Friday, November 04, 2011

Media Blues...

Excellent post over on the Shark Diver blog about poor messaging execution.  While people's thoughts and intentions are often in the right place - their tactics are off (and in some cases even have a negative impact on what they are trying to accomplish).

"Conservation messaging needs to be done without the "stupid pet tricks with wildlife...We can do better than we are with smarter messaging that actually translates into conservation gold."

And there have been several fails:

"This is on par with, if not as moronic as, recent media hits that were meant to convey important conservation messages such as:

1. Playing a guitar underwater while crooning to white sharks in a protected Bio Sphere Reserve. The message was, "white sharks are not dangerous." Since that video there have been 6 fatal white shark attacks and 11 non fatal predatory events on surfers and divers worldwide.

2. Holding up pizza box lids with lip stick on them to convey complex messaging about shark nets in South Africa. Since that media image over 2000+ sharks have been killed in shark nets all over the world."

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