The Challenge

To assist the then fledgling Green Communities initiative (GCI) in engaging ordinary citizens to adopt more sustainable actions.

CULLBRIDGE™ served as a social marketing advisor for the GCI until the Ontario Government ended its role in the initiative, and continues to serve in this capacity for a number of individual communities.

We also helped the Green Communities Association in developing its new Well Aware program.

Our Approach

We worked co-operatively with the 23 Green Communities and their province-wide marketing working group to identify the needs of the communities. 

We revised the social marketing section of the provincial GCI training curriculum for home advisors, blending tools from traditional social marketing and sales training with the community-based ones being identified at St. Thomas University by Dr. Doug McKenzie Mohr.  We were the primary social marketing trainer for the GCI communities, developed a social marketing toolkit for their use, and provided ongoing planning and implementation assistance.  In addition, we developed the initial marketing plan for Ottawa-Carleton’s initiative.

For the Well Aware program, we conducted research, established a baseline, and developed and pilot tested a strategy for mapping existing wells and promoting well stewardship. The research phase of this work included interviews with potential partners, focus groups held across Ontario, expert interviews, a literature review, and a survey of 400 well owners. 

Collaborators

McKenzie-Mohr Associates, Energy Matters, Green Community Association, Conservation Ontario, South Nation Conservation

Impact

The Green Communities have continued to thrive despite tough political and economic changes.  A key factor factor has been their recognized strength in delivering successful social marketing programs to households.

"Before Cullbridge worked with us, our social marketing skills were inconsistent and generally very rudimentary. This lack of expertise had been a real stumbling block. We knew we had to reach individuals in their homes and persuade them to take action and change behaviors, but we didn't know how to make that approach work. We needed a new way of thinking about things, but had not yet been able to articulate our needs very clearly."

"Cullbridge worked with us in a very creative and innovative manner, to help Green Communities define our requirements and apply social marketing in a practical way. They helped us understand community-based social marketing concepts and apply them to the Green Communities' programs so that we could affect the everyday actions of individuals."

"Cullbridge was very responsive to our needs, and worked well with the strong-minded individuals at each of the independent Green Community initiatives involved. The net result is that our project moved much further ahead, more quickly than originally anticipated." 

Wendy Walker, Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy (MOEE)

The first 50,000 copies of the resulting Well Aware booklet were so popular that in 2003 the Green Communities Association printed another 30,000.