The Benshi

I cannot say enough good things about the CDC’s Zombie Preparedness Campaign, and now it’s won a “WOW!” Award for P.R. And equally deserving is Andy Revkin of the big award he won for his Dot Earth blog. These are things I love.

There could be no more appropriately named award for the CDC’s Zombie Disaster Preparedness campaign than the “WOW!” award. Indeed. Wow!

zombies eat brains

ZOMBIES KICK DISASTER ASS

I’m about raved-out on this topic. I don’t know how much higher of a thumbs up I could give it. I was at CDC again this week doing another communications workshop (my 4th in the past year — they are such a great group of folks there). The same day, Dave Daigle and his colleagues who co-created the amazing Zombie Preparedness campaign were in NYC for the Platinum P.R. Awards where they won 2 of the 5 categories for which they were nominated.

I already gave the detailed account of why I feel this is a textbook case study in how NON-LITERAL communication can create revolutionary impacts. The people involved with communicating about climate change absolutely must take heed. The subject of “disaster preparedness” had become one of those topics at CDC where the prevailing attitude said, “you just can’t get people interested in disaster preparedness when there’s no disaster.”

These folks proved that sort of malaise to be 100% incorrect. So for all the climate clods who whine that, “you just can’t get people interested in a disaster that’s 50 years away,” I say, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

You just need to be creative. Which is something that hasn’t happened yet in the climate community, due to the staid, cautious, narrow, stiffling, politically correct attitudes that prevail at the top. No wonder a billion bucks was squandered over the past decade.

DOT EARTH GETS DESERVED RECOGNITION

Also in the winners circle this week is Andy Revkin with his Dot Earth blog at the NY Times. He became the first person to win for a second time the Communications Award given jointly by NAS, NAE and the Institute of Medicine.

He is simply the best voice out there on the subject of climate. If there’s anyone at all close to the genuine idea of “fair and balanced,” surely it is he. And he has the battle scars to prove it — routinely taking beatings in equal measures from the far right and the far left.

But most importantly, he is a true conversation leader with his blog — using it more often than not as a forum for his readers to talk amongst themselves.

Congratulations, Andy. So truly deserved.