tended to focus more on changing behaviors than actually engaging people with how they feel, make sense of, and experience the threat of climate change and its profound implications.

After teaching climate change communications and psychology for several years and working with many organizations and initiatives, I have noticed that how we think about climate change engagement tends to fall into four main categories, or what I call “quadrants.” They include a behavior change approach (let’s get people to do x and y), a values or social psychology orientation (focusing on values and attitudes people have towards these issues), a social innovation or solutions approach (let’s design the solutions), and finally a focus on the emotional and experiential dimensions, or what I would also call “affective” (the feelings associated with specific practices, actions or issues).

The “affective” quadrant is often ignored or comes last.

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Loud and Clear on Climate: Latino voters, leaders…moms

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Public opinion polling consistently shows that for overwhelming numbers of Latino voters in the US, protecting the environment is not simply a priority; it’s a personal matter, a matter of protecting culture, family, and community, and safeguarding loved ones’ health. And, for majorities of Latino voters, cutting climate pollution is seen as a question of fulfilling a moral duty to take care of the earth, to honor a long heritage, and to protect future generations.

Latino voters consistently outpace the American population as a whole when it comes to concern and desire for climate solutions.

New polling conducted in November and December 2013 for the Natural Resources Defense Council by Latino Decisions not only bears this out but finds even more intense support for policies to counter global warming. The findings send a clear message. As Adrianna Quintero, senior attorney for NRDC and Founder of Voces Verdes, puts it, “Those who ignore these findings do so at their peril. Latinos are speaking up loud and clear…”

The survey also investigates the factors that motivate climate attitudes among Latino voters, giving us strong signals about effective communications strategies.

And some of the key messaging takeaways from this research are powerfully demonstrated by the Latino leaders involved in this project and working on other national-level efforts to engage Hispanic communities in climate solutions, particularly Latina leaders who also happen to be moms:

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Climate Disruption With a Chance of Snow

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[caption id="attachment_34378" align="aligncenter" width="563"]Photo Credit: Salvan via Compfight cc Photo Credit: Salvan via Compfight cc[/caption]

Brrrrr….It’s freezing. So much for global warming, huh?

We heard this kind of thing a lot during the early January cold snap when everyone was talking about the Polar Vortex (a.k.a. the jet stream)—along with claims far more outlandish and sensationalized. And we’re hearing it again this week as temps dropped and snow blanketed the East Coast.

So how do we tactfully clear up the misunderstandings and advance a productive conversation about climate change?

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