During the campaign of the former year, evaluations were made for the next edition of the KSF campaign. Because the campaign already existed for a few years, considerations were made to make changes to the campaign concept. Initial discussions already started in the beginning of 2012. The running campaign was analyzed and recommendations for a possible new campaign were made. Internal discussions were held about the future of the campaign and questions were
Page | 28 Figure 4: Sequence and development of key events of the HIER Klimaatstraatfeest campaign.
Page | 29 asked about the effectiveness of the campaign. At the start of this phase, the organization was unconfident about the impact of the campaign concept and was less motivated to continue its process. Initially thoughts were present to start a whole new campaign concept, but eventually the decision was made to restart the KSF campaign. As one of the organization’s managers explained: “And you are unsure whether the goals that were initially envisioned are achieved. Do we really succeed in engaging people to save energy and involve them in solving the climate problem?”1 Another factor was the mixed signals that the organization perceived from a main
partner and sponsor of the whole organization. Based on these signals HIER thought that it would not hurt to come up with a new plan for the campaign. However, eventually the campaign idea was confirmed as valuable for the main sponsor, which led to the decision to discuss the possible alterations in the campaign design.
There were some important changes made, as the project manager recalls: “No, it has changed. The competition has changed. The main objective remained the same, to involve the average Dutch citizen in the solution to the climate problem.”2 In the discussion of changing the campaign one of
the main reasons was the financial situation: the campaign had significantly less financial resources available and therefore had to think about how to be able to organize such a campaign in the same way. The most important change was the introduction of elimination rounds during the competition. The organization had two main reasons for this change: firstly it led to a decrease in time and money investment into the campaign; secondly it provided an exciting competition until the end of the campaign. These eliminations meant that there were two moments during the competition after which only the best performing participants continued in the competition. This was introduced as an incentive to subscribe to the competition, to engage with neighbors and conduct collective actions. Next to that, the organization introduced another incentive to strive for points and therefore to mobilize for collective action because they only gave away prizes to the best 10 participating streets. One of the managers remembers: “In the previous years it didn’t matter much if you finished 2nd or 499th, because you got the same price. We
wanted to make it more exciting and put in some pressure until the end to let participants strive for place 1, 2, or 3 or the top 10.”3 Therefore, these changes were introduced as a means to improve
the action mobilization.
Another consequence of the budget decrease was the decision to change the way of mobilization of participants to subscribe. The decision was made to focus on mobilization of participants via partner organizations. Housing corporations and municipalities were the primary channel of participant mobilization: they were asked to create publicity in order to mobilize their constituents. In addition, plans were made to provide these partners with a gadget, which could be used to mobilize participants. Another decision was to focus the mobilization actions on mobilizing former participants. One more change was the declining budget for publicity: earlier there were resources available to conduct a media campaign to increase the visibility of the
1
Translation from Dutch, the original citation is: “En dat je twijfelt of je de doelen die je ooit voorzag of je die wel haalt met de campagne. Lukt het nu wel echt om mensen te bereiken, lukt het nu wel echt om energie te besparen en mensen te betrekken bij het klimaat.”
2
Translation from Dutch, the original citation is: “Nee, het is veranderd. De competitive is wel veranderd. De basisdoelstelling is wel hetzelfde gebleven, namelijk de gewone Nederlander te betrekken bij de oplossing van het klimaatprobleem.”
3
Translation from Dutch, original citation: “In de jaren daarvoor maakte het niet zoveel uit of je nou nummer 2 was of 499; je kreeg dezelfde prijs. Dat wilden we wat spannender houden en wat meer druk erop zetten tot het einde toe om voor plek 1, 2 of 3 te gaan of voor de top 10 te gaan.”
Page | 30 campaign. However, during this campaign it was decided to focus on free publicity: social media were chosen as most important means to gain publicity in combination with public radio. The most important event took place at the end of this phase: management made the decision-in- principle to start the campaign. This was also the initiation of the second campaign phase.