race to zero

Climate Champions & The Race to Zero

Social listening and behavioural change project and strategic report to understand the UK’s ‘persuadable middle’ in terms of attitude, understanding and conversation around climate change.

The Impact

+754,000

online conversations monitored around climate change

+500,000

Google searches on climate change subjects evaluated

We analysed over a million pieces of data through searches and conversations our target audience were having online around climate change. 

We were able to give clear direction on the types of subjects our target audience were engaging with, as well as their overall sentiment around climate change. We could then create a detailed report that included strategic recommendations of ways to communicate with the target audience more effectively in order to inspire climate action and behavioural change. 

Our findings are currently being used by several charities operating in the climate space to target campaigns for change.

A nationwide social listening project and behavioural change strategy to better understand and communicate with the so-called ‘persuadable middle’ around climate change and climate action.

We proposed a two-phase social listening programme to understand the conversations the persuadable middle were happening online around COP26 in 2021. 

Phase One: Big Data

Big data that identifies how the UK responds and engages with the climate change tags and keywords (as supplied by Semble) against the following filters:

  • Channel (Twitter, Reddit, YouTube)
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Sentiment

In this section of the reporting, we examined the themes most and least likely to be discussed online by the different demographics, the sentiment around the themes (positive, negative, passionate, or neutral), and any ‘gaps’ of interest that would help us understand how to target and talk to our audiences in a more engaging way. 

Phase Two: Qualitative Rationalisation

Our big data was then qualified and rationalised through a Facebook and Instagram lens.

Because our listening tool was restricted from listening to Facebook and Instagram, it was important that we focus our qualitative research on the two largest online communities in the UK to ensure our report covered all relevant channels.

We examined six online influencers and communities for both Backbone Conservatives and Civic Pragmatists to understand what they cared about, shared, and engaged with.

Keyword analysis was used to identify the Google search terms that are the most popular within any given theme.  This delivered an understanding of the most ‘searched for’ phrases, terms, or words.  Keyword analysis helped us understand what was already popular and had high awareness levels.  

 

Climate Champions are the UN-backed organisation tasked with galvanising the world of business and industry around the Race to Zero and the Race to Resilience.