The Pew Center on Global Climate Change
The Challenge
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change hopes to persuade government and corporate decision-makers to mandate practical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The Pew Center's primary audience is federal and state policymakers (e.g., senators and congressmen) and Fortune 500 CEOs.
To influence these highly sought-after decision makers, the Pew Center must:
- increase its "share of influence" in the publications they read
- sway public opinion among their constituents and customers
"We need the media to be our mouthpiece" says Katie Mandes, Director of Communications of The Pew Center on Global Climate Change. To reach national policymakers, Tier 1 publications must be targeted, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Forbes Magazine. But editors and journalists at these publications are the most difficult and elusive to reach.
Even so, influencing public opinion among a national audience is perhaps a greater challenge, given that the Pew Center's communications resources consist of only two staff and an annual non-payroll budget of less than $150K, which also needs to fund website development, search engine advertising, and freelance writers – limiting the funds available for a media contact database, press conferences, and press release distribution.
