Keep San Marcos Beautiful is trying to reduce cigarette butt litter in San Marcos, especially around Texas State University and the downtown square. They have created personal ashtrays to hand out but have not distributed them yet. Their goals are to raise awareness of cigarette litter's effects and increase participation in river cleanups. However, they have low outreach and social media presence currently. The document analyzes their situation and provides a SWOT analysis to help improve their public relations efforts.

1. Keep San Marcos Beautiful
End To Litter With Cigarette Butts
Situational Analysis
Elevate Public Relations: Kelle Gandy, Faith Piveral, Alexis De La Garza, Victoria Marin and
Claire Jackson
MC4320: Public Relations Campaign
T/TH 2:00 pm
Professor Paul Villagran

2. Executive Summary:
Keep San Marcos Beautiful is trying to combat the increase in litter in San Marcos with
just cigarette butts alone. The main issue with cigarette butt litter is that it finds it’s way into the
city’s drains which all runs back to our rivers. This has been an ongoing issue and Keep San
Marcos Beautiful (KSMB) is hoping to decrease the impact by raising awareness in areas with
high levels of cigarette butt litter such as the square and the church parking lot next to campus.
So far, KSMB has created personal ashtrays that we plan to hand out on the square and in return
have the students who receive one, also sign up for an email list that would sporadically send out
reminders of upcoming river cleanups. The current strengths for this program is the support they
have from the city since it is under the different city organizations. They also have an option to
adopt a spot, which is free and entitles those who adopt to clean these certain areas around town
at least six times a year. However, the weaknesses we look to work out include: low outreach, no
promotion, low social media presence, lack of awareness and the absence in servicing the
ashtrays. Through the emailing list, Relay For Life partnership, and other opportunities, we hope
to raise the awareness and outreach and cut out those weaknesses. Threats that this program
could encounter is the lack of apathy from its students, the growing population in San Marcos,
and the issue with certain areas being owned by different properties (ex: church parking lot). It’s
important to ask students on the square and around smoking areas in the city, where these
individuals would like ashtrays. By asking a few people, most smokers say they litter because
they don’t have access to a nearby ashtray.
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3. Problem Statement:
Texas State students who smoke are throwing their cigarette butts on the ground, and
those butts are affecting the ecosystem in the San Marcos River. Keep San Marcos Beautiful is
an initiative to combat this litter, but has low outreach to the city’s publics.
Situation Analysis:
Situation analyses are a crucial aspect to executing a successful public relations
campaign. The analysis gives the agency an opportunity to assess the client and the problem at
hand by determining the type of problem, the client’s target audience, the client’s strengths and
weaknesses as well as any opportunities or threats they may be facing – it is the driving force
behind the research that must be done in order to begin planning the campaign itself.
In this chapter, the Elevate team will be discussing our client’s internal factors such as
their mission and history, a detailed SWOT analysis we have conducted, as well as our client’s
situation regarding their current position and the direction in which they would like to go along
with any obstacles they may encounter along the way.
Internal Factors
The Keep San Marcos Beautiful (KSMB) mission is to “educate and engage San Marcos
residents and visitors in taking responsibility of improving our community environment.” KSMB
is an initiative that was established in 2009 that strives to keep a visually and physically
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4. “pristine” environment. KSMB looks to use resources within the city departments, partnerships
with other organizations and volunteers to advocate for a cleaner city. The department works in
preservation and beautification through Adopt-a-Spot, as well as, cleanup and graffiti removal
efforts. They also work in Education and Prevention through environmental education, mural arts
and litter prevention.
Funding for Keep San Marcos Beautiful comes from the city. Amy Kirwin acts as the
Community Enhancement Initiatives Manager and has five interns working under her in her
efforts to reduce cigarette butt littering in the city.
External Factors
Some trends and issues we see emerging that may hinder our efforts would be the rapid
population growth of students attending Texas State University (enrollment as of 2016 has
surpassed 38,000 students), the growing nightlife of downtown San Marcos and even the lack of
concern and education on the issue from the public.
