Media tools to reach and teach.

• Author: Palmer, Christopher N.
• Position: Leadership in Environmental Initiatives - Special Section: Answering the Call for Leadership

As threats to the environment and natural ecosystems have become more complex and pervasive, the National Audubon Society has broadened its array of strategies to meet the challenge. We have worked for legislation. Set up wildlife sanctuaries. Launched educational initiatives. Conducted research.

In the process, we have earned a reputation as one of America's leading environmental voices. And we have worked comfortably and successfully with companies as diverse as General Electric, Waste Management, and Motown Record Co.

Audubon has collaborated with major corporations for one reason -- it has been in our concrete interest. We have benefitted from business expertise, garnered both from business executives who serve on Audubon's board and from business experts with whom we have partnered on environmental projects, and we have had the opportunity to shape the views and awareness of corporate decisionmakers in the process. We suspect that our business partners have enjoyed similar benefits in return.

Critical to our environmental mission is the work of National Audubon Society Productions. We use media technologies of all kinds to foster citizen action for a sustainable environment. School videos, interactive CDs, IMAX films, dramatic movies, computer screens, to say nothing of living room TV sets, are crucial vehicles for conveying the idea that the Earth is ours to save.

Some of our most successful business partnerships have involved Audubon's media projects, which tend to offer corporations unique and high-visibility opportunities for demonstrating their environmental concern to important publics.

Using documentaries, debate programs, music videos, dramatic films, computer software, and other media, Audubon Productions reaches far beyond the "card-carrying" environmental community. In fact, we target our messages at three different markets.

Interestingly, these are markets highly prized by corporations. As corporate marketing efforts emphasize more and more "relationship" marketing, it is increasingly clear that attention must be paid to values or incentives that reach far beyond price and convenience to secure customer loyalty. And one of the values clearly on the rise is environmentalism. Customers prefer to associate with companies that are perceived as environmentally sensitive.

One market for Audubon consists of special individuals the Roper Organization calls "Influentials" -- the folks at whom corporations aim their image advertising...