About Us
Totally Unprepared is what happens when you put forward-thinking state agencies, earthquake geeks, social media nerds, a web analytics genius, a professional filmmaker, a hot firefighter or two, and a bunch of unsuspecting Californians in a blender and hit frappe. (See “Our Team“, “Our Funders” and “Our Partners“) The plan was to educate Californians about earthquake preparedness, but we did not want to bore you or ourselves to death with tedious lists and bone-dry commentary so we made earthquake materials that would be entertaining to us. We hope you have as much fun visiting these pages and watching our videos as we have had creating them.
Our mission is to rally Californians to prepare for the next earthquake. If you are reading this page, we are already winning, since it means you have gotten past the home page. Hooray! Please take a few minutes to visit the fun things we have created, and perhaps test your preparedness as well. If you walk away from this site a little better prepared for an earthquake, then we have done our job.
Our Philosophy
People have been doing preparedness public education campaigns for earthquakes and other disasters for years. Every campaign has taught the experts a little more information about what resonates with the public. A great deal of really smart research has been done on these campaigns to learn what resonates with Californians and what doesn’t. We are humbled to stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us and we hope we have done it better thanks to what has been learned from them.
For more information about the elements we have incorporated into our campaign, including:
- delivering concise information about preventing future loss instead of generic incident-based messages;
- providing branded messaging from multiple sources through multiple channels over time instead of focused on one day; and
- facilitating “observed preparation behavior”,