Using music festivals to promote Traincations
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 | Global Cool | No Comments
Air travel represents 10% of an average Brit’s carbon footprint. Global Cool encourages our audience to consider a flight-free holiday when planning their next short break. We created the Traincation as a hot travel trend and showcased it by taking celebrities to Barcelona, Amsterdam and Munich – exciting destinations that Brits wouldn’t think to reach by train. We filmed our celebrities’ experiences to show our audience that Traincations are a fun and easy alternative to flying.
The celebrity Traincations really caught the imagination of the media. Stories and video appeared in print and online in The Sun, News of the World, Hello, Company magazine and Now Magazine. We used social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to run competitions, talk about the campaign and establish the trend. In fact there were over 132 million opportunities for the public to see the campaign messages.
The campaign positions holidaying by train as aspirational, fun and exciting. The weekly articles not only demonstrate the range of exciting destinations that can be reached by train from the UK but also showed how the train journey can become part of the holiday.
As part of our Traincation campaign this summer, we recently ran a competition to win tickets to Gurten Festival in Bern, Switzerland. The prize also includes train travel to the festival courtesy of Rail Europe, TVG Lyria and Eurostar. Entrants told us – on the Global Cool Facebook page – which artist and song they would like to hear on Traincation and then votes were cast for the best suggestions.
All in all we had 130 entries and the campaign generated a 50 per cent rise in people viewing our Traincation content on Facebook and a similar rise in visits to our website.
What do you think of our Traincation campaign?
How we measure web activity and define online success
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 | Global Cool | No Comments
Our most recent web statistics have shown yet more impressive growth since our last update. Highlights from May’s results included:
- Most ever number of monthly unique users on globalcool.org
- Most ever monthly page views
- Highest number of repeat visitors
- Highest percentage of people opening our newsletter
- Most number of interactions on the website, Facebook and Twitter
Global Cool’s online activity has three main channels: the Global Cool website, our weekly newsletter and social media activity (mainly on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube, but also increasingly on Flickr and Four Square). In each of these channels we measure the reach of our activity and also the depth of affinity and engagement with our message.
As a campaigning organisation seeking to change the general public’s behaviour by making green lifestyles more attractive, clearly it’s important for us to communicate with as many people as possible, as frequently as possible. However, we also recognise the importance of monitoring how people respond to our messages.
Reach is relatively straightforward to measure: how many people visited the website, how many people opened the newsletter, how many followers do we have on Twitter etc etc. Affinity and engagement measures are more complicated and nuanced. Deciding what type user behaviour demonstrates affinity with your message and what demonstrates engagement is not an exact science. Some examples of affinity we measure include repeat visitors to the website, searches for our brand name, opens of our newsletter etc. Examples of engagement include commenting on a blog post, entering a competition or a retweet on Twitter.
It’s also worth noting that affinity and engagement measures will not always be positive. Some comments, tweets, Facebook messages will be from people telling you you’re doing it wrong, or that they hate you. Some people might view several pages on your website because they are so outraged by how dumb they think your article was that they want to make sure the rest of your content is just as disagreeable to their particular sensibilities.
In terms of the former, we do take a measure of how much negative feedback we get and it regularly comes at less than 0.5% of our total audience. The highest it’s ever been in a single month is 1%. For the latter it’s difficult to ever know what motivates someone to look at two, three, four pages on your site. However, given the tiny amount of negative engagement we get, we are willing to take a leap of faith and assume the vast majority of affinity-like behaviour we see is also motivated by positive rather than negative sentiment.
All in all, Global Cool is now reaching in excess of 70,000 people per month across all three of our main web channels. Of those people, around 22% are demonstrating affinity with our message and 11% are engaging with us.
We are keen to know how you measure your online activity and how you define your success indicators, particularly if, like Global Cool you are seeking to encourage behaviour change or promote green living. Feel free to leave us a comment below…
How to encourage green behaviour
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 | Our Philosophy | No Comments
There was an interesting and thought-provoking piece in Green Futures last week about changing people’s behaviour in order to prevent climate change, rather than simply raising awareness – as we’ve said many times before, climate change does not have an awareness problem, it has a marketing problem.
The piece describes behaviour change as “the holy grail” of sustainability. We would wholeheartedly agree with that, which is why Global Cool focuses its campaigns on getting people to make green lifestyle choices based on things that motivate them – mainly celebrity, sex, looking and feeling great.
Global Cool’s Executive Director, Caroline Fiennes, is quoted in the piece. You can read it in full here.
Do you agree or disagree? We’d love to know why so let us know in the comments box below…
A lesson from Tom Cruise on promoting green via the power of film
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 | Global Cool | No Comments
The Global Cool Foundation are now working with the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) to encourage the placement of green behaviours in films. Placing these behaviours in films is an attractive prospect for Global Cool as it normalises the actions (or products) for the viewer.
Getting people to change their behaviour to reduce carbon emissions is the aim, not getting them to be interested in climate change.
