It’s Getting Hot In Here

Just came across this disturbing bit of boasting from the Hawthorn Group, a communications firm hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) about their work to promote “clean coal” during the general election.

The clean energy movement can score a victory in that the debate is shifting from whether to address global warming to how, whether to transition to clean energy to what clean energy really is and from if there should be a price on emissions to how it should be established and what to do with the revenue.

That said, we’re still up against one of the most highly-organized, well-funded propaganda campaigns in history, and it’s willing to play dirty.A claim to victory from Hawthorn Group:

ACCCE found a way to break through the clutter and noise and make our issue front and center. President-elect Obama and Senator McCain, their running mates and their surrogates adopted our language and included it as part of their stump speeches. ACCCE shaped the debate by finding supporters of the candidates and turning them into clean coal advocates.

Lessons the Hawthorn Group learned in promoting “clean” coal:

1. Social media requires socializing in the real world. Our YouTube videos became popular because they contained interactions between us and many voters in many states. It wasn’t just us talking TO people, it was us talking WITH people and making them part of the story.

2. “Positive” sells. We took a difficult, controversial issue and presented it positively, talked to people about being part of a solution, and had fun.

3. Devising and implementing a strategy that focused on going where the news was happening and the crowds were gathering gave us greater results than trying to make people and news come to us.

We in the real clean energy movement need to be paying attention to this.