Mass_Media_Sustaining_Pollinators

Mass Media

Sustaining Pollinators

By: Kara Maddox, Tom Smith, Courtney Weatherbee Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

A T T R I B U T I ON

Mass Media: Sustaining Pollinators eFieldbook

e-pub: 978-1-7340417-9-8

Publish Date: 10/20/2020

Citations for this publication may be made using the following:

Maddox, K., Smith, T., and Weatherbee, C. (2020). Mass Media: Sustaining Pollinators eFieldbook (1st ed., 1st rev.). Kansas City: eXtension Foundation. ISBN: 978-1-7340417-9-8.

Producer: Ashley S. Griffin

Peer Review Coordinator: Heather Martin

Technical Implementer: Henrietta Ritchie

Welcome to the Mass Media: Sustaining Pollinators, a resource created for the Cooperative Extension Service and published by the Extension Foundation. We welcome feedback and suggested resources for this publication, which could be included in any subsequent versions. This work is supported by New Technologies for Agriculture Extension grant no. 2020-41595-30123 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

For more information please contact:

Extension Foundation c/o Bryan Cave LLP One Kansas City Place

1200 Main Street, Suite 3800 Kansas City, MO 64105-2122 https://impact.extension.org/

T A B L E O F CON T E N T S

Attribution .............................................................................................................................................. 2

Table of Contents..................................................................................................................................... 3

Meet the Authors .................................................................................................................................... 5

Contributors ............................................................................................................................................ 6

Media Team ............................................................................................................................................ 7

Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................... 9

Project Rationale/Context ............................................................................................................ 10 Pollinator Stewardship and Mass Media Rationale.......................................................................................................... 10

Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 12

Pollinator Stewardship Pilot Background ...................................................................................... 13 Meet Our Media Partners................................................................................................................................................. 13 Meet Our Higher-Ed Partners ........................................................................................................................................... 13 Narrowing Our Audience .............................................................................................................. 15 Characterizing Millennials ................................................................................................................................................ 16 Reaching our Audience ..................................................................................................................................................... 20 Creating the Campaign ..................................................................................................................................................... 21 Trust, Shared Vision, and Reciprocity ............................................................................................................................... 23 A Foundation for Collaboration .................................................................................................... 25 Collaboration Team Demographic Diversity..................................................................................................................... 25 The Speed of Changes....................................................................................................................................................... 26 Strategic Plan Alignment .................................................................................................................................................. 26 Campaign Outcomes – Metrics ..................................................................................................... 28 Behavior Change ............................................................................................................................................................... 31 Future Campaigns ............................................................................................................................................................. 33 Resources..................................................................................................................................... 35 Blog Post ........................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Campaign Components..................................................................................................................................................... 38

Native Ads ......................................................................................................................................................................... 40 Social Media Post Examples ............................................................................................................................................. 41 Webinars........................................................................................................................................................................... 42

M E E T TH E AU THO R S

Kara Maddox, Creative Director, Communications, NPSEC

Tom Smith, Executive Director, NPSEC

Courtney Weatherbee, Executive Assistant, NPSEC

CON T R I B U TO R S

Nathan Hermond, Lead Entomologist on the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot, Prairie View A&M University

Dr. Carolyn Williams, Executive Associate Director for Extension, Prairie View A&M University

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Dr. Clarence Bunch, Cooperative Extension Program Leader, Prairie View A&M University

M E D I A T E AM

Herb Hofmann, President, Blackhawk Audio

Adam Winters, President, Explore.US and Land.US

Juan Rivas Caban, Senior Vice President, Explore.US and Land.US

Graham McKernan, CMO, Gow Media

Rachel Conrad, Senior Account Executive, Culture Map

Eddie Quagliariello, Learfield IMG Associate

Braden Kobeski, University of Missouri Adzou graduate

Erica Overfelt, University of Missouri Adzou graduate

A C K NOWL E D GM E N T S

Our thanks to multiple people for their input that guided our thinking and organization of concepts and materials for professionals to use for educational programming including our Delaware and Maryland NTAE team members

Reviewers: We want to acknowledge the following individuals from multiple disciplines who provided content and usability reviews of this e-Fieldbook version.

