Coral Reefs Are Dying... Quick, We Need A Logo and Slogan!

Color me overly idealistic, but as a member of the nonprofit coral reef biodiversity conservation community whose collective financial resources in no sense match the scale of global coral reef crisis, I tend to have a default position that favors efficiency and action over postures and PR. No big surprise then that I find all the time, human resources, and funds devoted to logo design for the 2008 International Year of the Reef awareness campaign to be a tremendous waste.

A little history helps here. Ten years ago, in response to increasing threats and loss of coral reefs and their associated ecosystems, 1997 was declared the International Year of the Reef (IYOR), a global effort to increase awareness and understanding about the importance of coral reefs and reef threats, and support related conservation, research and management efforts. Through a decentralized process that involved millions of people around the world in local, national, and international events, increased press and web coverage, and advocacy efforts targeting political decision makers, IYOR 1997 resulted in increased coral conservation funding, new governmental agencies dedicated to coral research and awareness building, and a slew of new NGOs to add their efforts to the struggle.

IYOR '97 was a stunningly successful example of organizational outreach power coupled with grassroots organizing: the involvement of ordinary folks to influence people in powerful positions. In the case of IYOR '97, grassroots organizing worked to increase the capacity of the coral conservation community by training new volunteer leaders and by involving new volunteer activists. Since the power of grassroots organizing is in ordinary people, it seeks to mobilize large numbers of people. An activist group of five people may be able to reach 5,000 people in a week by putting up posters, sending e-mails, or making phone calls. Couple that with efforts by larger organizations and you can reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

Ten years after IYOR '07, there continues to be an urgent need to increase awareness and understanding of coral reefs. In an effort to step-up awareness-building and governmental focus on action over rhetoric, the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) designated 2008 as the International Year of the Reef (IYOR 2008).

While the ICRI Secretariat is serving as overall catalyst for IYOR 2008, any and all activities in each country will be decided upon and organized at national and local levels. As the IYOR 2008 website announces:

ICRI and its secretariat encourages a large involvement and welcomes active participation from all. Open to any individual, organization, government agency and non-governmental organization that wishes to be involved.

But something about IYOR this time around is striking me as unproductive. An ad hoc committee was created in order to facilitate preparation for the IYOR 2008 (I myself am part of this committee) yet aside from a website, the most significant flurry of activity has been to select a logo. Now IYOR '07 had a logo which if you ask me seems perfectly adequate for IYOR 2008. Just change the date, right? Apparerently not. IYOR 2008 needed a fresh, new, media savvy logo. As it could be awkward for one organization to step-up and design the new logo, a vote was agreed upon to sponsor the IYOR 2008 Logo Contest. The contest was open to individuals and organizations and the results are all part of the collage at the top of this post. They range from low-tech, hand-drawn logo's by promising young coral conservationists to stunning examples of Adobe software artists at work.

Even though this is a volunteer contest (I have been reminded that no resources were devoted to the logo since all the logos received were "donated" by the artists), am I to believe that time, productivity, and, yes, funds were not devoted to the production of many of the beautiful and professional designs? Approving the submission of final designs–some presumably produced by conservation organizations–involves brainstorming sessions, iterative design approval meetings, and ultimately human-hours that might be better served in mobilizing activities and awareness over image and PR. Oh, and then there are the copious teleconferences and emails by the ad hoc committee to discuss the logo process.

I'm not naive, PR and marketing are critical components to awareness building. And yes, a contest can serve to spread awareness. It's just that the clock is ticking (as of this post, there are 261 days remaining before IYOR 2008 kicks-off.) In the last 50 years alone, about half of all coral reefs have been lost or seriously degraded. Let's enter 2008 confident that we mobilized a planet to recognize their connections to and dependence upon a rapidly vanishing ecosystem, the information and tools necessary to change behaviors, and the will to take action in saving it. I'm not so sure a logo is going to do the trick