Nesta

Background

There are around 15m condensing combi-boilers in the UK, many of which aren’t operating at maximum efficiency. Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good, estimated that if 10m UK homes turn down the flow temperature on their combi boilers to 60°c or below it could wipe £1billion off UK energy bills and save 1.7m tonnes of carbon emissions. That's the equivalent of nearly 6m people taking transatlantic flights!

Our Approach

The challenge

We needed to make UK consumers aware of this simple life-hack and how it could save them an average of £112 and 173kg of carbon per year – a welcome message in a cost-of-living crisis while the 2030 Net-Zero target looms large. Next, we needed to drive them to MoneySavingBoilerChallenge.com where Nesta’s online tool would walk them through the process.

It’s tricky to target households by boiler type, it was important to make sure that the modest (by national standards) media budget was wisely used to home in on audiences motivated by cost and/or sustainability messaging, while focusing on buying efficiency and format shareability.

Objectives

To drive awareness and encourage action, we targeted money-savvy/money-conscious households and financially struggling households across the UK. These were then split into 35+ and 18-34 age group audiences based on different media consumption habits and attitudinal motivators.

The strategy

Our lead channel was audio. Across radio and digital audio, we identified stations/platforms that indexed strongly with all our audience clusters, taking advantage of the channels ability to emotionally connect with our audience and deliver cost efficient reach and quick frequency builds. And audio’s power to drive online action also played considerably into our thinking. Audio was supported by instructional short-form video ads across YouTube, social media, and premium publisher websites, alongside large format press ads in leading national newspapers to reach older audiences. Finally, we set up Paid Search to mop up what would turn out to be clear campaign-driven upticks in search volume. Our engaging multi-channel campaign ran in Q1 2023 align with cold weather and peak use of combi-boilers, extensive media coverage around increased fuel costs, and the UK Government’s ‘Help for Households’ campaign this also featured Nesta’s online tool so ensure Nesta’s messaging fell into a relevant and actionable period.

Results

31m

The campaign reached an impressive 31m adults in the UK

172k

Visits to the campaign website

33k

We generated 33,404 boiler turndowns

YouTube

Paid Search

paid social advertising

Insights

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