David Buys, Associate Professor, Health Specialist, Mississippi State University, david.buys@msstate.edu

Leslie A. Forstadt , Ph.D. Extension Associate Professor, Human Development Specialist and Director, Maine Agricultural Mediation Program, University of Maine Extension, leslie.forstadt@maine.edu

Susan Harris , Extension Educator, University of Nebraska Extension, Lead, Wellness in Tough Times NTAE Project, susan.harris@unl.edu

Lorna Wounded Head , Family Resource Management Field Specialist, South Dakota State University Extension, Lorna.WoundedHead@sdstate.edu

Adam Kantrovich , AgriBusiness Specialist, Clemson University, akantro@clemson.edu

Emily Krekelber , Extension Educator, Livestock & Director, Rural Stress Task Force, University of Minnesota Extension, krek0033@umn.edu

David Thompson , Swine Management Educator and member of Michigan State University Extension Managing Farm Stress Task Force, tom1637@msu.edu

Sandra Thompson , Ed.D. Community Development Extension Specialist, Florida A & M University Cooperative Extension, CIVIC Impact Team (deliberative forums). sandra.thompson@famu.edu

Advisors: Many thanks to the following members of the New Technologies for Agriculture Extension(NTAE) Team. They have been supportive in so many ways. An extra big Thank You to Ashley who took leadership publishing this publication edition.

Tira Adelman , Administrative Support & Reporting Karl Bradley , Leadership Beverly Coberly , Administrative Support Ashley Griffin , Publications Rose Hayden-Smith , Digital Engagement Chuck Hibberd , Catalyst

Megan Hirschman , Partnership Molly Immendorf , Professional Development

Akashi Kaul , Evaluation Rick Klemme , Catalyst

Heather Martin , Peer Review Coordinator Aaron Weibe , Marketing/Communications Editor: Many thanks to Lynn Little , retired University of Maryland Extension Educator, for her diligent and extensive editing of references, figures, and photographs.

Cover Photo: logo provided by this team

Project Rationale/Context

Pol l inator Stewardship and Mass Media Rationale

Advancing the role of integrated pest management, including effective use of pesticides, is critical to controlling the spread of harmful pests and diseases. It is estimated that 40 percent of global crops are lost to agricultural pests each year. In the United States, just the corn rootworm alone devastates more than $1 billion dollars of damage to Corn Belt farms annually. 1 The US Department of Agriculture Strategic Plan 2018-2022 emphasizes prevention and mitigation of agricultural pests and disease. Application of pesticides is a common control that annually impacts almost 400 million acres of land in production 2 and crops worth around $200 billion 3 . It is estimated that 25 percent of all pesticides are applied to houses, yards, parks, golf courses, and swimming pools 4 . Insecticides accounted for approximately 80% of expenditures in the home and garden sector and 50% of expenditures in the industrial/commercial/governmental sector in both 2009 and 2012. 5 There are recognized, undesirable effects associated with application and misuse of pesticides, especially by the general public without knowledge or training in pesticide safety. The potential to negatively impact pollinators is one of those effects. Pollinator health and sustainable colonies is critical for In the United States. One third of all agricultural output depends on pollinators. Insects and other animal pollinators are vital to the production of healthy crops for food, fibers, edible oils, medicines, and other products. The commodities produced with the help of pollinators generate significant income for producers and those who benefit from a productive agricultural community. Pollinators are also essential components of the habitats and ecosystems that many wild animals rely on for food and shelter. 6 Increasing the level of awareness about pesticides and their impact on pollinators by the general public can help to sustain pollinators around homes, farms and businesses. This project led by the National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC) (https://npsec.us/) will target messaging about pollinators using mass media (radio, digital, social) to reach a larger audience than is typical with most Extension messaging, will direct the audience to additional Extension resources and will develop methodology to measure audience engagement, including change in behavior and implementation of practices benefiting both native and managed pollinators. The approach will be pilot tested in a select group of Texas communities due to the mass media footprint already available to NPSEC in Texas, the content resources available through Texas AgriLife Extension, and the established connections with the Texas PSEP and state apiary inspector.

1 https://modernag.org/modern-agriculture/ags-most-wanted-pests/ 2 https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/pesticides-industry-sales-usage-2016_0.pdf

3 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/agricultural-production-and-prices/ 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticides_in_the_United_States 5 https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-01/documents/pesticides-industry-sales-usage-2016_0.pdf 6 https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/pa/plantsanimals/?cid=nrcs142p2_018171

Introduction

From January 2017 to October 2019, we narrowed our focus to pollinator protection by ensuring our topic was timely and seasonal, developed our messaging strategy, and built the capacity and financial resources to bring a campaign to life.

Pollinators are fundamental to our economy, food security, environment, and health. According to the USDA, honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year. Protecting bees and other insect pollinators, birds, and bats today ensures we eat tomorrow. The National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC) has been supporting pollinator health since 2017, primarily by providing education and training materials to Extension programs that teach pesticide applicators how to minimize the risk that pesticides pose to pollinators. Over the last three years, NPSEC has taken its mission to be a premier provider of pollinator protection information to a new, more visible level. Leveraging our unique relationships with several private media companies, we created an opportunity for the Cooperative Extension program at Prairie View A&M University to share its pollinator stewardship research and best practices with a consumer audience in a mass media campaign in Texas. Commercial media isn’t typically an option for Extension programs. It’s usually expensive and requires business connections that Extension agents are unlikely to have. As a result of its Pollinator Stewardship Pilot, NPSEC and its media partners have demonstrated how robust market research and mass media can be accessible to and affordable for Extension Service programs.

