If you’ve ever driven in Texas and seen those “Don’t mess with Texas” anti-littering campaign signs, there could soon be one urging people to protect their water.
As the Austin Statesman recently reported, the state is apparently turning to Austin advertising legend Roy Spence.
One of the founders of GSD and M advertising agency, he’s been asked by the Texas Water Development board and the Texas State University Meadows Center for Water and the Environment to help promote the need for water conservation in the state.
“If you don’t let the people of Texas know what’s at stake, you’re cheating them of the opportunity to make a better Texas,” he said during a recent speech at the annual Water for Texas conference.
“Can I help y’all?” he told the group of water experts reported the newspaper. “I wrote a theme line: ‘It’s Texas, dammit. We’ve got oil and we’ve got gas and we’ve got technology and we’ve got people. We’ve got to have water so we can kick butt forever.’ Something like that.”
His “Don’t mess with Texas’ campaign has been an obvious success. Since 1985, the state has spent nearly $2 million a year on the campaign. And it’s apparently working because the Texas Department of Transportation found in a 2013 study that litter along Texas roads had declined 34 percent since 2009.
