In October 2002, 40% of adults in Maine indicated they had heard or seen the expression "It All Adds Up to Cleaner Air." The telephone survey of 400 adults was sponsored by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection as part of its evaluation of its It All Adds Up To Cleaner Air campaign that ran during the preceding summer. The campaign included paid newspaper, television and radio advertising. Deb Avalone-King in the state's Bureau of Air Quality directed the research. She says the research findings helped the Department make decisions about how to proceed with their program this year. "We were astonished and pleased with the 40% awareness of the tagline, but our follow-up questions indicated some people associated more than clean air and traffic congestion with the umbrella theme. Now we wish we had a measure of familiarity with 'It All Adds Up to Cleaner Air' before we started the campaign so we could have measured change over the season."

The survey findings provided important direction on specific outreach methods for the 2003 It All Adds Up To Cleaner Air campaign. Three times as many people said they recalled seeing or hearing the expression from TV and radio ads versus newspapers. According to Deb, "we invested $10,000 to place the ads on Maine radio and TV stations and received the equivalent of $150,000 in paid advertising. So for 2003 we are dropping paid newspaper ads and relying on broadcast." The 2003 tracking research will monitor whether the number of program mentions in newspaper articles drops or stays the same relative to the previous year's.

In 2002, Maine residents recalled "tune up your car" as an It All Adds Up To Cleaner Air message more frequently than messages such as "change your oil" and "don't top off." The Maine program will use different spots this year, and track how this affects message recall.

The Maine DEP has benefited from its investment in research by being able to fine tune its program and will continue to monitor and evaluate its effectiveness. Deb recommends checking out the Download Center on the It All Adds Up To Cleaner Air Web site to get the sample questionnaire and information on research planning that have recently been added. "I wish the tools had been available when we started planning our evaluation," she added.