OCTOBER 18, 2017 By Rob Gould When it comes to defining the field I’ve labored in for almost 40 years, I’m a back-of-the-classroom spit-baller. It all started for me in 1984, when I joined the then-small niche firm, Porter Novelli. The “niche” was social marketing (now often called behavior change marketing). In those heady early …
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Getting Scientists Out of the Box on Climate Communication
Thirteen of the most eminent climate experts in the world were discussing how to tell the American public about the risks posed by climate change. One expert, exasperated, said to the group, “I know we don’t want to appear alarmist. But we are alarmed, aren’t we?” This (true) story captures perfectly the dilemma of …
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The Deeper Truth of the ‘truth’ Campaign: Influence is Bigger than Persuasion
One of my favorite stories from 1998, just as we preparing to launch the now-iconic ‘truth’ anti-tobacco campaign, involves my encounter with a PR-guy supporter of Big Tobacco. In a voice that oozed confidence and patronizing sympathy, he told me, “go for it, Rob, and do your worst. You’re never going to be able to …
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Mr. Spock’s Lament to Polarized Right America
In 2012, two of the most eminent Congressional scholars, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute, published an article entitled: “Let’s Just Say it: The Republicans are the Problem.” A key quote: “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of …
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The Elephant in the Room for Social Change Non-profits
As we witness the introduction of GOP candidates making statements about gay marriage, immigration, climate science, health care and the government plot to invade Texas, I wonder how the leaders of non-profit organizations are reacting. No, not the political organizations who are non-profits in name only. I mean the true non-profits – foundations, health voluntaries, …
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