Pollinator Stewardship Pilot Background

We didn't know exactly how we could use (or if we could afford) mass media, but we were intrigued enough by its possibilities to explore it.

The seeds of the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot were planted more than three years before NPSEC knew exactly what the seeds would grow to become. Our first project partner, which would later become Blackhawk Audio, approached NPSEC in January 2017 about the concept of using radio to deliver our pesticide safety messages to a broader audience. We didn’t know exactly how we could use (or if we could aff ord) mass media, but we were intrigued enough by its possibilities to explore it. From January 2017 to October 2019, we narrowed our focus to pollinator protection by ensuring our topic was timely and seasonal, developed our messaging strategy, and built the capacity and financial resources to bring a campaign to life. Through Blackhawk Audio, we met and partnered with three multimedia companies that would give us access online and on the radio to the audience we wanted to reach, including homeowners and real estate professionals — ideal markets for us because we know that pollinator protection happens one backyard at a time.

Meet Our Media Partners

IMG NCAA (later to become Learfield IMG), the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot’s first multimedia partner, came on board in early 2018. IMG provides digital outreach in the form of targeted sports website ads to men ages 18-49 across the United States. Later that year, Blackhawk introduced us to Land.US, which had just launched Explore.US, a website that highlights reasons to visit and live in small- and mid-sized towns across the country. It also hosts a members-only website that reaches a target audience of 30,000+ high-end residential real estate agents who want to list properties valued at $500,000 or more. Gow Media joined in early 2019. Gow owns terrestrial (land-based, as opposed to streaming) radio stations in Houston, Texas, and publishes a lifestyle blog called CultureMap in various Texas markets, targeting mainly women and Millennials. All of our media partners were interested in ways to gather and share quality content, so connecting them with experts in Extension made sense.

Meet Our Higher -Ed Partners

Once the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot’s media partners were on board, the project evolved rapidly. In May, NPSEC began researching how to tap Millennials — a large segment of our intended audience — with the help of

several research resources, including the advertising and marketing students from the University of Missouri School of Journalism’s Adzou program, a capstone course in the university’s School of Journalism.

In October 2019, we were invited by the eXtension Foundation to be one of five projects funded as part of the foundation’s USDA -funded New Technologies for Agricultural Extension (NTAE) grant. Our original Extension partner, which would provide the science-based pollinator content for the campaign, was Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the university needed to put its time and resources elsewhere. In the spring of 2020, Pr airie View A&M University’s Cooperative Extension Program in Prairie View, Texas, became our Extension partner, as they were interested in new ways to reach large audiences. Finally, our team was complete. It’s been a long road, and we didn’t always know w here it was leading us, but we remained open to new ideas and were willing to pivot in Extension partnerships, all while staying true to our mission and trusting the people we worked with. We could have brushed off the idea of using mass media, since it is unconventional for Extension Service programs, but we took a chance and we believe it’s paying off.

Narrowing Our Audience

After some broad research, we narrowed our demographic focus to Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996).

The Pollinator Stewardship Pilot mass media campaign hit the airwaves and the web on June 22, 2020.

But before we could develop the campaign, we had to determine the target audience, and it needed to be an audience that would help Prairie View meet certain goals in its strategic plan:

• Prairie View’s strategic goal two: Enhance natural resource conservation and management.

• Prairie View’s strategic goal five: Prepare Texas youth to be productive, positive, and equipped with life skills for the future.

• Prairie View’s strategic goal six: Expand access to Extension education and knowledge resources.

After some broad research, we narrowed our demographic focus to Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996). First, Millennials are the largest generation — about 80 million — giving us a huge potential audience, one that is largely untapped by Extension programs. Second, the research indicated that Millennials are in a stage of life that makes them more likely to listen to and take action based on the message we wanted to deliver, especially in the context of Prairie View’s goals. Millennials are a huge home-owning population — putting them in an ideal position to focus on resource conservation and management (Prairie View strategic goal two) because they have yards in which they can create pollinator-friendly landscapes. According to a 2019 realtor.com study, Millennials represent 42 percent of all mortgage holders in the United States. In Texas, the number is even higher: 70 percent of Millennials owned their own homes as of September 2019, according to a Dallas Business Journal report. Millennials also are having children at a steady rate — more than one million become parents each year, according to Pew Research Center. Equipped with the right information, Millennial parents can teach their children how to protect pollinators, a positive, productive life skill (Prairie View strategic goal five). A key to the campaign, then, would be to give our audience the right information: the Pollinator Prep Guide, which would be available for download . This aligned with Prairie View’s sixth strategic goal: Expand access to Extension education and knowledge resources.

