"Oh, I had no idea” – Strategies and Outcomes to get the Public to Care, Even When They’d Rather Not |
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Byline - Michelle Jiles
The presentations at the spring meeting for DC iSMA shared some barriers any behavioral researcher is familiar with: change behavior priorities vs an uninterested, unaware, or actively disengaged public. This was especially true for the population in the first presentation from Sarah Evans of Fors Marsh Group. How often do travelers think about the produce they bring in to the United States from abroad? Turns out, not as much as the USDA would like, but more importantly those who brought in produce had no idea what they were doing could be prohibited or the impact. Sarah and the Fors Marsh Group researchers focused their phased approach on data and regulatory awareness (invasive species piggy-back on some fruits and have decimated over 76,000 football fields worth of acreage, and no you cannot bring in escarole from Mexico), then launching advertising through the USDA website http://www.dontpackapest.com/, pushing awareness of rules digitally BEFORE someone traveled, and using innovative campaigns targeting fruit stalls, billboards on travel routes, and luggage tags and t-shirts to get the message out.
And a big thank you to Fors Marsh Group for hosting the Spring Meeting! If you are interested in becoming an iSMA member or learning more about social change marketing, visit the website at http://www.i-socialmarketing.org/.
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