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It would be difficult to think of a more climate-threatening, high-carbon product than coal. Yet, for all that, coal doesn’t seem that bad to many people. (Please excuse our artistic licence since it looks to be wood-fire, rather than coal-fire, in the picture.)

The main message of the advert is:

Coal turns houses into homes; can your low carbon product do that?

This headline addresses what, we feel, is the key implication of our analysis. Whilst very few houses now use coal directly for heat – it is still used in power generation, which relies on public acceptability (particularly in the USA). It also demonstrates what kind of consumer connection can be achieved with heating products. (Think what a good job Aga has done over the years – my Mum loves them!) An important challenge for new, low carbon, domestic heating products is to try and create a branding connection with consumers; building on the nice emotional feelings which users can get.

Consider how coal is already used in advertising …

and in the branding of a new restaurant chain …

So, as part of our Environmental Choices monitor (wave 1), we wanted to measure the associations that people had with ‘coal’ (with an open-ended question), and the emotions these associations evoked (from a structured list of both positive and negative emotions).

As we described the research, within the advert:

The fact is, a lot of people feel good about coal. Our research shows that for many people, it reminds them of cosy fireplaces, warmth and/or childhood.

The results we described in the advert only refers to the English sample. It is worth mentioning that the results are somewhat different for people from Canada, England and the USA. As we might expect, our cultural heritage makes a big difference in how we think of coal.

In the research we presented the word ‘coal’ using a 2-second tachistoscopic test. Here are the main categories of association that English people have about coal:

We then wrote:

There is even dissonance amongst those who have negative associations about coal: up to a quarter still find it evokes positive feelings of nostalgia.

Here is the data, showing first-mentioned associations (respondents were allowed to make upto 3 associations) to support this:

Only a small proportion specifically associate coal with climate change – but at least people in this group are much more likely to believe that coal should be replaced as a power source.

We can see that in all countries we surveyed, especially in Canada and the USA, those who associate ‘coal’ with ‘climate change / fossil fuels’, are more likely to believe that ‘Every effort should be made to avoid more coal-fired power stations being built’.

We then wrote:

Associations and feelings are intrinsic to purchasing decisions; how can you get people to feel better about their home being low carbon?

To support this last paragraph, here is some further reading:

About associations and emotions in advertising effectiveness – (p28/29)Selling Sustainability (2008), NESTA

About how all associations have an emotional component – (p25) The First Idea (2004), Greenspan & Shanker

About ‘The Affect Heuristic’ which describes how ‘affect-laden imagery was highly predictive of perceived risk from nuclear power and support for (or opposition to) that technology’ – (pxxxii) The Perception of Risk (2000), Slovic

About tachitoscopic research – (p.366) The Mental World of Brands (2001), Franzen & Bouwman

A very readable book about this whole area – How We Decide (2009), Jonah Lehrer

You can read our press release, or visit the ‘Power Generation‘ part of the Haddock Research website, for more information.

Please use info@haddock-research.com if you would like to discuss any of our analysis.

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This is our first advert, from a series of half a dozen planned, which we are first publishing in the April 2010 edition ofSustainable Business. The polar bear has become an iconic symbol of climate change, and so we wanted to start with this theme – and James (Ambler) came up with the original concept.

We all liked the image, but we spent quite some time finalising the copy. Perhaps we compromised a bit on the snappiness, but we wanted to include text that was directly supported by the Environmental Choices™ (EC) data that we have. Here is the text we finally used:

Our research shows that there is a high degree of differentiation within society when it comes to how people think, feel, and act in relation to climate change. People who are less concerned, or dismissive, about climate change are also less likely to be interested in nature, and less likely to connect with communication invoking nature – they may even find it annoying. There are other advertising concepts which get more wide-spread support.

Taking the first part of the paragraph:

Our research shows that there is a high degree of differentiation within society when it comes to how people think, feel, and act in relation to climate change.

This statement comes from our cluster analysis segmentation (Q23-Q27 of wave 1 survey). It was interesting that when we came to writing this, we had originally used the word such as ‘polarised’, but as Chantal (Gaboury) pointed out, that talks about 2 polarised camps, where what the data is suggesting is more of a broad spectrum of opinion.

Here is the next statement:

People who are less concerned, or dismissive, about climate change are also less likely to be interested in nature

This is derived from Q16 of EC wave 1 where we asked people to indicate, from a list, which sports or pastimes they really enjoyed doing (that changed the way they were feeling). In all countries and gender/age groups, there was a pretty similar pattern that people who were very concerned about climate change (Climate Citizens) were more likely to be passionate about nature than other groups. Below is data from the USA (and you can see this data by registering for ‘free summary‘ data from our website), and a similar general pattern could be seen with the Canadian and English data:

And about this statement:

, and less likely to connect with communication invoking nature

This comes from Q53 of EC wave 1, where we asked people to indicate how powerful they thought each of 6 environmental ideas were thought to be. We used rating scales, but to enable comparisons between people (especially since people from different cultures can score in different ways) we re-organised the data to signify which concepts each respondent thought was best/equal best, and which were worst/equal worst. We also did not include, in the further analysis, the 5% of people who were not engaged with any idea. This analysis indicated that an idea about the need to protect ‘beautiful nature’ was much more powerful amongst Climate Citizens than other groups. Indeed, usingSPSS CHAID analysis, and including testing a large number of demographics, concern about climate change was the best predictor about whether this was thought to be the most powerful idea of not.

- they may even find it annoying.

What we did was test people’s spontaneous reactions to the words ‘climate change’, and from a list of emotions, asked people how it made them feel (Q22). We can see that people who wrote comments which were dismissive/in denial about climate change were typically bored or annoyed by the subject. We have inferred that the iconic image of the polar bear may similarly annoy them.

There are other advertising concepts which get more wide-spread support.

Again, this is derived from our analysis of 6 differing branding concepts (Q53 of EC wave 1) as shown above. As can be seen, those we term ‘Sceptics & Uninvolved’ are least likely to find ‘beautiful nature’ a compelling concept – whereas other concepts we tested gained more wide-spread support. Combining the results of the CHAID analysis with our proprietary ‘Best/Worst net’ analysis and ‘Alignment’ profiling  we are able to say which is the most powerful of the concepts tested. For the record, the ‘Beautiful Nature’ concept came 3rd overall.

You can read our press release, or visit the ‘Branding report’ part of the Haddock Research website, for more information.

Please use info@haddock-research.com if you would like to discuss any of our analysis.