INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN: GO OUTDOORS FESTIVAL WASTE

Go Outdoors came to 4media group looking to conduct an integrated campaign to mark the early days of Festival Season. Whilst many people are looking forward to the atmosphere, music and the festival life, environmentalists are worrying about the impact the reams of left over litter and camping equipment is having.  The campaign was commissioned to raise awareness of the issue and specifically discourage the use of buying single use tents. Go Outdoors are encouraging festival goers to invest in tents that they intend to use repeatedly for future camping trips.

As a creative base for the campaign, which featured Broadcast PR and News Generation, we conducted research of 2,000 who have been to a festival and camped for at least one night to find out how many are guilty of leaving their belongings behind.  The results revealed: 

• 56% admit to leaving things behind at festivals including rubbish, bottles and leftover food and drink, as well as personal belongings.
• Over a quarter of festival goers buy tents solely to use at one festival and tend to dump them after.
• 10% of those surveyed left camping equipment, such as tents or chairs, at the campsite after the last festival they attended.
• The main reasons for leaving items behind were that they knew someone would collect it for them (48%) and that they had too much to carry (38%).
• When festival goers who had left camping equipment were asked what they thought had happened to their items, 30% believe their tent or other camping item was given to charity, while a further 22% think it was probably sent abroad as foreign aid.

In order to maximise the impact of the messaging it was important to secure the right spokesperson for the campaign. Given his career in the music industry and his recent activity campaign for environmental issues, specifically banning the use of single use plastics, McFly’s Dougie Poynter was the perfect fit for to front the campaign. Dougie was joined in the studio by Ian Mackintosh from GO Outdoors, who was able to talk about the research in more detail.