Character izing Mi l lennials

Once we determined the primary reasons to market to Millennials, we took a deeper dive. We wanted to know what resonates with them, how they think, and what drives their behavior. For this phase of our audience research we used three resources:

•

Pew Research Generation

•

University of Missouri’s Adzou findings

• VALS, an industry-standard framework that explains consumer behavior

Pew gave us insights into the differences among generations and how things like stage of life and outside events (like the COVID-19 pandemic) affect thinking and behavior.

Life Cycle Effect

According to Pew, the priorities and behaviors of each generation change with each life stage . This is called the “life cycle” effect. For example, Millennials are less likely to engage in political activity than Boomers are, but Boomers were the same way when they were in their 20s and 30s.

Period Effects and Cohort Effects

Generations are often profoundly affected by significant outside events and circumstances, such as wars, economic recessions and booms, and social movements. Events like 9/11 affect all generations at the same time. Pew calls such effects “period effects.” Sometimes those same events have a more specific impact on a particular generation of people, often those in their formative years. Those are called “cohort effects.”

The COVID-19 pandemic had a period and a cohort effect on our audience and, therefore, our campaign.

In March 2020, the nation went on lockdown as the novel coronavirus began to spread quickly. Schools and daycares closed. People started working from home. Backyards became entertainment venues. People needed safe, summer activities they could do at home, and gardening became a wildly popular pastime. In fact, the whole world has seen an increase in gardening during the pandemic. Millennials felt this period effect but may also have experienced a cohort effect, as the fear of their children contracting Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C) due to COVID-19 exposure made staying home even more critical. And time will tell what COVID’s cohort effect will be on the childr en of Millennials.

The Adzou students conducted surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews with Millennials to help us understand how Millennials feel about our campaign topics: pollinator protection, pesticide safety, the

sources of our food in the United States, and corporate social responsibility. The research also gave us three key insights into what motivates Millennials to take action. Adzou’s work was particularly interesting because Millennials were essentially studying themselves. The Adzou students surveyed 440 individuals. Their focus group included eight University of Missouri seniors, ages 21-22 (five females, three males). And they interviewed four men and four women, ages 18-36. Of those surveyed, 53 percent said they had gardens or lawns. Sixty-six percent of the respondents knew what a pollinator was, and 55 percent had never read the label on their pesticides.

Three key insights

 Key insight 1: Millennials support the environment.

Millennials care about environmental initiatives and are open to using more environmentally friendly products. They also value corporate social responsibility. One survey respondent wrote, “I think I would be more interested in pollinators if I understood the larger scope of what pollinators do. I know that they help us have flowers, but that’s about it. If I saw something on social media about it, maybe on YouTube or an Instagram ad, I would be interested.”

 Key insight 2: Millennials want specific, realistic steps to take.

Millennials need to be told exactly what they can do in their everyday lives to support a cause. One survey respondent wrote, “Just now knowing that bats and butterflies are endangered pollinators is crazy. Knowing that the conversation extends beyond bees is important. So telling people that and putting together a rational and emotional appeal would affect me.”

 Key insight 3: Quantitative data work best.

Millennials respond best to statistics and other quantitative data so they can draw their own conclusions after being given the facts. “To me, seeing a statistic makes the fact seem more believable and hits closer to home. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think seeing a statistic would be the same. So, if there was a statistic given on the extinction rate of population of bats, that would mean a whole lot more to me than just reading, ‘Bat populations are declining.’” VALS is a system that groups consumers according to psychological and sociological theories in order to predict their behavior in the purchase decision process. It gave us three Millennial personas that would be most likely to pay attention to and take action based on the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot campaign. Adzou also gave us a persona that we took into consideration as we developed our material.

Achievers, Strivers, and Experiencers were the VALS types we kept in mind when we developed our content.

