NAILED IT! THE PALAU PLEDGE

Welcome to Nailed It!, a regular blog series focussing on examples of excellence in values-based messaging. Each blog post will focus on one of the main categories of helpful values – Universalism, Benevolence and Self-Direction. They come from not for profit organisations, political campaigns, governments and private companies.

We hope our examples provide useful inspiration for your own messages and narrative development. For more on values based messaging you can check out our Resources page or this quick introduction.

Now we really want to go to Palau. And do the right thing when we get there.

The issues: sustainable tourism, environment

This example comes from: The Palau Visitors Authority

Strategic context: Palau is a small Pacific Island nation that depends on tourism but needs visitors to behave sustainably while they are there. The Tourism Authority came up with the idea of asking visitors to sign a pledge in their passports on arrival. To date, the pledge has been signed by hundreds of thousands of visitors and endorsed by activists, politicians, business leaders and celebrities.

This video is shown as a compulsory in-flight movie on every inbound flight to Palau. The creative team behind this video hosted workshops with local children to identify the right language and tone.

The values it’s priming are: Universalism [Protecting the Environment], Benevolence [Mature Love, True Friendship]

What we love about it:  Rather than simply tell visitors to take sustainable action while visiting the island – or describe the penalties they might face if they don’t - the video uses intrinsic values primes to frame a fable about connectedness, friendship and harmony without blaming the audience.

More info here: https://palaupledge.com