Hornsby Shire Council’s Waste Services Branch has just completed a comprehensive study into community attitudes to recycling which has culminated in a 40 page marketing strategy.
“One of the main reasons for undertaking this project was to find out why there appears to have been a plateauing of the diversion rate and to find out how to take community commitment to a higher level,” said Rob Holliday, Hornsby’s Manager Waste Management Division.
Following a tender process, Council engaged OWL Research and Marketing to undertake the entire program conducted in three stages.
“We decided to engage one company to undertake the whole program so there was consistency across the investigative stages and a link to the marketing outcome we were seeking,” Rob Holliday said. “OWL has worked with Council on other studies and also offers a marketing capability which gave them the edge.”
Stage One began with a self completion questionnaire mailed to 10,000 households. The 3,029 replies showed a high level of resident interest in recycling. Detailed analysis of these replies provided Council with statistical information about community attitudes and activities.
Nine focus groups were also conducted. Respondents discussed some of their concerns and provided a better insight into what people did or did not understand.
The Stage One report gave Council a new insight into community attitudes. The key message being more information and more education covering, what can be recycled, which bin do different items go in and why and what happens to all the recycled materials?
An aspect which needed more research was to better understand how different target groups reacted to various promotional elements. Stage Two comprised 13 focus groups, with respondents recruited according to age and lifestyle. Groups were conducted with senior citizens, families with young children, families with teenage children, unit dwellers, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) residents, church groups, students at Hornsby TAFE, and students in primary schools.
A range of communications materials used by Hornsby Council were shown together with items sourced from other Councils. All were compared and evaluated for clarity of design, information value, usefulness, worth retaining (hung on the fridge) or discarded. Groups were then shown a range of new graphic designs developed by OWL’s marketing team, including logos, slogans, layouts for calendars, information brochures, stickers and other promotional items.
In additional to a full research report, OWL also provided Council with a 40 page marketing strategy recommending a new logo, a new motivational phrase (‘a call to action’), plus a unique new group of communicators (‘The Bin Crew’). Council is now reviewing the reports and deliberating over the many recommendations included in the marketing strategy. Readers will be kept informed in future editions on developments with this bold new, marketing initiative.
For further information contact Rob Holliday at Hornsby Shire on (02) 9847 4816 or John Clark at OWL Research and Marketing Pty Ltd on (02) 9489 8888.
