"That's Facebookable."
Not a day went by without some variation of that quote being uttered in the cubicled walls of Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever's national offices during 2010.
In this age of declining hunter numbers and the continued detachment of our society from the outdoors, we've added a habitat battlefield in cyberspace by launching aggressive campaigns to reach new audiences in 2010. I call this new theatre of battle "Cyber Conservation."
On the surface, it's easy to point a finger at the incongruent nature of marketing to folks gripping keyboards and joysticks with a message asking them to drop those devices and get outdoors. But in reality, taking our conservation message to their screens is pure Darwin adaptation to survive in today's battle for attention, members, and habitat acres.
Not only do today's new media tools allow us to "talk" about conservation to audiences that have raised their hand with interest in what we have to say, we can also add personality and immediacy to our messages far easier than in any of the more traditional mediums.
And in no uncertain terms, one of our goals is to make conservation "cool." Why is "coolness" important to a conservation organization? When you look across the landscape of this country and see our habitat losses, the massive decline in quail numbers across the southeast, Iowa's pheasant collapse, and the frighteningly low number of young bird hunters; it's easy to see we need to inspire the masses to pick up the cause of conservation.
Will cyber conservation make it cool to be a member of Pheasants Forever or Quail Forever?
