Communications about Aquaculture are key
Odd Grydeland, FishfarmingXpert, June 5, 2015
The importance of getting your story out, and making it stick, cannot be underestimated.
This was the message to delegates at this week's Aquaculture Canada conference, who were reminded about the large amount of misinformation circulating among the general public, and why these messages were made in a way that made them stick. The same strategy could be used to get the industry’s messages to resonate with Joe Public.
Organizers of the session recommended that aquaculture staff involved with communication issues pick up a copy of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
According to the brothers: “Made to Stick made the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and was retired from the Business Week list after a 24-month run. It was named on several 'best of the year' lists and was selected as one of the best 100 business books of all time”.
The book suggests that the main components of someone’s strategic message should include the following principles:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
The session included a presentation by the former BC Minister of Forests and Minister of Agriculture, Larry Pedersen, who talked about strategic communications. With experience from the attempts of environmental groups to convince European customers to stop buying forestry products from BC due to their belief that logging practises here were detrimental to the environment, Pedersen suggested that it was largely the same people that were opposed to the development of salmon aquaculture in BC. He said that it was the ultimate dialogue between industry, government and the “saner minds” of the environmental movement (ENGOs) that finally ended the “War in The Woods”.
The ultimate acknowledgement that both the forestry industry and ENGO’s shared some very specific values led to the development of new rules based on compromises made by both sides, and the war ended. Pedersen said that there is no point in trying to involve the extreme segment(s) of the environmental community, as their views and opinions will never change, no matter how compelling the factual, scientific knowledge is, and they are not interested in talking about shared values.
Industry participants at the meeting stated that they had managed to identify some shared values with organizations like the (BC) Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform and the World Wildlife Fund, which resulted in the establishment of a set of standards that the world’s salmon farming industry is now working to live up to.