An example of this sort of placement is the use of BMW’s chic new i8 plug-in hybrid in the new Mission Impossible film. Tom Cruise will use the electric hybrid car in the new film, The Ghost Protocol.
Behaviour placement is particularly effective in action films like the Mission Impossible series as cars are an important part of the film and, so it’s very positive that this film will be promoting an eco-friendly vehicle.
Using an inflential, sexy actor like Tom Cruise also promotes the use of green products and behaviours as “normal”.
Adam Smith comes out for Global Cool
Thursday, March 31st, 2011 | Our Philosophy | No Comments
Global Cool’s approach is to ‘sell’ low-carbon lifestyles. We focus on how they are desirable to the individual:
- Get on a bus because you get lots of lovely time to yourself.
- Go on holiday by train rather than flying, because you’ll have a better adventure.
- Turn your heating down because it’s better for your skin.
This contrasts with many other green/ environmental campaigns which focus on the benefits to the environment. Global Cool takes this approach because, demonstrably, most people aren’t acting to reduce their environmental impact, ie, talking about the environment manifestly isn’t sufficient.
So, sometimes we get accused of pandering to self-interest. Better, some say, to focus on the shared long-term interest we all have in preserving the environment.
Really? Is immediate self-interest a bad way to get things done?
I bet that you ate food for dinner last night. Whilst, for sure, everybody shares a preference for a society in which everyone gets fed, that shared interest isn’t how you and your dinner came together:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest”* said no less a thinker than Adam Smith, the pioneer of political philosophy, who you’ll recognise from £20 notes.
Self-interest is how almost everything gets done: and is far more effective a call-to-action than benevolence. Adam Smith continued:
“But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour.
Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want…. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”.
This which Global Cool wants is for people to live greener lives, so we address ourselves not to people’s humanity (or environmental concern) which would be in vain, but to their self-love. We talk not of our own agenda (green/ the environment) of which we have constant occasion for help but rather talk about – and show – how the green options we promote are of their advantages.
And – just as Smith said it would – it seems to be working. “I like the way your campaigns work. Not “don’t do this, don’t do that cause it’s bad for the environment” but instead “you could do this cause it’s fun and happens to be good for the environment”, said one person in a focus group. There’s plenty more data too in Selling Green Lifestyles: Results from Two Years’ Innovation which discusses our model and the results from two years of campaigns.
*The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter II, pg.19
Climate Week: Green comms need to reach those not interested in “doing their bit” too
Thursday, March 24th, 2011 | Our Philosophy | No Comments
This week is Climate Week, aimed at people “wanting to do their bit to help combat climate change.” At Global Cool we aim to reach people who are not interested in “doing their bit”. That’s why we’ve launched a paper and a TEDx video (below) this week.
The group of people who are untouched by events like Climate Week are in the majority – so although climate change no longer has an awareness problem, it does have a marketing problem. If we’re to make the necessary cuts in emissions, we need everybody to take up low-carbon lifestyles, not just those who want to “do their bit”.
Remember that old adage “if what you’re doing isn’t working, you’d better do something else”? Well, for two years now, Global Cool has been doing something else – ‘selling’ low-carbon behaviours by focusing on the benefits to the individual.
Global Cool’s new paper – Selling Green Lifestyles: Results from Two Years’ Innovation – discusses the theory underlying our approach, the results of our campaigns (which we’re meticulous about measuring) and the key learnings. It’s not an arduous read: only six pages, and that includes a load of pictures & graphs.
The video is Global Cool’s Executive Director Caroline Fiennes presenting this approach recently at TEDx – learning lessons from iPhones, Kindles, scooters, dental care and jokes.
We’re sharing this material with you – our peers and partners – in the hope that it is helpful for you, so please do forward it around liberally. We would love your thoughts and reactions.
TED video: Global Cool’s Caroline Fiennes speaking on climate change at TEDx Warwick
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 | Our Philosophy | No Comments
Global Cool’s Executive Director Caroline Fiennes spoke about our approach to tackling climate change at TEDx Warwick recently.
The talk focused on Global Cool‘s core principle: the need to sell low-carbon behaviours by focusing on the benefit to the individual – a message that seems particularly apt during Climate Week, which is aimed at people “wanting to do their bit to help climate change”.
Global Cool’s work reaches those who have no interest in “doing their bit”, who happen to be in the majority. If we’re to make the necessary cuts to emissions then it is vital that we engage these people. That’s why we take our lead from the way commercial products like iPhones and Kindles are promoted to consumers when we design Global Cool’s campaigns to promote green lifestyle choices.
You can watch Caroline Fiennes’ TEDx Warwick talk in full here…
If you have any opinions on this video or on any aspect of Global Cool’s approach to tackling climate change we’d love to read your views in the comment box below…
New Global Cool white paper focuses on how to solve climate change’s marketing problem
Monday, March 14th, 2011 | Our Philosophy | 1 Comment
Selling Green Lifestyles: Results From Two Years’ Innovation – a white paper by Global Cool
Climate change does not have an awareness problem, it has a marketing problem.
