Running head: IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENT ONE CHANGE AT A TIME 1

Improving the Environment One Change at a Time

One Change

Sarah Keuhl

Blake Harward

Kayden Groves

Bridget Angus

Julian Santoyo

Salt Lake Community College

Business Communications
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Improving the environment can feel like an insurmountable challenge at times, because

let’s face it, there are so many different problems that need to be solved. After conducting

research as a team we’ve concluded that approaching these issues at a business level can be

instrumental in creating and leading positive change.

Purpose / Objective

The purpose of this campaign is to inspire and create behavioral changes in individuals

and companies in the Salt Lake valley. To share our message, we will use channels readily

accessible to smartphone users via social media as well as strategically placed print collateral.

Our campaign will focus on the small changes a individual businesses can incorporate to become

ecologically sound.

Audience

While we would love our message to reach a large audience, we are initially focused on

individuals and businesses located in the Salt Lake valley. In 2018, the U.S Small Business

Association estimated Utah was home to 277,140 small businesses and in 2015, it was

determined that small business employed 557,794 people, or 46.3% of the workforce – this

leaves us with a large and local target audience. (SBA, 2017)

In 2015, the U.S Small Business Association determined the top 5 industries for Utah's

small businesses belonged to the following:

 Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

 Construction
IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENT ONE CHANGE AT A TIME 3

 Health Care and Social Assistance

 Retail Trade

 Real Estate, Rental and Leasing

(SBA, 2017)

We believe that if we can get traction within these local industries, then we will eventually target

a broader audience. The Salt Lake valley population is growing quickly and businesses are

thriving in the state of Utah – statistically speaking, in 2017, Utah grew at an annual rate of

3.9%, which was faster than the overall US growth rate of 3.4%. (SBA, 2017) If we can gain

traction now, then we can have a significant impact on how businesses operate locally for years

to come, which will result in less waste in our landfills and allow us to reuse these materials, and

ultimately result in a cleaner, greener future. Below are additional research points, which has

helped determining how to utilize our channels:

Economy

 In 2016, the U.S Small Business Association estimated that the median income for

individuals self-employed at their own incorporated businesses was $50,918, while

individuals self-employed at their own unincorporated firms was $19,462. (SBA, 2016)

 The 2017 U.S Census Bureau for Utah estimates the median household income is

$50,353. (Census, 2017)

 In 2016, the U.S Small Business Association estimated that the median income for

individuals self-employed at their own incorporated businesses was $50,918, while

individuals self-employed at their own unincorporated firms was $19,462. (SBA, 2016)
IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENT ONE CHANGE AT A TIME 4

Work

 The 2017 U.S Census Bureau for the Salt Lake County estimates a population of

1,029,655 – of these, 50.3% is male and 49.7% is female. In 2012, the U.S Small

Business Association estimated 63% of small businesses in Utah were owned by males.

(Census, 2017)

Population

 The 2017 U.S Census Bureau for the Salt Lake County estimates the median age of the

common person is 30.8. (Census, 2017)

 The 2016 U.S Census Bureau for the Salt Lake County estimates that 54.8% of

households were owned by married-couple families. (Census, 2016)

 The 2017 U.S Census Bureau for the Salt Lake County estimates a total of 342,622

households. Of which, 70.8% were family households, 36.2% with children under 18.

(Census, 2017)

Ethnicity

 The 2017 U.S Census Bureau for the Salt Lake County estimates the racial makeup of the

county was 65.0% non-Hispanic White, 2.5% Black, 1.1% Native American, 5.6% Asian,

1.7% Pacific Islander, and 2.8% from two or more races. 21.6% of the population were

Hispanic or Latino of any race. (Census, 2017)

Education
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 The 2017 U.S Census Bureau for the Salt Lake County estimates 87.5% of the population

has a high school degree or higher, while 44.4% of the population has a bachelor's degree

or higher. (Census, 2017)

Messaging Goals

Our goal as a team for this campaign and target audience is everyone, the broad

spectrum and demographic can help us achieve our goal. The goal is “One Change” no matter

how big or small the change may be it makes a huge difference for a better environment.

Think

• Understand how small changes businesses can make every day.

• Understand tools available to help make changes.

• Understand importance of making changes now.

Feel

• Make a list of changes you can make that are important to you.

• See how changes others have made have impacted life styles.

• Research the best way to change to make the biggest difference.

Do

• Execute plan of action for change

• Evaluate if changes made are effective and make alteration to those that are not.

• Be diligent, add to your change and expand your options for change.

Key Messages
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There are several Key Messages that we feel are important for our audience to gain in each of

our communications that will inspire the greatest impact.

 Information - we will be sharing important information and data about the current

state of our environment with many of our messages is critical. This is designed to

cause concern with our audience.

 Emotion – We want our messages to create an emotion that is relatable for our

audience, we believe this will create the inspiration needed to change.

 Action – In many of our messages we will suggest one change our audience can make

that will have a positive impact on our environment.

 Logo established across the platforms for messages.

Channels / Media

With businesses being our target market, we chose different forms of social media as our

key channels of communications. Online communication allows us to communicate our research,

brand, and message simply to our audience. Below are our chosen channels of communications:

 Instagram: This social media channel having a highly engaged community is great

for cause awareness. It simply grabs the attention of the intended audience

through pictures and short messaging. This is a great way to educate our target

market on simple tips to have an eco-friendly workplace.

