Protect Our Winters Social Media CampaignResearch:
“Protect Our Winters (POW) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Founded by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones in 2007, POW turns passionate outdoor people into effective climate advocates. POW leads a community of athletes, thought pioneers and forward-thinking business leaders to affect systemic solutions to climate change.” - POW's 2018 advocacy efforts included training 47 influencers and 70 volunteers. Together, we reached 5,373,032 potential voters, secured 12,278 pledges to vote and received 134,440,300 social media impressions. |
- POW played a key role in coalitions to achieve these 2018 victories: introducing bipartisan carbon pricing legislation in the House, moving clean energy and electric transportation policy forward in Colorado and passing a ballot initiative to move Nevada to 50% renewable energy by 2030.
- In 2018, POW saw exponential growth, bringing in a new Executive Director, growing the team from 4 to 11 full-time staff members and adding five interns.
Dollars donated to support advocacy efforts
2018 = 1,711,077
What is the Approach?
Protect our Winters created a social media campaign about 1) how to contact your representatives, 2) why it is important to contact them, and 3) how easy it is. They used humor, public status (well-known athletes), and easy access as some of their strategies.
Strengths:
I think there are many different strengths of this approach. The first being that it is easily accessible to the people that care about this issue. Social media has turned in to a huge part of where we get our inspirations and news. The second strength is that they use humor. I think positivity and humor are some of the best ways to inspire people, and it keeps them engaged. For example, in one of the campaign videos, the girl is cooking and doing yoga while she is calling her representatives and saying “hi, its Becca…. Again.” This shows a humor aspect of it that most campaigns I see, don’t implement, and it is very successful. I also loved that they showed how easy it was, by giving examples of how to call and what to say. One of the guys in the video cracked open a beer while he was calling, and it really reaches a community that wants to do something, but they think it is too hard or nerve-racking. It really normalizes the process for the audience.
Limitations:
I think the largest limitation of this campaign is that it only reaches the people who were probably going to do this anyways. The people that follow POW on social media are passionate about Climate change reform already. Even though this might push some people over the edge to finally call, I don’t see a lot of new people finding this and being motivated by it.
Applications:
For my justice project, I am studying the lack of action from the U.S. government on Climate change. If I want this to change, then the biggest impact I believe I can have is to call my representatives and inspire others to do the same. I think social media can be used as a powerful tool to do this. For my approach, I can use what I have learned about what makes a successful social media campaign to create one of my own, or something similar. This might be a short film or video that I post on my social media, or get Student Council to post on their social media. I also thought about making an activity at a Nest meeting that I give everyone the number of our representatives and have everyone write out what they would say to them. The activity might start with one of these types of videos to make it seem easier to do, more normal.
Protect our Winters created a social media campaign about 1) how to contact your representatives, 2) why it is important to contact them, and 3) how easy it is. They used humor, public status (well-known athletes), and easy access as some of their strategies.
Strengths:
I think there are many different strengths of this approach. The first being that it is easily accessible to the people that care about this issue. Social media has turned in to a huge part of where we get our inspirations and news. The second strength is that they use humor. I think positivity and humor are some of the best ways to inspire people, and it keeps them engaged. For example, in one of the campaign videos, the girl is cooking and doing yoga while she is calling her representatives and saying “hi, its Becca…. Again.” This shows a humor aspect of it that most campaigns I see, don’t implement, and it is very successful. I also loved that they showed how easy it was, by giving examples of how to call and what to say. One of the guys in the video cracked open a beer while he was calling, and it really reaches a community that wants to do something, but they think it is too hard or nerve-racking. It really normalizes the process for the audience.
Limitations:
I think the largest limitation of this campaign is that it only reaches the people who were probably going to do this anyways. The people that follow POW on social media are passionate about Climate change reform already. Even though this might push some people over the edge to finally call, I don’t see a lot of new people finding this and being motivated by it.
Applications:
For my justice project, I am studying the lack of action from the U.S. government on Climate change. If I want this to change, then the biggest impact I believe I can have is to call my representatives and inspire others to do the same. I think social media can be used as a powerful tool to do this. For my approach, I can use what I have learned about what makes a successful social media campaign to create one of my own, or something similar. This might be a short film or video that I post on my social media, or get Student Council to post on their social media. I also thought about making an activity at a Nest meeting that I give everyone the number of our representatives and have everyone write out what they would say to them. The activity might start with one of these types of videos to make it seem easier to do, more normal.