“ Archie” the Achiev er Age: 39 Motto: “My family first” Priorities: Family, career, nice home, nice neighborhood Work style: Very busy, always thinking about professional goals Worries about: Money, balancing family and work The hook: May enjoy using the Pollinator Prep Guide to engage his kids in the yard or garden this summer “Sara” the Striver Age: 29 Favorite activity: Video games Worries about: Job security Aspiration: Financial stability, freedom (likes to wear fashion of celebrities she idolizes) Point of pride: Being first in the family to go to college The hook: May enjoy taking the Pollinator Personality Quiz as she scans her social media feed this summer “Eddie” the Experiencer Age: 24 Driven by: The latest trends; wants to be first in line to see the hot, new film; always looking for the next best thing Priorities: Friends, physical activity, “sensation seeking” The hook: May enjoy creating a backyard garden this summer with a garden blueprint or putting up a bee hotel

“Mixed Signal Millie” Age: 24

Job: Still working first job out of college Home: small apartment with balcony Cares about: plants — has succulents and a garden tomato plant; saving animals and the environment (as long as she has time and it’s convenient) Pesticide awareness: Avoids putting pesticide on her plants or letting her dog play on a treated law; read an article on Facebook about pesticide dangers but isn’t aware of their larger impact

The hook: May enjoy the Pollinator Prep Guide to better understand how to protect pollinators from pesticides

Figure 1: Demographic and Behavior Snapshots - VALS

Reaching our Audience

Once we defined our audience, it was time for audience segmentation — determining how many people and which portions of our overall audience each media platform could reach.

Figure 2: Audience Segmentation

We also developed a strategy for capturing audience information. When a user clicks on AgNearMe.com — the campaign’s landing page— from a social media channel, Land.US collects demographic data about that person (marital status, location, age, parental status, etc.) that’s connected to their socia l media profile. We then share this data with Prairie View’s Cooperative Extension Program so that it can better understand and communicate with this audience in the future. We collect the email address of the users who download the Pollinator Prep Guide, so Prairie View can follow up with this audience with supplemental resources.

Creating the Campaign

With our audience defined and a plan for reaching them, the next step was to develop the centerpiece for the campaign, the Pollinator Prep Guide, and the promotions that would drive people to the guide.

Prairie View’s lead pollinator content expert, Nathan Hermond, and NPSEC’s creative director for communications, Kara Maddox, created social media posts and stories for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Kara wrote the radio scripts, and Blackhawk Audio produced the radio spots. Kara, Nathan, and the Land.US team created the targeted web ads, and Learfield IMG published these ads on its college sports networks.

Listen and View our Messages below:



Radio Ad 1



Radio Ad 2



Radio Ad 3



Digital Ads example 1 – 300×250 UCLA



Digital Ads example 2 – 320×50 Cal

 Digital Ads example 3 – 728×90 Michigan State



Digital Ads example 4 – 970×66 UNC

 Digital Ads example 5 – 970×90 Ohio State

All of this content, which gives Texas Millennials activities to do in their yards and gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic, directs people to the AgNearMe.com landing page (also created by Land.US). Here they are prompted to download the Pollinator Prep Guide, the design for which came from a competition on 99designs, a digital hangout for graphic designers to find projects.

Image 1: Ag Near Me Prep for Pollinators Landing Page

Nathan and Kara repackaged Prairie View’s existing pollinator resources to create the Pollinat or Prep Guide, which tells users where to find certain pollinators (native to Texas, of course) as well as how to attract and protect pollinators. It also contains a worksheet for tallying the pollinators they see and encourages them to post pollinator photos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with the tag #PrairieViewPollinatorProject. This

guide was the basis for all messaging on radio, digital, and social networks. By tracking downloads and hashtagging, our team will be able to measure audience engagement.

Image 2: Prep for Pollinators

The Pollinator Prep Guide can be found on AgNearMe.com. Resources from which we created the guide can be found in the Reference section at the bottom of the guide.

Pilot data are still coming in, but preliminary findings are promising. In the first three weeks of the pilot, we had 1,436 visitors to our campaign website, AgNearMe.com. This is where our audience can find our Pollinator Prep Guide, the Pollinator Personality Quiz, and the Pollinator Garden Blueprint. So far, our digital ads are driving more people to our How-To Guides page — where they can download our content — than our radio ads are. We’ve had 989 visits from our digital ads and 431 visits from radio messaging, but this may change over time. Stay up to date on our pilot by following us on Connect Extension.

Trust, Shared Vision, and Reciprocity

It’s important to note that NPSEC and Prairie View were able to create the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot campaign and distribute it through such high-profile platforms because the media partners offered us very

affordable rates for radio, digital, and social media advertising placement and creation. And they did this because of the trust and shared vision our group cu ltivated over the project’s three -year development period. NPSEC’s long -term vision is to further develop these key partnerships. The benefit to Blackhawk, Learfield IMG, Land.US, and Gow is that NPSEC will continue to pay for their services for similar projects in the future and eventually bring in corporate sponsors and underwriters to generate revenue as part of these projects. The business model of corporate support creates the economic incentive for all involved and makes this sustainable. eXtension’s commitment provided the match to ignite this concept. Because of this partnership with NPSEC, eXtension recognized an untapped opportunity to amplify extension content and tap into a trusted and science-based resource that added value to these media channels.

