Background

The National Park Service would like to mitigate unintentional wildlife feeding through their campsites and day use areas. Currently, there are multiple types of messaging that vary from park to park and an ideal solution would unify these attempts. NPS would like to try a new behavioral-motivator communication strategy to see if it has a more potent effect. 

Situation Analysis

Create a communication campaign strategy that will increase the amount of campers complying with food storage guidelines and reduce human and wildlife incidents at 7 National Parks. 

Core Problem/Opportunity

Past campaign strategy efforts focused on using behavioral motivators to promote change, such as fear, wildlife protection and legal implications. However, none of these efforts worked. Our strategy must consider the psychology of the key publics in order to change their thoughts and behaviors. 

Goals

Target Key Publics with information that will motivate behavioral change to practice food storage safety and reduce human/wildlife incidents at National Park Campgrounds with different regulations. 

The Big Idea

Guilt is an emotion over something we have done while shame is an emotion over who we are. Shame arises from humiliation felt when personal inadequacies are exposed. When something about ourselves is exposed and causes shame, a desire to change things about ourselves is triggered to preserve and improve our personal self-worth (Decker).

Researchers found that shame "was uniquely associated with the motivation to change the self above and beyond moral self-blame and harm to others." Meaning, shame is a better motivator than guilt or fear. (Rivero) 

Shame has an evolutionary purpose as a mechanism for making the right decision. In this way, shame functions like pain, warning us of personal behavior that could make people not like us (Ratner). 

However, too much shame can backfire. This is why we suggest placing humor at the forefront as a way to prevent negative effects. Benefits include:

• Attention-grabbing

Humor often stands out from other marketing and advertising attempts because it’s naturally colorful and original

• Shareability

 People love to spread laughter. Making campaigns humorous imbues it with more shareability

• Relatability

Funny brands are more.  relatable and are seen as more trustworthy and human

• Memory Recall

Humor is linked to higher recall, which means any message imbued with humor will be easier for target demographics to remember (Olenski).

Promoting heroism in children to serve as Park Ambassadors will also help increase awareness and dialogue between child and parent. 

Key Publics

1. Group Campers

2. Families with Children

3. Day-Visitors

Strategies

Raise awareness of food safety issues and use shame and humor to motivate change through multiple channels, such as:

• Social media posts

• Social media user generated content

• Email

• Printed materials (posters, pamphlets, activity sheets)

• Illustrations

• User-generated content

• Badge stickers

• Reusable bags 

Group Campers:

Suggestions include real-life photos of animal incidents and/or dramatized, humorous illustrated events with heavy digital editing to capture attention. Ideally, there will be at least one image for each animal that may be considered, such as bears, birds, etc. These images will include phrases that subtly promote shame, such as “Don’t be that guy/gal/dude/person”, “Don’t let this happen to you”, “What were you thinking”, etc. 

Families with Children:

Suggestions include activity sheets with food safety related puzzles and prompts, potentially including environmentally friendly crayons or pencils, to promote parent and child dialogue. Market a mascot, such as Bandit the Raccoon, to promote children as park advocates. Bandanas and badge stickers, for sale or first-come-first-serve, could help the children feel official and prideful. 

Day-Visitors:

Place photos and/or illustrated poster(s) and/or signs at obvious locations for day-visitors, such as bathroom stalls, welcome center, comfort station, etc. Offer pamphlet at the welcome centers or similar areas, if applicable. 

Tactics

• Printed pamphlet at check-in that features food storage and cooking safety and includes a simple graph that clearly shows all the parks and specific regulations.

• Park hosts offering yellow ‘bandit’ bandanas, activity sheets and ambassador badge stickers to children.

• Reminder email notification about proper food storage 24 hours before their camping reservation (if applicable)

• Screen printed reusable canvas bag with printed instructions on how to store food, including how to rig a bear-proof system

• A social media campaign for both Millennials and Gen Xers utilizing user-generated content in a “what were they thinking” style. Existing images can be found of unintentional human/animal interactions on various social media channels.

Social media posts will be unpaid and added to @nationalparkservice and individual park accounts. We will target millennials on instagram and Gen Xers on Facebook, both featuring “Don’t let this be you” user-generated content. #dontletthisbeyouNP

• Hang large posters at campgrounds with humorous images and illustrations that are heavily dramatized with a subtly shaming statement 

Implementation

• Find real-life images of animal incidents for social media posts and gain permission for usage

• Create illustrated scene(s) for posters 

• Create pamphlets

• Order customized canvas bags, crayons, bandannas and activity sheets

• Supply each park with posters to hang near campgrounds and trailheads, kid’s supplies, and canvas bags (either to be restocked or first-come-first-serve)

• Update default email response with images and hashtag

• Post images weekly on social media sites and promote sharing during camping season 

Evaluation Criteria

• Use social media analytics to determine post interactions, deciding which images had the largest result

• Send questionnaires to park hosts or managers and camping guests at the beginning and end of the camping season to determine individual park successes compared to number of incidents in the past year and guest awareness of food safety regulations

• Analyze number of social media posts with various hashtags

Sources

Decker, Nate. Marketing Implications for Guilt and Shame: Sentient Emotion Series. Sentient Decision Science. 2016. https://www.sentientdecisionscience.com/marketing-implications-guilt-shame-sentient-emotion-series/

Olenski, Steve. The CMO's Guide To Using Humor In Marketing. Forbes. 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2018/06/15/the-cmos-guide-to-using-humor-in-marketing/#55d6c90162bf

Ratner, Paul. Shame has an evolutionary purpose, say researchers. Big Think. 2018. https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/why-shame-helps-humans-survive

Rivero, Lisa. Shame and Motivation to Change. Psychology Today. 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/creative-synthesis/201501/shame-and-motivation-change