Though there are no specific competitors in the industry, there are other organizations
who do similar work and carry out similar projects as those of KSMB. The Municipal Separate
Storm Sewer System (MS4) works on storm water runoff and litter that flows into the river. The
Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) conducts clean ups and educational outreach alongside KSMB
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5. as well as on their own. The Texas State University sector of Relay For Life also works in
collecting cigarette butt litter around the city.
Relevant Publics and Stakeholders
The key publics and stakeholders directly involved and affected are Texas State
University (students, staff and visitors), San Marcos residents and in general, the environmental
life in and around the city. It is known that students and staff smoke near the university on the
corner of North LBJ and Woods. With no existing ashtrays on this corner, used cigarettes make
their way onto the ground. Along with the popular nightlife in downtown San Marcos comes
smokers who litter their finished cigarette butts on the street. Though there are existing ashtrays
on the “Square,” it is assumed that individuals have no knowledge of them or believe them to be
inconveniently located, according to our client. This litter ultimately makes its way into the San
Marcos River, affecting all environmental life near it and causing extreme danger to our
ecosystems.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
Since 2009 Keep San Marcos Beautiful has been a city initiative dedicated to promoting
and enhancing the city’s environmental appeal. Keep San Marcos Beautiful has a few current
strengths that have been the key to its lasting success for over five years. Key strengths include:
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6. (1) ​support of the city​ of San Marcos, because it is operated by the city. The City of San Marcos
promotes Keep San Marcos Beautiful as their city initiative and with the City of San Marcos
Parks and Recreation Center as a backing, Keep San Marcos Beautiful has enough support to
stay strong in terms of
(2)​ ​funding and resources
(3)​ ​innovative ways​ of solving the environmental and unappealing visual aspects of the city.
Keeping San Marcos Beautiful has various city programs like adopt-a-spot, where groups can
adopt a certain area of San Marcos can clean it six times a year without any charge. Groups can
sign up by emailing the Keep San Marcos Beautiful Coordinator. Other great programs include
monthly river clean-ups, graffiti removal, and mural art creation.
(4) A strength that pertains specifically to the cigarette litter initiative that is helpful are the
purchase of the portable ashtrays. The portable ashtrays are a resource that people can use,
especially those who are constantly busy, to dispose of the cigarette butt on the go without
littering in the streets of San Marcos. Since ashtrays are not available at every corner in San
Marcos, this resource will encourage those who do smoke to responsibly dispose of their
cigarette butts.
Weaknesses:
Keep San Marcos Beautiful’s major weaknesses include:
(1)​ ​poor outreach to businesses around the city as well as student organizations on the Texas
State University. Many students are likely to not know Keep San Marcos Beautiful’s mission and
also don’t know how they could get involved with helping with their initiative.
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7. (2) no current promotional strategies and no social media presence.
(3) Keep San Marcos Beautiful’s target audience is not aware of the initiative and also has a low
awareness of the issue that cigarette litter has on the San Marcos River.
(3) Keep San Marcos Beautiful set up multiple permanent ashtrays along the Square, but they are
not being serviced and often end up having actual trash in them. Those who choose to partake in
San Marcos nightlife do not purposefully go out of their way to find the ashtrays and would
rather litter in the streets.
Opportunities:
There are many opportunities for Keep San Marcos Beautiful that can increase awareness
of their cause. Their targeted audience is Texas State University college students who casually
smoke, and through effectively utilizing social media, can reach this audience. By using a
Facebook event planning feature, their Hot Spot river clean-up can attract many more people in
their targeted demographic. By effectively utilizing social media, we cover a wider range.
An opportunity that can be used to help Keep San Marcos Beautiful grow their audience
is Texas State University campus outreach. The outreach would include visiting campus
organizations to inform them of the various programs that Keep San Marcos Beautiful has to
offer. The campus outreach may also organically grow their social media presence in the college
community.
