Maximising your audience through trusted networks
It’s the age-old question. When you have an important message to get out, what’s the best way to reach as many people as possible?
Faced with the need to educate the broader community about the approaching bans on various single-use plastics items, the EPA’s Sustainability Partnerships Program found itself tackling this thorny problem. Using the EPA’s existing communications platforms was a good start, but to drive behaviour change, information about the bans needed to reach as many people as possible.
Thankfully, a simple solution was available. Given the program works closely with a range of community groups and organisations, collectively representing diverse sections of society, why not use their networks as well? Partnering with these organisations, who are trusted by their communities, was a highly effective way to help get the message out and drive behaviour change.
“We wanted to build what we called ‘trust advocates’ who could encourage their communities to take simple steps, but also communicate why the changes were being implemented in the first place,” said Mitchell Jones, project officer for the program. “The EPA served as an expert and provided advice to organisations, so they were able to speak to their own respective networks with confidence.”
As an example, Meals on Wheels gave presentations about the bans to over 200 staff and volunteers across the state using messaging and factsheets provided by the EPA. These people were then able to pass the information on to their clients, numbering in the thousands. Meals on Wheels also provided staff and volunteers with simple postcards that explained what was being banned and why. The postcards alone ended up reaching 36,000 people.
Representing a completely different demographic, Girl Guides implemented initiatives to reduce waste and improve recycling rates at their campsites. They held face-to-face information sessions for over 150 people, online sessions to campsite committee members and broader webinars. A sustainability hub developed for the Girl Guides’ website portal was accessed by over 6,000 people.
With a total of 17 partnerships with different organisations and groups, the EPA was able to use existing networks to get the message out there, while tailoring the medium to suit the demographics. It’s estimated the total audience reached by this hugely successful series of collaborations was just under 1,000,000 people.
A million people on board the journey to phase out single use plastics? Now that’s a good news story!