SPI plans public relations onslaught

The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. (Washington, DC) plans a multiyear, internet-based campaign next year to promote the benefits and sustainability of plastics, and rebut misinformation. The campaign will use vehicles such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs to reach the 20 to 30-year-olds –“the Millennial Generation” – as well as plastics industry employees.

The internet strategy includes launching and maintaining a blog on the sustainability and benefits of plastics; monitoring other blogs and actively participating in consumer-oriented discussion boards and blogs; producing and posting videos highlighting plastics’ benefits on SPI’s own website and on YouTube, creating a “benefits of plastics” page on Facebook or MySpace geared to the Millennial Generation, and establishing pages on the Wikipedia online encyclopedia about the sustainability or benefits of plastics.

The campaign also will include education of third-party allies and independent experts; spokesperson training to use what SPI calls the master message track; and talking points SPI plans to develop. There will be funding of third-party research on the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of common household plastic products as against. competing materials, an a communication tool kit for the industry’s 1.1-million North American employees.

This will be the first large image-boosting effort since the former American Plastics Council’s 10-year, $250-million “Plastics Make It Possible” program. The goal of that program, which ended in 2005, was to increase acceptance of plastics in opinion polls by an annual five percentage points.

The APC was the predecessor of the Arlington, Va.-based American Chemistry Council’s plastics division.