A Foundation for Collaboration

According to the Collaboration Framework, “Valuing diversity hon ors the uniqueness, gifts, and talents each person, group, and organization brings to the collaboration."

The Pollinator Stewardship Project would never have been as successful as it has been if our team members hadn’t collaborated the way we did. Each group within our collaboration team had to be able to operate according to its own organizational priorities and within its own structure, while still contributing to a collaborative process. Extension professionals use a model called the Collaboration Framework, which encourages collaborators to, among other things, keep lines of communication open and make sure team members clearly understand their responsibilities and the priorities of certain tasks. These behaviors are more likely in groups with an underlying value and respect for diversity while working toward a shared vision and set of outcomes. Although we weren’t previously aware of the Extension Collaboration Framework, we believe that our pollinator collaboration team has followed the framework’s diversity, shared vision p rinciples, and evaluation processes to measure progress and identify why stumbles may have occurred. According to the Collaboration Framework, “Valuing diversity hon ors the uniqueness, gifts, and talents each person, group, and organization brings to the collaboration. It opens the door to gaining an understanding of how all the elements fit together and how each is important to the whole. Diversity brings a critical balance to any level of collaboration.” (Bergstrom et al., 2014, p. 5)

Col laboration Team Demographic Diversity

The pollinator collaboration team is diverse in some conventional ways, such as age, geographic location, and experience — all of which helped us create content that we hope will appeal to a wide audience. We also discovered more complex and challenging differences among us, raising awareness of certain organizational patterns, working styles and preferences, and how these affect the groups’ abilities to collaborate. Our team includes people from multiple generations — from 20-something Millennials to 70-something Baby Boomers — all of whom bring a range of attitudes, thought processes, and problem-solving approaches to our discussions and planning. The team members also live all over the United States, from Colorado to Texas to New York City. Even though we piloted our campaign in Texas, it was valuable to have this national perspective, because we knew our radio listeners would live within a certain radius, but our web audience could come from anywhere.

Our team’s mix of traditional and digital media experience was also key to making sure our campaign’s structure and messages were effective for both platforms. Herb Hoffman of Blackhawk Audio and Graham McKernan of Gow Media have a combined 55+ years of radio ad sales and content production under their belts, while Adam Winters and Juan Rivas from Land.US have worked in digital media for more than 25 years combined. We also partner with Anthony Savelli and Rick Selah, founders of Podcast Ad Reps, who worked with the Blackhawk Audio sales team to pitch our campaign to large national sponsors.

The Speed of Changes

The less visible diversity of the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot collaboration team is what taught us some unexpected and valuable lessons.

The Pollinator Stewardship Pilot brought together what author Gerard Roland refers to as “fast - moving” and “slow - moving” institutions . Slow-moving institutions change incrementally, over time, and usually only when they need to change. Fast-moving institutions do not necessarily change often, but they tend to change quickly (Roland, 2004, p. 4). They have the capacity for centralized decision making and can “change nearly overnight when there are revolutionary moments” (Roland, 20 04, p. 12). These labels are not value judgements — rather, they describe what the Collaboration Framework calls “contextual factors,” which are “characteristics of the … environment that are related to the effectiveness of a collaboration… The collaboration may be able to influence these characteristics, but the group does not have control over them” (Bergstrom et al., 2014, p. 10). In other words, our collaboration team ultimately could not change the inherent qualities and habits that drive the pace at which our members move. We can only adapt to accommodate all styles and keep the creative process moving.

On our collaboration team, the small private-sector members (BlackHawk, Land.US, etc.) have been the fast movers, and the large, public university partners have been the slower movers.

During the early stages of the pilot’s development, when our higher -ed partner was Texas AgriLife, our collaboration team didn’t anticipate or fully appreciate the time or buy -in from layers of administrators that a slow-moving institution requires. We were eager to charge full steam ahead, while AgriLife needed to be more deliberate. We also hadn’t adequately defined the value of this pilot project to the university, so it makes sense that the pilot became less of a priority for the university, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Strategic Plan Al ignment

As we talked with Prairie View’s Extension staff about them joining our team, we discovered that the university’s strategic plan had objectives that aligned well with the goals of the Pollinator Stewardship Pilot, which made the project’s benefit to Prairie View clear from the start. Prairie View also provided access to an

even broader, more diverse audience. We let them know that we understood that they would follow a timetable they were comfortable with. Conversely, Prairie View helped us expedite the content creation process so that we could meet the NTAE grant’s publ ication deadline requirements. With all of our partners in sync, while honoring each other’s diverse styles and needs, the pilot project moved forward toward a shared vision: a world where people use research-based knowledge to support pollinators.

