Taking research findings into the home - how to get consumers to take action when they have never heard of you
by Elin Price
Packed with teams of behavioural scientists, data analysts, designers and all-round clever people, Nesta’s an exciting place to work as we test and scale solutions to some of society’s biggest problems. One of our areas of focus is sustainability – finding ways to help reduce carbon emissions from our homes.
While we regularly work closely with policy makers and industry to share findings and solutions, it isn’t every day we need to speak to the public – and so our channels to reach households are very limited.
Last year, following extensive in-house research involving modelling and live testing, Nesta was able to quantify the impact of reducing the flow temperature of a combi boiler from factory setting 80 degrees Celcius to the more efficient 60 degrees Celcius.
Our research revealed that around 15 million condensing combi boilers in the UK could run more efficiently by simply turning down their flow temperature, for a gas saving of 6-8%. In real terms, the potential saving for a household turning their boiler flow temperature from 80 to 60 degrees is around £112 and 173kg of carbon per year.
Research also showed that this was a relatively unknown way to save money and energy in the home and it was the first time that anyone had evidence on the carbon – and financial savings – a typical household could gain.
Many householders weren’t aware they could change their boiler settings at all, and others were worried they would make a mistake. We knew that in order to help people save money and energy, we’d need to persuade households that it was quick, easy and free.
So… we created a step-by-step tool to help people take the action, hosted on a bespoke website and planned the Money Saving Boiler Challenge campaign to reach households where they are. We had to be creative – we had no consumer-facing channels andNesta is not well-known as an advice-giving organisation - yet!
We didn’t really know what to expect from our first consumer campaign but the results have been highly motivating. By the end of the campaign we helped save £20 million off energy bills and reduced carbon emissions by 37,000 tonnes - the carbon saving equivalent to 119,290 people flying from London to New York or the production of 21.3 million quarter pounder beef burgers.
We learned some lessons along the way. Here are our top five learnings:
1. Building effective partnerships takes time – but pays off
Credible partners were essential. We sought out strategic partnerships with consumer-facing organisations including energy companies and advice-givers to leverage their audiences. Without this type of collaboration, we wouldn’t have had nearly as much impact.
Partnership work is a huge investment in time, nurturing relationships and consulting on research to get the right organisations and spokespeople on board.
The evidence behind the campaign was crucial to achieve buy-in and this had to be lined up and verified before partners agreed to come on board. The support and reach gained was invaluable, with partners like EDF and Which? consistently referring a high number of web users to the campaign.
2. Shoot for the moon – ‘Imagine if Martin Lewis recommended our tool?’
A passing comment saw us explore a huge opportunity. An endorsement from Martin Lewis and Money Saving Expert – without doubt the UK’s most respected advice giver on money saving would be invaluable.
Given the profile of MSE we weren’t surprised that the team there wanted to see clear and robust evidence and easy actions that work for their audience. Our campaign met these objectives and the emails and meetings were worth it. Every time Martin mentioned the campaign on ITV (twice), included us in the MSE email (3 times), or tweeted about the campaign, our web traffic spiked.
It can be worth seeking out high-profile advocates to amplify your message – if it’s relevant to them and their audience it’s win-win.
3. Monitor the external landscape – and work quickly to respond
While Nesta is all about reducing carbon emissions from homes, when we had an early indication of likely results of reducing boiler flow temperature, we knew that households’ focus wouldn’t be predominately about carbon reduction. The cost of living and energy price crisis reinforced to us that the financial impact would be a key motivation for most people.
The project and communications teams worked in sync to pull together a user tool and campaign that could support people before they turned their heating on last autumn. We launched in early October and maximised every opportunity to get the campaign in front of people, from working with the Government to include it in their Help for Households campaign to sending spokespeople across the country for media interviews.
4. Content is king and behavioural science is your friend
We used paid advertising as well as partner channels for the campaign and creating the campaign assets in-house saw us iterating and improving them after audience testing and trying different versions to test which had the most impact.
The best performing campaign creative on digital channels was the most simple: both statics and video featuring real people taking the action. We developed the assets using tools from behavioural science – including the EAST and COM-B model, to reduce the barriers people had and increase the likelihood of them taking the action.
5. Having a clear measurement of impact will help with ROI
Having a way to measure the effectiveness of the message was built into the plans from the start. By including a button on the website for people to report they had taken the action, at the end of the eight-step process we could quantify the actions and justify more budget, keep partners on board and develop media hooks. We saw 214,000 actions reported on the site during the campaign period, which was invaluable for reporting and measuring success. Without that simple button we just couldn’t have quantified our impact so clearly.
So…
…Nesta’s foray into consumer campaigning taught us that there are ways to reach thousands of households, even if you aren’t a consumer-facing household name. But it does take leg work and determination. When it pays off though – it is a great result all round.
Elin Price is campaigns manager at Nesta, the UK's innovation charity. You can say hello on Twitter at @misselinprice
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