Cause Marketing

You’ve probably heard the old joke whose punch line talks about “bringing a knife to a gunfight.” The joke is about feckless approaches in hazardous situations. In the fight to save forests from the ravages of the pine beetle, which has affected at least 2 million acres of conifer forests in the Western United States, the U.S. Forest Service has made a reporter their partner. Perhaps you’ve seen news reports about the pine beetle epidemic. Here’s a recent one from my local newspaper if you haven’t read about it anywhere else. It’s a story that hits close to home for me and my family. Many of my in-laws spent their formative years in and around Cedar Mountain in Southern Utah, where the devastation to the conifer forests due to pine beetles is widespread. When my father-in-law surveys the devastation to his boyhood playground, he’s heartbroken. The U.S. Forest Service ran the ad above in the October issue of Outside magazine. It’s a slightly cheeky ad with a clear call to action: stop...