For two years Global Cool has been promoting green lifestyles using a highly differentiated approach, focusing not on the problem (rising temperatures, melting ice caps etc), but on the interests of people we’re trying to influence (fun, socialising, being cool etc). After all, the climate doesn’t care why people adopt behaviours that are more green, all that matters is that they do and that we find a solution to climate change.
This week we’re releasing a white paper on Selling Green Lifestyles. It discusses our learnings and results from the past two years of campaigning to reach Outer Directed people. We’re sharing this with our peers and partners so that others may benefit from the insights that underpin our approach and the results that this has generated for us. You can also find a full report on our campaign results here.
In a nutshell, we believe that if we’re going to successfully move sustainable living out of the niche and into the mainstream, it’s necessary to focus like a hawk on the benefits to your audience, and not the climate problem. Some people have used this approach and got it right, and the paper highlights a few examples of campaigns we like. However for the majority, there’s still a long way to go to make green a desirable mainstream proposition.
We’d love to know what you think of the paper, and also hear some of your thoughts on selling green lifestyles, so please leave comments on this post or get in touch with us directly.
To view the full white paper please click here.
A big thank you to Emily Rycroft and Chloe Swart for researching and producing this paper.
Global Cool web activity: How we measure, why we measure and the results
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 | Global Cool | 1 Comment
The performance Global Cool’s online activity has been showing some impressive growth in recent months.
Global Cool uses several online channels to communicate with our audience: the Global Cool website, our weekly email newsletter, social media (mainly Facebook, Twitter and You Tube) and the Global Cool Foundation website. As with all our work, we rigorously measure the performance of our online activity, both on a month by month and on a campaign by campaign basis.
Since relaunching our website last June (with the focus on it acting as a hub for all of the channes listed above) we have seen significant growth in our online reach across all channels. The number of unique users coming to globalcool.org and page impressions have trebled in the last eight months. We have also seen a trebling of our audience on Twitter too, with the launch of three new accounts: @Traincation, @BooksInPublic and @GlobalCoolFDN. Our total online reach across all channels was 72,357 in February 2011, up from 37,883 in July 2010.
Increasing our online reach was one of our major goals this time last year, but we recognise that it’s not just about hitting as many people as possible. It’s also extremely important to engage those people with our campaigns and key messages in order to achieve our overall goal – geting people to take up green behaviours in order to prevent climate change.
In addition to reach we also closely monitor a series of affinity measures (mainly different types of interaction across the various channels we use) in order to assess how receptive the public is to our campaign messaging. These include both positive and negative interaction, and we’re delighted that whilst 12% of our audience across all channels are demonstrating positive sentiment towards our campaigns, less than 1% are showing negative sentiment.
You can read more about the impact of Global Cool’s campaigns here.
How are you measuring your online performance? We’d love to hear about what you’ve learnt…
Environmentalists need to follow brands’ lead and get ‘behaviour placement’ on screens
Monday, February 28th, 2011 | News, Our Philosophy | 1 Comment
Product placement hits UK TV screens today following a relaxation of the rules on television advertising. The first product to be placed will be a Nescafe coffee machine on the ITV show This Morning.
Product placement is an attractive proposition for brands because it drives people’s behaviour by normalising those actions (or products) in the eyes of the viewer.
Environmentalists need to take a similar approach in the drive to change people’s behaviour in order to prevent climate change. If we see our favourite characters in Coronation Street recycling, or see Brad Pitt riding a bike everywhere in a film, or see Simon Cowell in his mansion with solar panels in the background, we are much more likely to consider that behaviour aspirational and desirable. This type of campaigning is therefore more effective at changing behaviour than, for example, taking out posters on buses telling people how much carbon they can save by ditching their cars.
We know from our own campaigns at Global Cool that most people want to know what’s in it for them (being as cool and sexy as Brad Pitt, for example) rather than what’s in it for the planet. Does that matter? Absolutely not. Getting people to change their behaviour to reduce carbon emissions is the aim, not getting them to believe in climate change and become eco warriors. We’ll need to make taking the bus just as aspirational as driving a car, and if we need Brad Pitt’s help to do that, that’s fine.
That’s why Global Cool has recently announced a partnership with the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA), who will facilitate us working with the film industry to ‘place’ green behaviours into films. This isn’t about making the production of films more green, it’s about using the film to show green behaviours, leveraging film’s power to pull large audiences which influence people’s lifestyle choices.
If it works for Nescafe then it can work for climate change too.
Innovative Green Lifestyle Content
Global Cool Foundation runs the Global Cool campaign, our innovative online green lifestyle magazine. The site regularly attracts over 30,000 unique users per month - visit GlobalCool.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or watch our You Tube videos.
Our Blog: Making Green Mainstream
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It…
"A fantastic organisation working to help people find ways to be greener without sacrificing the things they enjoy." - Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
"Global Cool does a great job" - Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party and former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
"I really want to do well, but I honestly don't know how to do well unless somebody tells me.... and that's where Global Cool has a future" - Stephen Fry, British Actor
Read more...
Follow Us