Volume 3, No. 18. September 26,2003
AZA Report
Eye
opener
The striptease act was one thing; altering the swearing-in ceremony was the
more noteworthy point. Both came at the closing banquet of the American Zoo
and Aquarium Association’s Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Before
swearing in the AZA’s new board members, Immediate Past President John
Lewis at the podium removed his coat and tie and donned a T-shirt—bearing
Aza’s eyes and the legend “I Am Aware” —handed out by the
association’s National Awareness Campaign Committee earlier in the week.
Then, instead of merely replying to their charges with “I accept,”
Lewis had the new board members repeat “I accept and I am aware.”
“Awareness”
was the catchword of this year’s conference. AZA has, for the past couple
of years, mounted a campaign with the help of Proprietary Media, a New York
media and consulting firm, to improve public understanding of both the organization
and its mission. Part of that campaign was creating a cartoon mascot, a hybrid
creature called Aza, and working with former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley on a
survey of children and a resulting white paper (THE
LOOP, April 25, 2003).
This
year the campaign reached groundswell proportions, thanks to the efforts of
the AZA’s National Awareness Committee, a blue ribbon leadership committee
formed last year. “What we realized last year was that everybody was not
at the same stage of understanding,” said Lyn Frankel, senior director
of marketing at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, and vice chair
of the committee. The campaign also honed its intent: with the primary message
being wildlife and habitat conservation, it is not so much promoting AZA itself
but the collective that is AZA. “We can be much more impactful if we operated
with one voice of 215 strong institutions and 33,000 experts,” Frankel
said.
Last
year the campaign forged a five-point plan: to secure buy-in from institutions
at the director level, to establish leadership, to generate understanding of
the concept, to draft goals and objectives and a subsequent marketing plan,
and to improve internal communications. The first is in progress: 160 institutions
have signed on. “We’re 80 percent there,” Frankel said. The leadership
has been established via the committee. The drafting of objectives and the marketing
plan is still under way, and internal communications was the key component of
this month’s conference, highlighted by a morning general session devoted
to the National Awareness Campaign and culminating with Lewis’ visual and
verbal statement at the banquet.
AZA
institutions traditionally partner in almost all aspects of their missions,
but that communication “is in silos, if you will,” Frankel said. “The
animal people cooperate with the animal people, the marketing people communicate
with the marketing people. This is breaking down the silos and getting everybody
talking with everybody else.”
Generating
understanding of the concept is, perhaps, one of the most difficult challenges
within and without the organization. The committee under took extensive surveys
of zoo patrons over the past year, compiling data that reinforced the information
Proprietary Media had previously gathered. According to the surveys, the American
people are concerned about wildlife, they love zoos and aquariums, but they
don’t know what those AZA-accredited institutions do outside their walls
in regards to worldwide conservation efforts and species survival programs.
Significantly, while several other organizations push conservation agendas,
the surveys indicated that many people “don’t know who to trust,”
Frankel said. “They want someone to tell them what to do. They trust us.
They want us to take that role.”
That role can be profound when it is voiced with 33,000 animal experts in 215 respected institutions, not to mention the fact those institutions represent the one tangible link between the civilized world and the wildlife world: the animals themselves. “We have the collective expertise, we have the physical contact with people,” Frankel said. “Our animals connect with people in an emotional way. In order to change minds and activate hands, you’ve got to open eyes. It’s a winning recipe for high-impact education.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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