TECH MESSAGING To demystify the ways biotechnology benefits us all, the industry needs to start talking BY BILL CANNON ©ALEX NABAUM 6 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN | WORLDVIEW
People need to know what biotechnology is, and on average they don’t. Loyal viewers of 1990s Sunday morning talk shows may recall a slogan that still sparkles with catchiness: “At BASF, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” In one example among the many now immortalized on YouTube, that line comes at the end of a lush montage that rolls behind a woman’s purring voice: “At BASF, we don’t make the cooler; we make it cooler. We don’t make the jeans; we make them bluer. We don’t make the toys; we make them tougher.” By advertising industry standards, the campaign was a smash hit. In 2002, toward the end of the blitz, the agency that produced the commercials basked in its awesomeness, issuing a press release that cited “nearly 70 percent of respondents recognized the slogan and 48 percent of all respondents both recognized it and correctly attributed it to BASF”—achieving a Madison Avenue Zen state called “true awareness.” Yet just two years later, The New York Times reported that BASF was changing direction. Why? Because when asked how BASF made things better, those surveyed responded with puzzled looks. So BASF rewrote its slogan, simply labeling itself “the chemical company.” That might work if you are a Fortune 500 company with a bottomless well of cash for advertising and rebranding. But what lessons can companies and trade groups lacking such war chests do to spread the word about the good things biotech brings to life and have it stick? FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE First, people need to know what biotechnology is, and on average they don’t. If you ask a handful of people on any street in the world to define biotechnology, they will probably talk about genetically engineered foods or foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It makes sense that most people would come up with that as a first example, because a recent Google search produced about 700,000 more hits for “biotechnology AND food” than for “biotechnology AND drugs,” and three times as many as “biotechnology AND fuel.” And while food is a fundamental part of biotechnology, it’s only a part. The other thing that most people don’t know is that biotechnology is not new. Even the term is nearly a century old—coined in 1919 by Hungarian engineer Karl Ereky. The application of the science is many centuries older. On a history timeline, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), lists the oldest example of the field as the Chinese using “the first antibiotic, moldy soybean curds” to treat boils in 500 BCE. Some far more recent evidence reveals the general public’s lack of knowledge about biotechnology. In 2003, for example, a poll from the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University concluded: “Americans see clear benefits to society from new developments in science and medicine but at the same time they hold strong reservations about new techniques in biotechnology such as human cloning and genetic therapy.” In many cases, the reservations about GMOs in food and concerns about human cloning get extended to the entire field, and in nearly all cases the concerns arise from very limited knowledge. CONNECTING THE DOTS I asked a few members of the Scientific American Worldview editorial board about ways of improving the public understanding of biotechnology, and several themes emerged: Be direct and persistent. Own what you do, explain what you’re good at and why it matters to your audience. Don’t assume your audience knows about your product—even in cases where some of the people you’re trying to reach actually work for the company making the product. Seek a receptive ear where people live and work and hang out online. Be proud of achievements and frank about failure, and root conversations about biotech in the familiar. “It’s all about how do you help consumers connect those dots,” says Mary Boote, CEO of the Global Farmer Network, which she describes as an international agricultural advocacy group “that gives farmers a voice in the global food security dialogue, with a vision of that helping farmers access the technology they need to boost production in sustainable ways.” For consumers in the developed world who enjoy a glass of wine or some cheese with that wine, Boote points out, “the enzymes used in both of those are genetically modified.” Though she balks at technology-denigrating neologisms like “Frankenfish”—which some activists use to describe a genetic mash-up in aquaculture—GMO is far from a dirty word to her. (See “Communication Breakdown,” Scientific American Worldview, 2015.) “It is a scientifically reviewed and supported technology that is allowing us to feed more people on less land with more efficient use of our natural resources,” Boote says. Such things are desirable, and increasingly essential, in a world whose middle class will number an estimated 4.9 billion by 2030. If we can grow a genetically modified fish a little faster and with less BIOTECH SUCCESS ... AND FAILURE 7
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