Ontario Tackles Promotion and Education

Think about the way we associate different products with ideals, images and promotions. Companies put a lot of money and effort into advertising and selling their products. They reach out and actively try to engage the public to sell their product. This is a lesson that municipalities need to learn.

Selling our programs to the public has, traditionally, not been an area of municipal expertise. In fact, spending money on promotion and education (P&E) is often seen as a luxury and the first budget line item to get cut. Then we wonder why programs don’t do well or why participation is low.

As service providers, it is important that we engage the public. This doesn’t mean necessarily spending more money for “advertising” but spending the available money in a way that provides the best benefit.

Effective P&E is a major theme in the blue box best practice (BP) work which is currently underway in Ontario. The research conducted on the BP project has demonstrated that municipalities having some form of communications/P&E plan have better success with their programs.

There are a number of ongoing projects that should help municipalities improve promotion and education of their waste management programs. A key project, funded through the Efficiency and Effectiveness (E&E) fund, will be providing a framework that municipalities can use to plan, implement and monitor strategic communications. This framework is based on social marketing principles and will help municipalities make effective use of their limited promotion and education resources. There will be two outputs of this project: a workbook for use by municipalities; and an interactive tool, based on the workbook, that is being developed for the Knowledge Network (www.vubiz.com/stewardship/Welcome.asp) for use by municipalities.

The results of the blue box best practice project and the P&E project described above will be available by the end of May, 2007. For information on these projects you can check either the AMRC website (www.amrc.ca) or Stewardship Ontario’s website (www.stewardshipontario.ca)

Remember, if anyone is ever looking for any information on what is happening in Ontario, feel free to contact Clayton Sampson at csampson@wdo.ca or at 519-539-0869.

[Source: May 2007 WasteWatch]

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