Utah High School
Clean Air Marketing Contest

About

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Professors Edwin Stafford (Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, USU) and Roslynn Brain McCann (USU Extension Sustainability) are working to help improve Utah’s air quality via a statewide high school clean air marketing contest including Cache, Carbon, Grand, Salt Lake, and San Juan counties in Utah and Franklin County, Idaho. Nearly 1,000 students were involved in the contest for the 2023-2024 year.

Building on the contest’s successful launch in Cache Valley in 2015, the expanded contest’s goals are to (1) inform high school teens learning to drive to recognize local air pollution, understand the pollution problems associated with their new driving privilege, and learn driving behaviors that can lessen their personal impact (e.g., refraining from idling, carpooling, trip-chaining, taking the bus, walking, biking, etc.); and (2) have those high school teens create educational outreach public service announcements about how people can reduce their personal impact on local air pollution aimed at their peers and local residents.

Students involved with the contest are educated about Utah’s air pollution problems, its sources, ways to reduce air pollution, and social marketing communication techniques used by marketing professionals for creating memorable, effective public service announcements (e.g., use of parody and humor, call-to-action, rational and emotional appeals, etc.). In essence, environmental science, art, and savvy marketing are integrated, where the high school students learn about how to craft persuasive clean air social messages that can resonate with their peers and local residents. Many winning entries over the years have been funny, edgy, provocative, and related to teen pop culture and values.

Prizes have been donated generously by local businesses, the City of Logan, non-profit organizations, and concerned citizens. For 2024, about $6,000 in cash, gift cards, and merchandise was donated and given to students designing winning public service announcements at both the high school and state levels. Winning submissions are used for education outreach across the state each year.

Each high school selects their winners by mid-January, awards them with $50 gift cards, and their top public service announcements enter into the statewide competition, where entries are evaluated by a panel of prominent judges. State winners are eligible to win cash awards of $100 or more, and are announced every February at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at USU in Logan.

Self-reported measures by teens involved in the contest indicate that teens perceive to be empowered to make a difference as “change agents.” They report that the contest does educate them about local air pollution and that they are more willing to act on preserving air quality. Some evidence also indicates that they are influencing their parents to engage in preserving air quality as well (in what McCann and Stafford call “the inconvenient youth” effect).

Future plans for the contest involve expanding it to additional counties across Utah.