Did you know that nuclear technology is used to help keep medical devices sterile? Neither did most people.
That’s a big part of the reason the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA) launched NUnuclear.ca, a microsite designed to promote dialogue about the broad uses around nuclear technology. The public traditionally thinks of power generation when there’s talk about nuclear power, said Kathleen Olson, CNA’s director of communications.
But nuclear technology plays a vital role in supporting several other industries, such as uranium mining and nuclear medicine and research. In fact, Olson said there are more than 70,000 Canadians that work in the nuclear industry. “Our goal is to help Canadians explore all of those different areas,” she said. “We want to take the conversation well beyond just the area of nuclear power generation.”
The site is part of the communications strategy of CNA’s five-year strategic plan; the plan launched last year with a goal of supporting the growth of nuclear technology in Canada.
The site features five vignettes – each with their own theme on how nuclear is and can be used: Nuclear at Home; Science & Innovation; Nuclear in Medicine; New Technologies and Space Age Nuclear. Users can click on cubes within the vignettes to see facts about how nuclear technology impacts us daily.
The site is part of a bigger social media push for CNA. It started using other social media channels early this year under the “TalkNUclear” brand. They include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a blog that started in May. Users can share facts about nuclear technologies via these social networking platforms.
The primary goal of these communications, said Olson, is to create an environment in which Canadians can have a conversation about nuclear technology. “We need to help focus and shape that dialogue,” she said.
Olson credits Rain43, the Toronto-based agency with which CNA worked to develop the microsite, for understanding CNA’s goals of focusing Canadians’ dialogue around energy choices they make as consumers. “Energy literacy is another big goal in terms of how we want to contribute to this conversation,” said Olson. She adds that CNA was impressed with Rain43’s experience in social dialogue and social media.
John Yorke, partner and president at Rain43, said “In our experience in the energy sector, we’ve realized consumers don’t care about energy and energy policy unless something goes wrong with it or it gets turned off… or if someone is building a gas plant near a school yard. The education side is really difficult because it’s out of sight, out of mind.”
He added “But when you do engage them, everyone does have an opinion.”
The creative insight for developing the site – which needs to communicate a lot of relatively complex information – was to compartmentalize it into bite-sized pieces, said Yorke. “We wanted digestible content with little nuggets that change people’s perception,” he said. “They’ll have an ‘a ha’ moment like ‘I didn’t know that when I have a 3D rendering of my heart, that’s nuclear medicine’ or ‘I didn’t know that my BlackBerry screen was created through nuclear technology research.’”
The site is family-oriented and skewed a little towards females, said Yorke. “The dialogue typically needs to happen with mothers.”
Olson said that as CNA proceeds with different pieces of the site, she’d like to build out more opportunities for consumer feedback beyond surveys and straight feedback. “We want to go deeper than who’s visiting, but why they’re visiting,” she said.
