Week 12 Learning Journal Post

This post is a bit of a after-action review following our consulting exercise in BGIMGT566.

The experience was a huge hit with the class. It gave us the opportunity to experience how far we've come over the course of the quarter. It challenged us in a really fun way.

I was on the energy team. The experience of working together, even with brand new partners, was really strong and high level. Had we had the chance to meet for perhaps 2 hours more, I think we would have returned with a spot-on campaign idea. As it was, we ran out of time, mostly because we allowed ourselves to get stuck in solving the problem that was presented, and in doing that, got sidetracked. It was all good work, but I left feeling unresolved.

So the conversation continued, albeit, inside my head. It went a bit like this:

Insight: Social media is a communication tool, not a problem solving tool. It is good at broadcasting info via a wide network. Not so good at designing programs. I've noticed that conversations around energy often get bogged down in the complications, the details, and the frustration of seeing the huge gap between what is and what is possible. (And, yes, that is where the business opportunity lies, though I dare say, attempts to tap it, by and large, have not hit the zeitgeist quite yet). My goal is to become better at facilitating conversations that lead toward simple changes as opposed to ones that stymie us with complicated, seemingly irresolvable problems.

Our client came to us wanting to help energy auditors achieve a higher rate of converting home energy audits into homeowner action to reduce energy. We re-designed a process that would reduce or eliminate some of the barriers. It was a decent attempt at a business model for a couple hours effort, but to me, the social media component of our design felt more forced, than organic to the system.

With the benefit of morning-after hindsight, I did a mental do-over.

1. What is the underlying goal? Save energy (as opposed to selling home improvements).

2. Who has the power to do that? Our client came to us with a focus on energy auditors. Throughout our conversation, we bounced between auditors and home-owners as the audience. There are many ways the audit processes that we'd collectively experienced could be improved to lead to more "sales". But that is a design challenge more than a social media one. If energy auditors were a tightly knit group, perhaps active in a professional group or in a situation where several are active in a company where their role is similar and they can influence program design a social media campaign might be useful.One could imagine contests, incentives, shared among peers. My observation is that they are loosely affiliated, work in a wide variety of programs and employer relationships from utility to independent contractor to HVAC Sales. As such social media is not the best tool to reach them. So I switched my attention to homeowners. They have the ability to act or not act, and we can reach and connect them using social media.

3. What simple behavior change should we target? Our group got bogged down by the complexity of the larger issue. In doing that, we missed the chance to find something simple as the focus of a campaign.

Coming back to it, I decided to target light bulbs and shower heads. Lighting represents 11% of home energy use and is an easy and simple target. And like lighting, the aesthetics of lo-water shower heads has gotten pretty darned nice, and once installed, will lower hot water use for a lifetime. It is so easy. Upfront cost is minimal and long-term savings potential is great. Takes only minutes to implement. Why don't people just screw them in? That's a simple behavior change we can ask for.

Resulting campaign proposal: Just Screw It, a combination video/Rippl campaign using happy imagery, and played to the tune of Michael Jackson's song "Just Beat It".