Holidays, Humor, and Twitter Boost the National Audubon Society’s Image

Camilla Cerea/Audubon

The National Audubon Society, for years, was the butt of jokes poking fun at its old-fashioned image. It couldn’t catch a break, even when profiled in the New York Times in 1991. The article’s biting takeaway: Audubon may never shake its “old-fogy image.”

Fast forward to 2018, and that old bird is thriving. The group no longer brings to mind only images of Grandpa in a Christmas sweater holding his binoculars. Today, the nonprofit is active on Twitter and engages with supporters through #BirdsTellUs, a social media campaign that pushes supporters to promote the safety of birds by addressing climate change.

One key to its revamp, Audubon realized, was to be both serious and satirical.

CEO David Yarnold, a former journalist, knows better than most that the way a legacy charity is featured has a longstanding effect on its ability to attract and keep members. Acknowledging that getting results online can be a Herculean task, he said in a 2016 Chronicle column: You have to reach people on their phones, tablets, computers, apps, maybe while they are waiting in line with five other apps open and three people yelling orders.

So why not embrace attention-grabbing pieces in the Onion, the satirical online site that embellishes and invents stories, to reach a new audience of meme lovers?

One Onion post has Yarnold saying, “We’ve seen quite a few pictures of birds, but hardly ever the real thing.” Other accounts claim Yarnold punched a goose and turned into a flapping birdman. Another riffs on the perils of membership dues. Humorous mentions in the Onion, the Daily Beast, and BuzzFeed, too, prove the power of being in on the joke rather than being the joke.

Why (Not) So Serious?

Audubon’s not-so-subtle shift in media strategies started with Yarnold, but Beaconfire RED, a marketing and consulting company, helped kick it into high gear.

Jared Schwartz, vice president for strategy and innovation at Beaconfire, said their goal was to make humor match the mission. Their work with Audubon led to two awards.

About four years ago, Audubon wanted to create a more attention-grabbing — a.k.a. “sticky” — campaign to highlight parallels between climate change and corresponding environmental risk for birds. If enough people saw the connection, Audubon hoped to receive many gifts and pledges between $20 and $500.

The group shared a “Talk Turkey” infographic that explains how to have a conversation with dear “Aunt Sally,” who loves birds but doesn’t think much about climate change.

The illustration offers tips for engaging a skeptical loved one in a conversation about how climate change threatens birds. The ultimate goal: inspiring a gift to the society. Here’s one scenario:

“Look! Aunt Sally, I think I just saw a bald eagle!” (Other options include the burrowing owl, Allen’s hummingbird, and the roseate spoonbill).

“Yes! I recognize the call!” Aunt Sally replies. (Aunt Sally might also simply say, “Oh, where?”).

Then you’re instructed to focus the conversation on birds, which, if all goes well, will prompt her to say, “That’s terrible! What can I do?”

“Donate.”

In either holiday-inspired hypothetical, said Elizabeth Sorrell, vice president of audience engagement at the National Audubon Society, the goal is to get out of the weeds and tap into a relatable human interest. Once that’s done, it is easier to weave in statistics that say nearly half of birds are threatened by climate change. That’s not only less annoying, they predict, it’s also more effective.

Humor Complements Mission

#BirdsTellUs acts as a catchy slogan for Audubon. It is succinct and easy to remember.

When it started, the #BirdsTellUs goal was to log 5,000 Twitter mentions of the hashtag during two weeks in 2015. Instead, it was tweeted more than 9,300 times during that period. And “Influencers” such as the writer Margaret Atwood and the environmentalist Bill McKibben, among others, have shared it.

Beaconfire RED and Audubon came up with the hashtag jointly, Sorrell said. The effort has increased the number of social-media mentions, according to Google Analytics. The group keeps the hashtag relevant by tying it to current events. For example, the CEO recently used the hashtag to post on Twitter that the midterm election results are “good news for birds.”

It’s not all fun and games, however. When Yarnold tweets out a story about climate change affecting birds, he adopts a somber tone: “Audubon’s science shows climate change is the number-one threat to our birds,” he tweets. “Throughout history, birds have been the canary in the coal mine, and this new report shows we need even more urgently to secure a healthy future for birds and people. #BirdsTellUs.”

This “digital first” strategy is a far cry from 1991 when cellphones were fat and Audubon was perhaps too stiff. Now that Audubon seems more like a cool dad, it would be fair if it asked the New York Times, with love and snark, “Who’s the old fogy now?”

Audubon

Corrections: A previous version of this article said that #BirdsTellUs has been tweeted 9,300 since 2015 instead of saying it was tweeted that many times during a two-week period in 2015. It also said its new media strategy was started by Beaconfire RED instead of by David Yarnold, though Beaconfire RED ramped it up.