Global Cool Foundation

Press coverage of Global Cool’s Do It In Public campaign

Monday, August 9th, 2010 | Global Cool | 1 Comment

At Global Cool we recently launched our Do It In Public campaign.  This year we’re building on 2009’s activity and showing people how taking a journey by bus or train is the perfect opportunity to enjoy some much needed ‘me time’.

We’ve started an online book club and handed out free Hodder & Staughton books at train stations, held a series of free events on the Art of Conversation on a restored Routemaster bus, and teamed up with transport companies to brighten people’s day with some famous station announcers! And we’ve even found time to visit various music festivals to interview bands backstage about how they like to enjoy their ‘me time’.

Below is a collection of the great press coverage Do It In Public has been receiving…

Onboard a bus where commuters chat? Crazy! Metro

Bus-t that taboo in the Mirror, Independent, People, Talk Talk, MSN, Run Riot and Gumtree.

Virgin Media, Mirror.co.uk and Evening Standard all carried the video report of our first Art of Conversation talk.

Our Art of Conversation spokesperson proved popular with radio stations and was interviewed on BBC Radio Fivelive, BBC Cambridgeshire, BBC York, Smooth Radio, Colourful Radio, County Sound Radio, Kingdom FM, Radio Wave, The Bay & Lakeland and U105.

And one of the coolest newsletters out there, Urban Junkies, recommended the Art Of Conversation.

The Guardian wrote about our Book Club, as did blogs This Is Local London, Savidge Reads and Once Upon A Book Case.

Our interviews backstage at Field Day festival were featured on Mixmag and Dontstayin.

Clash magazine’s website gave away VIP tickets to Field Day festival for us.

And lots of listings for our Art of Conversation lectures in Time Out, Free London Events, Meet Up, Free London Listings and Do Blog.

Check back soon for more coverage to be added.

Tags: Art of Conversation, Books In Public, Do It In Public, Field Day Festival, PR Coverage, Public transport

Do It In Public 2010 campaign

Thursday, July 15th, 2010 | Global Cool | No Comments

Global Cool’s Do It In Public campaign for 2010 is now in full swing.

This summer we will once again be promoting the use of public transport rather than cars for longer journeys. Here are some of the highlights of the campaign:

• Books In Public – We have created an online book group to promote the joys of reading books on long bus and train journeys. To launch Books In Public we partnered with the publisher Hodder & Stoughton to hand out free copies of seven different books at train stations around the UK over the course of seven weeks. We’ve also offered our readers a 5% discount for recommending books for a long journey, in association with the Book Depository. You can find out more about Books In Public here, follow the hash tag on Twitter and see photos of one of the handouts, at London’s Liverpool Street, here.
• The Art of Conversation – Ever been too scared to strike up conversation with a stranger on a bus or train? We’ve got the perfect solution. We’ll be holding a series of lectures on a Routemaster bus that will travel around London, educating people on how to chat with random strangers.
• Celebrity voiceovers – we’ll be getting some of our celebrity friends to take to the mic at tube stations to add a touch of familiarity to the public service announcements and hopefully put a smile on people’s faces as they make their way around by public transport.
• Festival activity – once again we’ll be travelling to some of the UK’s biggest music festivals to talk to bands and artists about their experiences on public transport.
• Website content – in addition to all this the recently revamped Global Cool website will be producing all sorts of inspiration for using public transport. Read some of our articles here.

This is the second summer we’ve run the Do It In Public campaign. Last year we took a double decker bus loaded with games and activities to music festivals around the UK and interviewed several of the acts. You can view the videos we made on the Global Cool You Tube channel.

Find out more about Global Cool’s campaigns here

What do you think about our campaigns?

Tags: Art of Conversation, Books In Public, Do It In Public, Global Cool, Public transport

Global Cool Impact Assessment report released today

Thursday, July 8th, 2010 | Global Cool | No Comments

Global Cool is immensely proud to publish research that shows our campaigns are having an impact – and how serious we are about measuring and understanding our results.

We have now completed a full cycle of our four campaign areas – the Art of Swishing, where we worked with fashion to promote clothes recycling; promoting alternatives to driving (Do it in Public); using less energy at home (Turn up the Style, Turn down the Heat); and alternatives to flying (we promoted Traincations). Each campaign has succeeded in reaching and influencing our target audience – no mean feat given the innovative way in which Global Cool operates and the breadth of these topics.

Global Cool’s approach to promoting low-carbon behaviours fits what the Institute for Government calls “evidence-based innovation” – in other words, using techniques that have proven effective elsewhere (in our case, from commercial experience of selling to our target audience) and applying them in a new context.

Download Global Cool Campaigning Impact January 2009 – June 2010 here

Tris Lumley, Head of Strategy at New Philanthropy Capital, said: “I’m really impressed that Global Cool is so serious about measuring its results. This is really hard to do, especially for campaigning charities. In NPC’s experience, there is far too little focus across the sector on understanding results. And Global Cool’s results look great.”

Here are some of the findings that we’re excited about:

• Some of our campaigns aim to build awareness of low carbon behaviours such as “swishing” or taking train-based holidays to destinations beyond Paris and Brussels, and they’ve been successful. For example, awareness of swishing rose from 6.7% to 12% among 18-24 year olds.
• Other campaigns are more about influencing attitudes, such as towards taking journeys on trains and buses, or wearing warm clothes in winter, and we’ve succeeded here as well. After our “Wrap up for winter campaign” the proportion of people who said they were inspired to wear warmer clothes at home rose from 12% to 18%.
• We’re effectively finding our target market: 80% of people we talk to are ‘Outer Directed’ vs. less than half that in the general population. After four campaigns 30% of ODs have at least heard of Global Cool, up from 16% in January 2009.
• We’re building our reach through our campaigns and through our web traffic, social networking members, press coverage, etc. Already the cumulative reach of our campaigns is over 238 million.
• We get great feedback from focus groups (“The blog is readable and the photos show that it’s fun and active rather than just preaching, it’s an organisation out there doing something”) and social network sites (“Global Cool features really interesting & entertaining articles that just HAPPEN to promote an eco friendly lifestyle.”). A person our chief executive met at a party right after the launch of our home heating campaign said “Oh you made those videos? I loved them! I thought I’ll try that. So I put on a jumper and turned down my heating. It had never occurred to me to do that before!”

Measuring the results of any kind of campaign is not easy. People’s behaviour is influenced by many external factors beyond our control (volcanos, airline strikes, etc.), so even when we see changes in attitudes and/or behaviour, it can be hard (and sometimes impossible) to pin down what caused them. Global Cool therefore measures interim stages of attitude as well as interaction with our audience – what we call reach and engagement – in addition to action. We also look at many types of data – including surveys of the general public before and after each campaign, surveys of our subscribers, focus groups, and third party research.

Find out more about Global Cool’s objectives, approach, target audience and target actions here

Tags: 18 Degrees of Inspiration, Art of Swishing, Climate Change, Do It In Public, Impact Data, Innovation, traincation