Global Cool Foundation

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

Press coverage of Global Cool’s Traincation campaign

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 | Global Cool | No Comments

Global Cool launched its Traincation campaign at the end of March. The aim of the campaign was to promote flight-free travel around Europe by showing how easy it is to get around by train these days.

We made films of four celebrities – Rick Edwards, George Lamb, Scott Mills and Mr Hudson – taking Traincations to destinations around Europe, including Barcelona, Amsterdam and Munich. You can see all these films and find out more about the campaign here.

The Traincation campaign also gained a considerable amount of press coverage in the following publications:

We Hud East – by train (The Sun)

Rick Edwards & George Lamb take a Traincation (Hello)

Traincation to Barcelona (The Independent)

Britain’s top 10 gripes about travelling by aeroplane (The Independent)

The Eco Express (News of the World)

Train vs Plane: Tired of airports and keen to reduce your carbon footprint? (Metro)

See Rick Edwards and George Lamb on a romantic mini-break (Company)

Rise of the Traincation in Britain (Wandalust)

Win a stylish Traincation in Paris (Conde Nast Traveller)

George Lamb & Rick Edwards visit Barcelona (Now magazine)

DJ Scott Mills goes Dutch by hitting the tracks (Daily Star)

Stella loves: A Traincation to Burgundy (Daily Telegraph)

Pic from The Wandering Angel

Tags: Amsterdam, Barcelona, CompanyMagazine, CondeNastTraveller, DailyStar, DailyTelegraph, flight-free, GeorgeLamb, Hello, Metro, MrHudson, Munich, NewsoftheWorld, NowMagazine, RickEdwards, ScottMills, TheIndependent, TheSun, traincation, travel, Wandalust