One of the reasons that the movement to slow down global warming was so successful is that global warming campaigns and climate change advertisements were widely sponsored by various organizations. For example, the Environmental Defense Fund launcheda "Fight Global Warming"campaign in 2008 that produced several public media tools to help raise public awareness. ("Help fight global warming" 2011) For example, their "Train" advertisement was published on several websites, including YouTube and was played on different TV Channels. ("About the Fight Global Warming campaign" 2011)
The Department of Climate Change in Australia also used television to spread the message on climate change. The Department of Climate Change invested 3,869,081 USD for advertisements on metropolitan and regional stations. Among all of the used media mediums, television proved most successful, “delivering a national reach of 88.5 percent at 1+ within the target demographic. (Climate Change Household Action Campaign Evaluation Report, 2009)
Since advertisement played a significant role in supporting climate change campaigns, advertisement should also be used to raise awareness about an equally important global problem of biodiversity loss.
Proposition: We propose that ICB creates a 30 second high-impact video that can be used as TV commercial and on promotional websites. Member countries would be required to play the commercial on national channels at least 4 times a day. According to The Museum of Broadcast Communication, in the United States, "prime time" when television viewing is at its highest throughout the day is between 7PM and 11PM. (Prime Time, 2011). Thus, we suggest a time-line for commercial showings that are biased towards these times.
Commercial Time 1: 7AM - 12AM
Commercial Time 2: 12 AM - 6 PM
Commercial Time 3 and 4: 6PM - 11 PM
Cost of Proposition: Currently, 30 second advertisements on top-ranked channels during 'prime time' cost up to 325,000 USD. (Prime Time, 2011) If each nation is asked to display the commercial 4 times a day, the cost will exceed 1.2 million dollars per nation. This is less than one third of the sum that the Department of Climate change in Australia used to advertise the climate change problem.