Resource Type: Experiments

Get back to basics in climate communications with simple messages, plain (but vivid) language, and relatable benefits. These are among the key takeaways from the 600 million digital ads and two years of testing by Potential Energy, a nonprofit coalition of creative, analytic, and media agencies that brings a marketing philosophy of “People First” communication to climate. This webinar covered frameworks and language that most increase climate change understanding, messaging “ways in” that increase worry and demand for government action, terminology and concepts to avoid, and key audience segments most open to new messages.
The creative content from their Science Moms and The Great American Build campaigns is available for others to amplify online.             

SMS texting can boost voter turnout. The results of a field experiment in the 2021 Pennsylvania state primary found that text messages increased voter turnout by 0.8 percentage points. Three specific message wordings were tested: the strongest turnout effect (+1.0 percentage point) came from asking voters to ask their friends and family to vote. Two other messages were called “Fight for your rights” and “Assumed good behavior” increased voter turnout by 0.7 percentage points. All voters targeted were also identified as more likely than the average voter to care about the climate crisis.

For clean energy engagement with (English speaking) Latino parents on Facebook, testing suggests, cities (rather than school districts) make for campaign targets that garner more support. Additionally, use low-production value videos (text cards & stock footage) rather than high-production value videos (with custom footage and interviews): they produced similar action rates, and in addition to being more cost effective, the low production value videos had higher viewership rates, and can be quicker to make. This research was conducted as part of a field research grant to Climate Parents from the Climate Advocacy Lab.

This is the first part of a two-part training for organizers on approaches to better integrate digital tools into their work. This training looks at two integral aspects of organizing: recruiting new supporters (Recruiting – Part 1) and then keeping them coming back for the long-haul (Retention – Part 2).
This session, Recruiting, explores the intersection of recruiting new supporters, the use of digital tools, and evidence-based insights to help organizers think through possible uses of digital tools for rinding new supporters in their daily workflows. This is for people with some organizing experience who are thinking about how to better use digital. The focus is on strategy and systems thinking around getting new members and then setting them up to become long-term members of your organization. It is not a tactical how-to for specific platforms or online-to-offline models.