I recently learned about an interesting anti-littering campaign that started in Texas in 1985.
First off, I don’t know anything about Texas. I haven’t even stepped foot into their land.
But from what I’ve read online, they had a serious littering problem back then. If it got to the point where they had to launch an entire public campaign about it, then I can only imagine how dirty the streets were. It was so bad that the state had to spend $20 million every year to clean up their roads. That’s equal to over $51 million today.
And most of the litter was caused by the younger people.
Meddling kids, as every Scooby-Doo villain would say.
So Texas’ Department of Transportation hired an ad agency, GSD&M, to develop an anti-littering campaign that targets the younger people, and the co-founder, Tim McClure, was tasked with creating the campaign.
At first, he thought about how he could create a new campaign while incorporating the word ‘litter,’ which he got stuck on.
Then while he was out on a walk, he thought back to the times when his mom would yell at him about how his room was always a mess.
He thought the word ‘mess’ would better describe garbage rather than ‘litter,’ which was more commonly used to describe cat litter.
That’s when his idea hit, and he went off and created the slogan, “Don’t Mess With Texas.”
When they pitched it to the Department of Transportation, they shot it down at first. But they eventually gave the OK in 1985 and launched it.
After running for a few years, the results?
Littering was reduced by 71% in four years.
But of course, it’s good to know why it worked.
From my brief research, I never found an analysis of why it worked. So I’m just going to briefly tell you why I think it worked.
When you see “Don’t Mess With Texas,” there’s a sense of comradery, a sense of belonging amongst the Texas residents. It’s as if they’re telling everyone,
“Yes, don’t mess with our land! Don’t mess with our state!”
Not to mention, a lot of celebrities jumped on the campaign bandwagon, which spread awareness even further.
And whatever celebrities do or get behind, it becomes a cool trend, which young people always love to follow.
But when it comes to learning the psychological factors, one of my favorite resources to turn to is Joseph Sugarman’s The Adweek Copywriting Handbook.
If you don’t know, Joseph Sugarman was one of the best copywriters in his time, and he put up live copywriting seminars that had four figure price tags on them.
Lucky for you and me, he condensed his seminar materials into this book at a very affordable and generous price.
And even though the focus of the book is on print ads, a lot of the principles can be applied to emails (And even sales letters) as well.
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