A Little Bit Of Love — Mark Salisbury

Good riddance to bad rubbish

Norfolk Waste Partnership—
Brand Strategy, Brand Identity + Print

Background

Working across the Norfolk Councils, the Norfolk Waste Partnership aimed to improve recycling behaviour, ensuring residents understood what to do with their recyclable items and encouraging them to recycle more.

With a target audience of 420,000 households across the region and a production budget of just 9p per residence, a low-cost, high impact campaign was required.

Working together

Research from Wrap into UK recycling habits was coupled with local insights from the NWP team to shape the design brief.

In response, a range of concepts were developed and prototypes created for evaluation by project stakeholders. Engaging the committee with this workshopping approach helped to fine-tune the designs and ensure early buy-in.

A deliberately different approach

The chosen campaign route embodied several key features:

It avoided the traditional, safe council aesthetic.
It brought a little bit of fun to a topic which can often be quite dry.
It lead with simple messaging, covering the main points that items placed in recycling bins need to be clean, dry and loose - not bagged.
It aimed at several audiences, from unengaged through to the idealists.

Getting the message out

A mail drop was the only way to guarantee every household was reached in the budget, making the leaflet the key piece of campaign collateral.

Friendly illustrations got the important messages across quickly, and a bold black and pink two-colour palette helped to get attention and keep costs down. The leaflet was printed on recycled, uncoated stock giving it a tactile finish not usually associated with council material.

For a longer term prompt, the leaflet included a summary sticker residents could post near their recycling bin as a reminder.

Waste not...

The mobile billboards provided buy the Waste Partnerships bin lorries ensured that residents recieved a constant reminder of the message in the months after the mail drop. These were supplemented with static advertising in a few key locations.

Socially active

The campaign followed through across social channels, helping to reinforce key messages and increase the reach.

Pop-up propaganda

Norwich council were convinced to lend the campaign a tenantless shop, providing a canvas for a city-centre pop-up display.

Stretching the tiny production budget a little further, the display was created by mounting vinyl graphics onto a wall built of cardboard boxes. Hanging paper letters and a large format poster completed the lo-tech messaging.