My CO2 Space

When it comes to online advertising, the UK government is certainly trying. I learned some more about the 'Act On CO2' campaign today courtesy of 2 great blog posts. The first on The Coffee House revealed that David Milliband (UK Environment Secretary) has a blog that links to an Act On CO2 MySpace site, more on that in a minute. Second was GoodGreenPR which provided useful insight into the role of PR as an agent of change with regards to global warming and related issues.Thanks to Caroline Wilson for republishing the article from Behind the Spin online.

The Act On CO2 campaign is the first stage of the Climate Change Communication Initiative, a £6m investment aimed (according to Caroline Wilson's article) at "communicating about sustainability over the next three years". Online social communication is very much part of this. The MySpace page myspace.com/actonco2 attempts to engage in a largely youth-dominated but increasingly commercial online network, which makes me wonder why the campaign's personified as "Male...37 years old" on the profile.

There are links on the page to various government departments (there are obviously some SEO link strategists at work in the government) including the 'Act On CO2' site itself. Most interesting to me are the links to 'social site Flickr & YouTube.

The YouTube channel has attracted 3 subscribers and 162 channel views but only 2 videos have been watched. Little surprise given the content - I don't think many people are interested in watching a collection of videos, the first 4 of which feature interviews with/speeches from David Milliband. 3 subscribers, 4 friends and one comment are hardly impressive usage statistics, but hey, maybe a little link equity from my blog will help them!



There is one comment that reads:

" death to the new world order!subscribe my channel and add me as a friend!:)"

...TUGS10197's profile page is similarly anti-establishment with clips from the Hollywood film V for Vendetta and other videos about gang violence and the KKK.

The areas of engagement here are clever but the content woeful and the lack of understanding that these spaces cannot be easily controlled or spun to desired ends is obvious.

The Flickr profile flickr.com/photos/actonco2 is similarly dull and far from useful but please watch the slideshow here if you want to see more pictures of Mr Milliband and others standing at a podium speaking at the Citizen's Summit on Climate Change.

There is at least some interactivity, such as the option to embed this little banner on your own site...

I really don't see how any of this will ever help to reduce CO2 emissions, perhaps a Facebook 'Act On CO2' branded carbon calculator application would work better, or a video forum where people can discuss how they effectively cut their emissions would work better.