Sell the sizzle, not the sausage

[Chris Wells]

My friend Nathan from Transition Malvern sent me a guide to public-facing Climate Change advocacy that's really good. I strongly recommend everyone in the Comms and Awareness/Education teams take a look - I've only read the intro so far but it already makes a lot of sense. It's called "Sell the sizzle, not the sausage" and you can download it here:

http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Sellthesizzle.pdf

Let me know what you think.

[George Latham]

Now I've got confused by the ordering of the comments...
Re the visioning thing... you might want to look at Forest Row's Vision doc. I've a hard copy - but pdf here (I see they are on ning too..):
http://transitionforestrow.ning.com/notes/EDAP

[George Latham]

Looks very interesting... also have a look at this publication from Green Alliance called 'From Hot Air to Happy Endings' which also has a contribution from futerra along with many others...

http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/grea_p.aspx?id=4686

[Paul Mitchell-Gears]

website animation <- yes!
blog comments <- oh yeah, you're right. that's a bit counterintuitive isnt it.

[Chris Wells]

They're in reverse order because they're blog comments (this is Ning's blog section, after all...)

[Chris Wells]

Might make a wicked front page animation for the (new) website, don't you think?

[Paul Mitchell-Gears]

Your idea sounds brilliant btw!

[Paul Mitchell-Gears]

Aren't these comments in reverse order? Seems like a bug to me

[Chris Wells]

That's where great imagination and creativity can really persuade where words can't. For instance, I was in the Black Lion Dining Rooms last night and saw all their old photos of the Kilburn area from 100 years ago. Couldn't we create some sort of beautiful animation of Kilburn Then, Now and in the Future? It would be a fairly simple task to do the first two and then we could convene some kind of envisioning workshop to talk about what we'd like to see in 100 years' time in Kilburn - I could Photoshop the results... Could be a very powerful way of looking at what we want to happen.

[Paul Mitchell-Gears]

Thanks! Food for thought. I think that focussing on a positive future is something that Transition does really well. However it is by nature very multi-pronged which while a good thing can sometimes make for a lack of clarity in its vision. I guess the key thing when communicating it is to focus on those areas of appeal to the audience.