E2 has been telling the story of how clean energy works with our jobs reports, our www.cleanenergyworksforus.org site and our direct and indirect advocacy with lawmakers at the national and state level for years now.
Recently, we deployed an interesting new communications tool – with some great success.
If you walked in or around the state capitols in Raleigh, NC or in Harrisburg, PA recently and opened your mobile phone browser, you would have been served up a series of digital advertisements featuring local farmers, solar installers, preachers and even grandmothers, each explaining in a few words how clean energy benefits them and their families (two examples are displayed above). Click on any of the ads and you’d go to a Web site where you could learn more and add your name to a list to tell lawmakers to support important clean energy policies currently under debate.
Using a digital advertising technique known as “geo-fencing,” we were able to pinpoint the ads directly mobile phones in around those statehouses. No lawmaker or staffer with a mobile phone could avoid them during a four-week stretch in May and June when they were considering clean energy policies. You can see for yourself what lawmakers saw by going here and here.
The ads garnered more than 1 million impressions in both Raleigh and in Harrisburg. That’s better than average for a geo-fencing campaign of this type. Thousands of people in both markets clicked on the ads and visited www.e2.org, but just as importantly, the pinpointed nature of the geo-fencing campaign made it impossible for lawmakers and their staff to avoid seeing the faces of clean energy at a critical time.
Along with digital ads, E2 is also deploying another advocacy communications tool we’ve used before – radio.
Recently, E2 launched statewide radio tours in New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Illinois and Ohio to put E2 members and other clean energy entrepreneurs and others on the airwaves to tell the story of how clean energy is creating jobs and driving economic growth – and to push for smart clean energy policies. By utilizing E2’s recently released reports that detail clean energy jobs right down to the city, county and legislative district level, our spokespeople can tell thousands of listeners and their lawmakers exactly how many of their neighbors work in solar, wind, energy efficiency and other clean energy occupations.
The radio tours will run through the next month or so, critical timing for clean energy policies in some of these states and also coinciding with the summer driving months.
Of course E2 could do none of this without the support of members like you. Only through your tax-deductible donations are we able to do the work of advocating for policies that are good for the economy and the environment in strategic ways like these. If you like what we’re doing and you haven’t renewed your E2 membership lately, please do so by going to www.e2.org/join and/or consider giving to the E2 Opportunity Fund.
And if you’d like to learn more, please feel free to contact me at any time.
Bob Keefe is E2’s Executive Director.