Threats:
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8. The threats that present themselves to Keep San Marcos Beautiful are not impossible
obstacles, but must be noted. The main threat to Keep San Marcos Beautiful is the apathetic
attitudes and unawareness many young adults have regarding cigarette litter and its correlation
with the environment. Many college age adults are likely to not fully acknowledge an issue
unless it pertains to them immediately. Many people do not know of cigarette litter and the
drastic effects that it has on the San Marcos environment. Also many Texas State University
students are not originally from San Marcos, Texas. This may hinder their understanding of how
cigarette butts can affect the river.
Another threat to Keep San Marcos Beautiful is the growing population of San Marcos and the
expanding downtown area. While this is excellent economical growth for new local businesses to
move into downtown San Marcos, it is difficult to handle the environmental aspect of the city
when there is construction and other pollutants present. Downtown San Marcos draws in both
local and tourist crowds that are both looking to enjoy the San Marcos nightlife, and with certain
bars starting to sell cigarettes behind the counter or in vending machines, it is difficult for the
city to ensure ashtrays close enough to each bar.
Current Situation
Development:
Currently, students and faculty of Texas State regularly smoke on LBJ Dr. near the
churches, and when they do so, they litter cigarette butts. The people who smoke there, as of
now, have no place to properly dispose of their cigarette butts. However, Keep San Marcos
Beautiful has created several hundred pocket ashtrays to distribute. As of yet, no efforts have
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9. been made to distribute the ashtrays. Also, Keep San Marcos Beautiful has installed ashtrays in
the square, another problem area.
Current Position:
Keep San Marcos Beautiful has good intentions with both the pocket ashtrays and the
permanent ones installed on the square, however, there has been little to no execution of any
ideas. The pocket ashtrays have yet to be given out, and square-goers either don’t know where
those ashtrays are, or they don’t care to go to them if they are out of the way. Also, those
ashtrays aren’t serviced often and are regularly used as normal trash cans, which is not their
purpose.
Direction:
Our client would like to reduce the amount of cigarette butt litter in San Marcos around
campus and on the square. To address this issue, we can ​utilize email marketing​, the ​pocket
ashtrays​, and a possible ​Relay for Life​ team-up and/or a river clean-up.
Obstacles:
One of the main obstacles facing our campaign is awareness. There are simply not
enough people in the city of San Marcos who truly care about the issue of cigarette butt littering
or the effects it has on our rivers. This also ties into another obstacle – the low implementation of
awareness. Before beginning the campaign, none of our agency members had heard of the Keep
San Marcos Beautiful (KSMB) program, which lead us to assume there were a multitude of
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10. students who had been unaware as well. Another obstacle we face is that of KSMB emails being
delivered into recipients’ spam folders where they are often not seen.
Resources:
Our client and her team have multiple resources that we will be able to use to execute this
campaign. They were able to show us a map of where ashtrays have been previously placed
around the square and at our main problem area – the corner of Woods Street and LBJ Drive.
This will be helpful when deciding where new ashtrays should be placed without having to
canvas the city searching for existing ones. The KSMB team also has 1,000 portable ashtrays
that we will be able to distribute to San Marcos residents during our campaign events as well as
an activity guide where they do the majority of their advertising.
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11. REFERENCES:
Amy Kirwin
Solid Waste Program Coordinator
City of San Marcos
401 E. Hopkins St.
San Marcos, Texas 78666
512-393-8407
akirwin@sanmarcostx.gov
Samantha Armbruster
Main Street Program Manager
San Marcos Main Street Program
630 E. Hopkins St.
San Marcos, Texas 78666
512-626-0240
sarmbruster@sanmarcostx.gov
Keep San Marcos Beautiful. (2016). Retrieved September 13, 2016, from
http://www.ci.san-marcos.tx.us/index.aspx?page=924
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