Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin...

In general, I’m an advocate of Penrith City Council’s ‘Penrith is Here’ campaign. But today they are the butt of a rant of mine: have you seen the ‘Litter-Free Promise’ signs around? The great big banners strung up near some main intersections in the area?

Question for Penrith Council: Did ANYONE in charge of this campaign even show it to anyone outside of his or her cubicle? Because if they had, they would;

1. Realize that most of the text is too difficult to read from a moving car or even a stationary car that isn't at the very front of the lights, and

2. Realize that the sign’s main text (‘Take the Litter – Free Penrith Promise’) reads like a jumbled up slogan to free Penrith by taking litter, rather than the intended slogan to galvanize people to promise to make Penrith litter-free.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the text above it is the one that should be large: Love Penrith? That’s the one you want people to answer yes to if you want the next question to also be a yes. And to get them to say yes to that question needs some creativity if you want to reach the people littering.

I think part of the reason this gets my goat so much is that I think it is trying to emulate a fantastic and successful word-of-mouth campaign run in the 1980s called ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’. Mike Blair and Tim McClure of GSD&M were the brains behind it: when asked to create an anti-litter campaign, they pinpointed that 18-25 year old males in their beloved cars were the main culprits. The slogan was derived from a saying of one of their mums, and when it finally got past the polite and reserved Texan government department, it was printed on bumper stickers and given out for free at petrol stations state-wide. Then, once everyone already had the sticker on their cars and were familiar with it, they got a well-respected Texan musician to say the slogan on a TV ad (here) and mention it whilst performing for a much-followed Texan college football game. Job done. The slogan is as much a part of Texas now as the Lone Star AND most importantly, reduced litter in the following four years by 72%. Seventy two percent!

The reason it worked was- wait for it - they knew their target audience. I know, it's such a little thing in marketing eh? Not. NO WHERE in your Litter Management Strategy, PCC, do you define the target audience as anything other than the 'community'. Really!? The entire community litters? From the grannies to the Panthers fans to the school kids - they all litter the same amount!? As a result of actually identifying their target audience, the DMWT campaign worked because:

• Their slogan was in the same language as it’s target audience, an audience who wanted to be seen as rule-breakers (unlike the Penrith banners, as they seem to be politely targeting families. I’m going to take a wild guess that the majority of Penrith litterers are not the general 'community' but are the same image-focussed, mildly anarchic, anti-community 18-24 year-olds who are NOT going to download your PDF certificate taking the Promise...)
• They did the brainstorming and creative legwork to reach the target audience (don't even get me started on a comparison)
• They had the patience to see a slightly more complicated (but actually very low-cost) campaign through (see above.)

And as an added bonus, because the slogan and campaign was deemed as 'cool', the whole Texan community from the grannies to the footy fans to the school kids did take it on board. But only because one target audience was identified and made it visible.

Littering costs millions of dollars for states and councils. It's disgusting. Spend the freaking time, energy and creativity on a campaign and see the results. In short, stop being as lazy as the litterers. 

Bam. Rant over.*

*PCC, if you can show me the numbers that prove to me this campaign did work, I will retract all of the above in a heartbeat.