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
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