Public Relations Campaigns Should Target Goverment Regulators
A major beer brand just announced its switch to a 100% biodegradable substance, made from a mixture of by-product waste and compostable materials, to form the rings that hold six-packs together. Now here’s an interesting question: Why doesn’t the existence of such a substance result in the government’s mandating its use?
Obviously, government regulation is never an optimum solution; it would be far better, for a dozen different reasons, if either a) corporations had the decency to do the right thing on their own, or b) that public pressure forced the corporations to do the right thing. But it’s equally obvious that this rarely happens. It may shock you to learn the history of the car companies’ resistance to the safety measures that were forced upon them throughout the years.
In the PR and marketing efforts I take for my clients, I like targeting the relevant government regulators with messages to the effect that, “Here’s an innovation that prevents X (horrible environmental consequence). If you mandate its use, you will be greatly reducing X, and everyone will love you for it. I can send you some more information on this if you’d like.”
Of course, this doesn’t always work, because the companies that sell the incumbent solutions, in this case, traditional plastics, have lobbyists who fight like hell to ensure their clients’ positions aren’t damaged. Having said that, it’s always worth a try.
Craig,
As usual, you’ve wandered into a highly complex and controversial subject with many variables, and approach the logistics and science with a sort of naive, moralistic emotive viewpoint.
One thing we can all agree on is bio-degradable plastics are a great idea!
However, before you start crusading,or casting villains and heroes for your little morality play, perhaps it might be more useful (if less exciting) to objectively review the science.
Bio-degradable, as opposed to composting, plastic come in all forms, and grades of environmental values. Just because some are produced from fossil fuel doesn’t necessarily make those products less environmentally friendly, on fact on the contrary, these products may be far more beneficial than many “natural” or plant based products.
This is an area of tremendous advances in technology, with exciting new investments and developments being announced every other week !
Trying to impose regulations may be very difficult as legislation takes a long time to formulate and get passed into law, while the technology is moving must faster leaving such regulations either obsolete or counter-productive..
Government6 action would be probably more effective by deploying incentive programs, consumer education, etc.