Reading Time: 6 minutes

Topic: The effects of our household waste and emissions on the environment and how they can be altered, ultimately lowering the ecological footprint of our community. 

Mission statement & goals: Throughout this campaign we’d like to be able to bring awareness to what waste and emissions from our own homes can do to our planet. While additionally offering cleaner and as we like to call it, greener options to the Boulder community, for everything from cleaning products to the sources that heat their homes. We plan to do this through teaming up with sustainable personal brands and businesses to promote a cleaner lifestyle, sparking changes in habit. 

Hashtag(s): The hashtags formally associated with our campaign are just the three below. I want to limit this to a small number so all of our content and related user engagement content is relatively organized on the internet. This creates an easier message to follow looking back and allows for the potential for one of these three tags to become trending or viral. 

#MakeOurHomeGreen

  • Overarching hashtag and a name for the campaign.

#TheGreenOption & #BuyGreen

  • We will use these as well but also encourage the audience to use as well. Audience members can use these when making a ‘green’ purchase or switching to a sustainable option in their day-to-day lives.

Values: We value intelligence and creativity as well as sustainability and respect. 

Media outlets used: Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest are the social media platforms we plan to campaign using. We chose these resources because they have a young audience.

Partners: Our partners include a combination of eco-friendly businesses and individuals with personal brands in the field. 

  • ThriveMarket, an amazon alternative
  • Refill Revolution, a local sustainable grocery store that carries bulk and refill goods.
  • Taylor Pfromer, a Colorado based social media influencer and climate activist (@taylor.pforwords)

Target audience: local Boulder community with a focus on the college/young adult population in the area. (CU Boulder students heavily).

  • Why them?
      • They are local
      • They are influential on this topic → Because, they’re just starting to live on their own and they’re developing individual habits from their guardians. Including household duties like; Grocery shopping, purchasing household and personal care items, household waste disposal, and overall managing a home and themselves. 
      • Big users of social media according to a survey conducted through Marketingprofs.com that 77% of Generation Zers and 79% of Millennials reported using social media multiple times per day.
  • How will I successfully target them? Language?
      • Appeal to their values through language. This is a more left leaning audience, use language to target this for example trying to bring about empathy (rather than like loyalty if I were talking to right leaning people)
  • Refer to pop culture. Only if something relevant comes up.
      • References to leading sellers in home goods and services. As they could be considered ‘popular culture’ in the household goods/home management industry. (I.e. Amazon, Kroger, Target, Walmart).
      • Repost or make reference to celebrities who represent our sustainable goals and values. These familiar names/faces popping up related to our message can spark engagement. (I.e. Miranda Kerr or Drew Barrymore and their beauty companies Kora Organics and Flower Beauty or Woody Harrelson and his 80% wheat paper paper company Step Forward Paper).
    • Use new words (or neologisms). Being careful to not try too hard, this could have a negative impact on our relationship with the target audience.
    • Be concise. In this day and age millennials and generation Z have shifted towards shorter and more concise language we should reflect this in our own.
      • Not only to be able to briefly capture their attention in our fast paced world but to fit the quick nature of social media.
    • Use images. The well known saying that a picture is worth a thousand words sums this point up well, a well used image can say what words never could.
      • Especially in the field of environmental activism, an image of the Pacific Garbage Patch or a side by side of land after years of deforestation in Brazil can pull at our audiences heart-strings better than a description of it.
      • Take note and be wary of instilling a sense of ‘ecophobia’ in our audience. Playing too much into pathos (emotion) and not enough into logos (logic) and ethos (reason) will result in an emotional audience without direction.

Timeline: Complete plan for campaign and design posters, notecards, Pinterest boards and social media posts. Make sure we’re ready to go!

Week 1:

  1. Create Social media accounts on Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and Instagram.
    1. Handles on all accounts are “@Makeourhomegreen”. Information like our goals, partners, where we’re located and our three associated hashtags included in social media bios. Then, add links to connect them all so we’re easy to navigate as a whole. 
  2. First social media post on Instagram and Twitter to start the week. The purpose is to catch the attention of our audience with this post. So we’re using a heartfelt video from the activist and YouTube creator Prince Ea in our post. 
    1. Instagram = Post a minute long clip from this video as well as a caption further explaining what he did. That in the way we are consuming natural resources and burning fossil fuels now our planet won’t survive. But we’ll end on the positive note that this can be slowed and even stopped, adding that they could do their part pretty easily too!
    2. Twitter = Link to full video and same caption.
  3. Second social media posts are again on Instagram and twitter. Topic of this post is mission statement related now that we hopefully have some people’s attention. 
    1. Basically an introduction on these platforms, which includes our ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘where’ information. As well as the mission statement.
    2. Instagram & Twitter= Post is an outdoor picture of me, the creator of the campaign combined with some sort of social media sized infographic. The caption/description includes some background information on me and about the campaign now that we have their attention with the initial video.
      1. This provides viewers with a personal connection to the campaign, and can help us to appeal to the young crowd we want.

Week 2: 

  1. This second week of posts will be made up of a lot of smaller posts for example this Instagram post:

A.

  1. This week is full of small but visually engaging posts to help us gain a following. Specifically the smartphone-like notification in this post should catch my audience’s attention.
  1. On Twitter we will post the same small engaging posts as Instagram but we will repost news and interesting posts from at least one source a day. As well as in engaging in the comment sections of accounts with similar values to ours. This creates the possibility of bringing their audiences to our page as well. 
  2. To end the second week of this campaign we plan to team up with the CU Independent (a local news platform like the Boulder Daily Camera would also work) to mention us to their readers to start the next week.
  3. Social media influencer post about our work

Week 3:

  1. This week we’re creating the Snapchat account, the snapchat account’s main goal is for audience engagement.
    1. Specifically a space for Q & A and some live DIY’s from me for repurposing plastic and other single use or old products. → This week would be a DIY glassware video (i.e. old jars).
  2. This week’s Instagram and Twitter posts will link to the helpful Pinterest boards. And will also display some news of the dangers of plastic build up in our ecosystems. 
    1. Twitter = Repost this article and associated video https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-pollution-huge-problem-not-too-late-to-fix-it 
    2. Instagram = Include snippets of both (ask social media influencer(s) to as well)
  3. This week our partnered social media influencers and businesses will use our hashtags, posted on their own social media and in stores.

Week 4:

  1. For this fourth week we’re posting larger graphics which we have an example of here, 
    1.  
    2. These can be printed out and used in schools or other community building to pass on some helpful sustainable alternatives in a simple way.
  2. This week the same small posts and activeness on Instagram and Twitter will make up most of the posts.
  3. For another two-three months after this we’ll regularly stay active curating instagram posts, reposting relevant news on Twitter, and hosting Q & A time as well as DIY videos onto Snapchat. In addition to this we plan to continue shouting out our partners and they’ll be promoting our hashtags as well.

Why #MakeOurHomeGreen can affect change: This social media campaign has the potential to change the consuming habits of a whole community of young people who recently joined the ‘adult world’. This makes them particularly susceptible to influence in the area of home goods. By educating this audience on the effects of their current habits we hope to inspire a change in heart and attitude towards our shared planet. After doing so we’re giving them resources and advice to change these habits. In this plan I believe I’ve successfully planned out a campaign that will do this through a balance of ethos, pathos, and logos as well as persuasive techniques and a well thought out timeline.