Belfast City Council is Northern Ireland’s largest Local Government authority, serving a population of over a quarter of a million people.
What did our client need to achieve?
In the face of strict European Union targets for the reduction of the amount of waste going to landfill, the Council needed to increase consciousness of waste management as a civic responsibility and show how the individual household could positively contribute by increasing the level of domestic waste being re-used and re-cycled.
How did we help them achieve it?
The biggest challenge was how to overcome public inertia by moving them away from being unaware or passive on recycling matters, to being active.
The strategic thought, therefore, was to demonstrate tangible, positive outcomes of recycling by showing how everyday items can be recycled into other everyday items.
And by listening to what people had to say – tapping into how they felt – we developed the campaign proposition – Waste - it’s not rubbish!
To get the message across we developed press, radio, online and outdoor advertising solutions which, through pinpoint accurate planning within a defined boundary map, allowed us to reach out to audiences in a tightly targeted way, with little or no waste... We even used the sides of bin lorries, representing imaginative added value by means of the client optimising its own assets.
And we took the message to a Waste Fair via interactive screens which used technology not previously seen in Northern Ireland.
How do we know it worked?
Independently conducted post-campaign research showed an 82% awareness of the campaign theme.
But the proof of the pudding... nearly 60% of people claimed that the advertising had caused them to change their recycling behaviour (for the better, of course!)
In the period 2005-2008, a 155% reduction (23% recycling vs. the previous 9%) was achieved in waste going to landfill; exceeding targets within the 2007/08 Corporate Plan.