 Twitter: Hand in hand with Instagram, our twitter communications will be used to

attract our audience to our cause and educate them on how they can join the

initiative. (Remove)
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 Blog: Once we have attracted our audience, we hope to continue educating them

through sharing stories, examples, and answering common questions on our blog.

In hope, this is where we will establish credibility and authority for our clients.

 Poster: Although most of our audience can be reached through the other social

media platforms, we want to make sure that our message resonates with our

audience. By sharing our posters, it will reinforce our message not only digitally

but physically.

 YouTube Video: Our online video will be used as an additional resource our

audience can view in order to learn more about our brand and message. We will

create our video using drone footage and adobe premiere pro.

Tactical Planning

We have broken our project down into three-week cycle, where we focused on reaching

our target market, with the right messages, at the right time. Below are the details of our three-

week communications strategy:

Who (Audience) What (Message) How (Channel) When (Timing)

Small/Local  The first week will be Instagram: Week 1: July 9-13
Businesses focused on introductions. - Introduction post  All posts will be
Goal: Obtain 5  Our post will be primarily (Sarah) shared on
followers focused on how businesses - Tip #1 (Sarah) Tuesdays and
can build an eco-friendly - Tip #2 (Blake) Thursdays.
work environment and why Twitter: (Remove)
it matters. - Introduction post
(Blake)
- Tip #1 (Blake)
- Tip #2 (Sarah)
Blog:
- Introduction post
(Sarah)
- Tip #1 (Sarah)
- Tip #2 (Blake)
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Small/Local  Our posts will be primarily Instagram: Week 2: July 16-20

Businesses focused on sharing stories
Goal: Obtain 5 of businesses who have an
followers eco-friendly workplace and
how they got there.
Small/Local  Our posts will be primarily
Businesses focused on our call to
Goal: Obtain 5 action. How to measure
followers small and simple wins of
(Total:15) becoming eco-friendly.
 Tip #3 (Bridget)  Key goal will be
 Tip #4 (Julian) the distribution of
Twitter: (Remove) our posters.
 Tip #3 (Bridget)
 Tip# 4 (Julian)
Blog:
 Tip #3 (Bridget)
 Tip #4 (Julian)
Poster:
 Create Poster
(Kayden)
 Distribute
poster to 10+
places
(Bridget/Sarah)
Instagram: Week 3: July 23-27
 Tip #5 (Sarah)
 Tip #6 (Julian)
Twitter: (Remove)
 Tip #5 (Blake)
 Tip #6 (Bridget)

YouTube Video
 Create/Post
Video (Kayden)

Conclusion

The research we have conducted and shared will give us a good platform to communicate

effectively with our audience and give us good results. We are excited about this initiative and

hope to inspire our audience enough to make at least one change to make the world a better

place.
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Learning Objectives

 Build collaborative team relationships to meet team goals.

o This project requires collaboration to accomplish the goals we have set. There are

a lot of moving pieces and deadlines that we would like to meet, so without

collaboration and building relationships our goals would be difficult to meet.

 Use current technology and business software to create business communications based on

audience and purpose.

o We are using current technology and social media platforms to communicate our

messages. We use design software to help enhance our messages for a more

professional look.

Debrief

This project, while rewarding, was very challenging through every step of the process. It

pushed us as a team to communicate with each other and depend on the principles we learned

during the semester to communicate our message to our target audience. It also stretched our

capabilities to mold ourselves into subject matter experts, then communicate this information in

effective and empowering channels. In the next few paragraphs, we will share a few things that

went well and what we would have done differently.

As a group we quickly agreed upon focusing our communications campaign on teaching

others how to become more environmentally friendly. Together we agreed we wanted to use our

channels as ways to educate and influence others to make changes. When we would regroup, it

was obvious that the core of what we wanted to accomplish was at the center of everyone’s

research. But, we soon realized that we were lacking a strong target audience. In a group
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discussion we came together and agreed that our material should be directed to businesses,

specifically Utah businesses. Looking back, it would have been more effective to decide on

purpose and then the audience before beginning our research.

After narrowing down our target audience we focused on our brand. We chose to use a

modern theme, seeing as almost all of our channels were geared toward social media. Together

we created the name one.Change which symbolized our message. Additionally, we built a brand

guide which helped the team create material which carried the same tone. One of the best things

we did before posting is we decided on our strategy and built a calendar with assignments to help

each individual contribute and plan their schedules accordingly. This was a great win for our

team!

Once the posting actually began we learned a few lessons very fast. First, twitter was not

attracting our audience and was not going to be an effective channel. As a group we decided to

put the work we had dedicated to our twitter presence into our blog and Instagram pages which

were bringing the most traffic. Second, while posting on Instagram, we realized that followers do

not stay engaged if you do not post often. In effort to drive our followers up, we decided to post

several times the last week of the project. This change worked for our strategy and increased

audience involvement from 1 to 2 likes, to anywhere from 4 to 10. We believe that our poster,

video, and blog worked the way we had hoped, but looking back we would have prepared more

material for Instagram and posted more often.

Overall, we feel that our group did a great job achieving our goal to effectively communicate

what changes business can make to become environmentally friendly. The materials we created

were modern, fresh, educational, and drove traffic between our channels. Additionally, we all felt

that we learned how to alter our communication to be directed towards a business, and not just
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the individual. We are excited about what we created, learned, and developed as we completed

this project.

Works Cited

SBA Office of Advocacy. Small Business Profile. Retrieved from

https://www.sba.gov/advocacy/2017-small-business-profiles-states-and-territories

U.S Census Bureau. QuickFacts. Retrieved from

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/saltlakecitycityutah/PST045217