Campaign Outcomes – Metrics

The team created an engaging “Bee Waggle Dance” video to see if our audience prefers video over static content. Check out the video!

The six-week Pollinator Pilot Campaign began during National Pollinator Week (on Monday, June 22, 2020) and officially ended on Sunday, August 2, 2020. Social media initiatives on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter began on Monday, July 6, and will conclude in mid-September, 2020.

Below are the metrics for our radio and digital outreach initiatives:

• AgNearMe.com, the campaign landing page, received a total of 2,732 views during the six weeks.

• Radio brought in a total of 1,243 website visitors, and our digital providers brought in a total of 1,489 website visitors.

• 27 people visited the Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) website after visiting AgNearMe.com.

• 162 people provided their email addresses to gain access to our spotlight content (Pollinator Prep Guide, Pollinator Personality Quiz, and Pollinator Garden Blueprint) and learn more about pollinator protection.

• Over the six weeks, our radio messaging through the Texas State Network (which broadcasts across the state) reached 21,411,900 people.

• Over the six weeks, our radio messaging through the Gow Media network (which focuses on the Houston area) reached 1,270,500 people.

• Our banner ads displayed through Learfield IMG on college sports websites generated 1,181 total clicks. People saw the banner ad and clicked through to AgNearMe.com.

• 620 people read our three Culture Map articles, spending an average of 3 minutes and 27 seconds on the first article, published on June 25, 2020; 2 minutes and 50 seconds on the second article, published on July 8, 2020; and 2 minutes and 39 seconds on the third article, published on July 22, 2020.

See figure below for full metrics chart:

Figure 3: Radio and digital media metrics for 6 week pilot (June 22 - August 2, 2020).

The social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter had a rocky start; our media team could not spare the resources to run the social campaign, so NPSEC brought on two recent graduates from the University of Missouri School of Journalism as interns to help. These students, Erica Overfelt and Braden Kobeski, were familiar with NPSEC and our campaigns since they worked with the Center during their final semester through the Adzou program. In addition, Later.com, the original social media content scheduling platform chosen by our media team, was not a good fit for our campaign. We could not schedule certain content (Instagram stories), and we could not capture metrics for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram collectively. For this reason, NPSEC decided to use Hootsuite instead, and we began scheduling content via this new, more powerful program on Monday, July 20.

Our presence on these three platforms is steadily growing. For example, from August 1-7, 2020, Hootsuite shows postings and engagement have risen, although our number of followers dropped by one. See figure below:

Figure 4: Social Media Metrics for August 1-7, 2020 via Hootsuite

Our social media campaign for the pilot will continue through mid-September. At that time, the social media content we created from our campaign spotlight pieces (Pollinator Prep Guide, Pollinator Personality Quiz, and Pollinator Garden Blueprint) will run out. To boost engagement and determine the type of content our audience likes best, Erica and Braden plan to include test content. For example, the team created an engaging “Bee Waggle Dance” video to see if our audience prefers video over static con tent. This video was created by Braden Kobeski; Braden wrote the music and created the video himself.

Click below to view the video:

Mass Media Pollinators: Waggle Dance video available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe87OdcTuf4

Behavior Change

While the bulk of the pilot campaign has ended (radio and digital), many of the campaign’s ripple effects remain to be seen. We can report some behavior outcomes, though.

The call to action (CTA) on our spotlight pieces asked Millennials to take photos in their backyards and gardens of pollinators with their pollinator-friendly plants and share them on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with #PrairieViewPollinatorProject. This action shows audience members are able to identify pollinators other than honeybees, which was our first goal, as we found during our research that many Millennials did not realize pollinators were more than just honey bees. So far, only a few people have taken this action, but we hope this number will increase during the last few weeks of the social media campaign and in future pollinator stewardship campaigns with PVAMU. We plan to use the same CTA and hashtag through sp ring and summer 2021 to gather a full year’s worth of data.

Below is an example of an audience member who took part in our CTA on Facebook:

Image 3: PVAMU audience member uses pollinator pilot campaign's hashtag

As a result of this partnership, PVAMU did revamp its College of Agriculture and Human Sciences website over the course of the pilot and re- launched with the announcement, “Ag is Back!” The university’s communications team also is working on a newsletter to send to PVAMU’s existing audience, as well as to the 162 new audience members collected through the AgNearMe.com landing page.

Image 4: Revamped website for PVAMU College of Agriculture and Human Sciences

Future Campaigns

As we wrapped up the social media portion of the campaign in August, 2020, NPSEC and PVAMU continued to develop plans and look for corporate sponsorships for future campaigns.

