Rodent Awareness Week, an event to promote public knowledge of rodents and the dangers they present to home and health, will take place Oct. 17-23.
Rodent Awareness Week is an annual designation established by Professional Pest Management Alliance (PPMA) and recognized by Chase’s Calendar of Events. This week also encourages homeowners to work with qualified pest control professionals to address rodent issues.
PPMA recently conducts over 1,000 online interviews with homeowners to understand the similarities and differences across Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers related to pest control needs and perceptions.
The study shows that when aided, homeowners quickly make the connection between pest control professionals and protecting both public and family health. However, less than 40% of homeowners across all generations will call a professional if they find several rodents in their home.
PPMA wants to move that needle.
“Rodent Awareness Week presents a unique opportunity for pest control companies to unite behind a timely and pertinent campaign” Cindy Mannes, executive director of PPMA, said. “It is imperative that we continually educate the public about the property and health risks associated with rodents when they invade people’s homes and businesses and that we urge them to call a professional instead of attempting to handle a mouse or rat problem on their own.”
Rodents are top of mind for consumers during the fall months. According to PPMA’s Living Survey using its artificial intelligence research, there was over 1.2 million online engagements on the topic of rodents in November 2020. This was a 27.9% increase from October 2020.
Rodents were also a top concern as a health and home issue in November 2020 with over 266,000 engagements on the topic, according to research conducted by Advanced Symbolics Inc.
During Rodent Awareness Week, PPMA will devoted all Pest World social media pages to address persistent pests, highlighting its Rodents Revealed microsite and its consumer site.
The group is also working on a new consumer campaign featuring rodents that will be reveal in October.
PPMA is asking all pest control companies join in this awareness initiative by focusing their social media content on rodents throughout the week and to us the hashtag #RodentAwareness is all posts.
PPMA created an exclusive Rodent Awareness Week toolkit available for Mainframe subscribers to download.
The toolkit includes a customizable press release, suggested social media content, Rodent Awareness Week logos, high-resolution photography, media training documents as well as a list of video content that can be directly embedded on a company’s website.
For more information about PPMA, its marketing programs or how to get involved in supporting these important consumer education programs, visit the PPMA website.
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