Former US vice president Al Gore and a nonprofit climate group have begun what they say will be a three-year US$300 million advertising blitz to recruit 10 million advocates to seek laws and policies that can cut greenhouse gases.
The campaign was introduced in a 60 Minutes appearance by Gore on Sunday. The first ad, posted online at wecansolveit.org, compares the challenge of fighting global warming to the invasion of Normandy and the civil rights movement.
That advertisement will start appearing on television today, said the Alliance for Climate Protection, a group created by Gore in 2006.
It will be followed by ads tailored to particular audiences and media, including the Internet.
About half the anticipated budget has been raised from donations, mostly from anonymous benefactors, people involved in the campaign said.
In a presentation on the campaign last week, Cathy Zoi, who heads the alliance and was formerly a Clinton administration environmental aide, said the goal was to replicate the marketing success of enduring public service ad campaigns like the frying egg depicted as "your brain on drugs" and the 1971 advertisement featuring a tearful American Indian considering a polluted landscape.
Communications experts have noted that the issue rarely shows up on voters' lists of worries.
Zoi said the goal was to recruit people she described as "influentials."
"These are people who talk to five times as many people a day as the typical person, who derive self-esteem from having new information," she said.
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