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
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