Nathan Hermond, lead PVAMU entomologist on the pilot, and Kara Maddox from NPSEC had a Texas Butterfly Guide set to launch at the end of August, 2020, in preparation for a webinar hosted by PVAMU in partnership with the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Cockrell B utterfly Center. We scheduled a wrap- up webinar, hosted by eXtension, for late August, and we have plans for fall and winter pollinator guides and some ideas in the works for spring 2021. We also hope to distribute our resources through home-schooling networks for Millennial parents who are teaching their kids at home as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. The team is reaching out to potential corporate partners and expected to secure funding for the fourth quarter by the end of August, 2020. NPSEC has also added a Corporate Social Responsibility section to its website. Click here to review our Corporate Social Responsibility Pitch Deck.

We hope to work with new Extension partners who want to reach Millennial audiences via integrated mass media campaigns.

Listen to what Nathan Hermond had to say about his experience working with NPSEC and his thoughts on developing content for the campaign.

Nathan Hermond: Nature with Nathan video. Available at: https://youtu.be/s25gDVaa5N8

Stay tuned for updates via Connect Extension, and feel free to reach out to me at karamaddox@npsec.us for more information.

Resources

Blog Post

Mass Media Team Create Pollinator Prep Guide (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass-media- extension-messaging/blog/mass-media-team-creates-pollinator-prep-guide)

New Pollinator Garden Guide now available for download (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass- media-extension-messaging/blog/new-pollinator-garden-guide-is-now-available)

Prairie View A&M University Pollinator Pilot Launch (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass-media- extension-messaging/blog/prairie-view-aandm-university-pollinator-pilot-set-to-launch-june-22-2020)

Prairie View Metrics Week 1 (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass-media-extension- messaging/blog/prairie-view-aandm-cooperative-extension-campaign-week-1-metrics-are-in)

Prairie View Weeks 1-3 Metrics (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass-media-extension- messaging/blog/prairie-view-aandm-cooperative-extension-campaign-week-1-3-metrics-are-in)

Vote on Pollinator Garden BluePrint (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass-media-extension- messaging/blog/vote-on-our-pollinator-garden-guide-design)

Campaign Components

Mass Media Pilot Landing Page. AgNearMe dot com is the landing page for the pollinator pilot and houses the Pollinator Prep Guide, the Pollinator Garden Blueprint, and the Pollinator Personality Quiz. This site is managed by Adam Winters and Juan Rivas. Numbers of downloads and views are tallied each week. (https://agnearme.com/)

Pollinator Garden Blueprint Guide. The Pollinator Garden Guide teaches Millennials how to use the ‘buddy system’ while planting, highlighting the importance of planting groups of flowers together in a backyard garden. (https://agnearme.com/pollinator-garden-blueprint/)

Pollinator Personality Questionnaire. The Pollinator Personality Quiz reveals the type of pollinator the quiz-taker is at heart, based on a series of questions. (https://agnearme.com/pollinator-personality-test/)

Pollinator Prep Guide. The Pollinator Prep Guide shows Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators. (https://agnearme.com/pollinator-prep-guide/)

Native Ads

How to draw butterflies, bees, and other helpful pollinators to your garden . The Culture Map, Houston Series tells Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators during the Covid-19 pandemic. (https://houston.culturemap.com/news/home-design/07-08-20-ag-near-me-gardening-what-to-plant-to- attract-pollinators/?preview=1)

Pandemic gardening? Here’s how pollinators are important to your plants. The Culture Map, Houston Series tells Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators during the Covid-19 pandemic. (https://houston.culturemap.com/news/home-design/06-25-20-ag-near-me-gardening-how-to-identify- pollinators/)

Pesticides and planning ahead: How to protect your pollinator garden. The Culture Map, Houston Series tells Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators during the Covid-19 pandemic. (https://houston.culturemap.com/news/home-design/07-22-20-ag-near-me-gardening-how-to-protect- pollinators-pesticides/)

Social Media Post Examples

Facebook. These example social media posts show Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators. This content is shared on the AgNearMe.com Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/agnearmecom)

Instagram. These example social media posts show Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators. This content is shared on the AgNearMe.com Instagram page. (https://www.instagram.com/agnearme/)

Twitter. These example social media posts show Millennials how to identify, attract and protect pollinators. This content is shared on the AgNearMe.com Twitter page. (https://twitter.com/agnearme)

Webinars

Chat archive from Back to the Future webinar. In our first webinar, the National Pesticide Safety Education Center Executive Director, Tom Smith, talks about why it makes sense to use mass media for Extension messaging. (https://connect.extension.org/g/mass-media-extension-messaging/blog/chat-

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