Cool Effect - a non-profit fighting the climate crisis by supporting carbon reduction projects across the globe - sought out to educate businesses and individuals about ways to Travel Better with a multi-pronged campaign spanning Q4 2019 and H1 2020.
To kick off the campaign and help Cool Effect to nurture existing and new relationships with key businesses, Cool Effect attended the VERGE conference in effort to educate, communicate and show businesses, organizations and universities solutions to fighting climate change through their corporate strategies. The task at hand was to develop multiple creative assets to leverage at the VERGE Conference in an effort to drive business representatives on-site to recognize the need for a multi-pronged sustainability plan that addresses emissions reduction efforts and incorporates the purchase of triple-verified carbon offsets from Cool Effect. Provided travel was a huge strategic pillar, our goal was to leverage corporate travel as a relatable and actionable example for businesses, bringing to life its impact and easy solutions to travel more sustainably.
Additionally, to support the onsite booth experience and as an asset to leverage externally on an ongoing basis, Demonstrate in partnership with Cool Effect developed an easy-to-understand animation video and user-friendly app that showcases an individual's travel impact and easy solutions. Continuing into Q4 and H1 2020, the campaign included ongoing travel-focused content and efforts to inform businesses and individuals about ways to optimize travel for a happy planet.
The Travel Better campaign executed on behalf of Cool Effect took the complicated topic of carbon emissions generated by travel and, through the use of engaging visuals and compelling data, created both an immersive installation and intriguing content that provided individuals and businesses with not just information, but the ability to take concrete action to reduce the carbon footprint of their travel. Elements of Cool Effect’s holistic approach to educate the public included event execution and creative development for use across social, blog, website and email communications, data visualization development with corresponding user-friendly app, and a strategic earned media communications campaign to raise awareness.
Kicking off at the VERGE conference and taking inspiration from modern day airline check-in desk and pre-flight lounges (including an in-flight crew of brand ambassadors), Cool Effect was able to take the expectations associated with this familiar layout to surprise, delight, and educate visitors in a highly memorable way. Cool Effect’s presence at the VERGE conference was complete with an immersive booth experience filled with a 2-minute animation video that conceptualized the impact of corporate travel, leveraging figures for current aviation carbon emissions, and expected increase if travel continues at a steady rate. In conjunction, the team developed an engaging app that allowed on-site event attendees to toggle between length of air travel and showcase corresponding impact in effort to showcase personal impact of travel to the conference. By also providing visitors with a “pre-flight checklist” full of ways they could tangibly make an impact in the fight against climate change, Cool Effect was able to further ensure that their campaign message lived on long after events concluded.
Throughout the remainder of Q4 and continuing through the first half of 2020, Cool Effect’s Travel Better initiative utilized assets developed such as social content, data visualization, a pre-flight checklist and an animation video to continue efforts to educate consumers and businesses about ways to make informed decisions about travel and reduce their impact for a healthier, happier planet through social, blog, website and email communications and continued earned media communications efforts to further raise awareness. Cool Effect was steadfast in offering simple solutions to better, smarter travel in order to make it an approachable issue for both individuals and corporate partners.
The campaign was successful in driving offset purchases to help ease the burden of travel and holiday celebrations by drastically increasing audience size, monthly engagement, and monthly impressions across channels. Cool Effect successfully provided simple solutions to better, smarter travel in order to make it an approachable issue for both individuals and corporate partners, allowing for a happier, healthier planet.
Via execution of the Travel Better initiative at the VERGE conference, Cool Effect gathered over 60 quality business partner leads.
Cool Effect saw an increase of over 50% in total travel offset sales during the course of the Travel Better campaign with December 2019 generating the highest number of new purchases since the organization's inception, and January 2020 coming in as the second highest month for sales on record. New corporate partners alone generated over 330,000 tonnes sold in December 2019.
Through December 2019, in the middle of the campaign, the organization saw 90% cross-channel increase in audience growth rate, 90% cross-channel increase in monthly engagements and 82% cross-channel increase in monthly impressions.
Through continued earned media communications efforts, the campaign generated over 1.6 billion earned media impressions between August 2019 and July 2020
