Project overview
The cities of Kirkland, Redmond, Bellevue, and Bothell came together to develop a campaign to encourage durable and reusable item adoption. Cascadia supported the development and implementation of this three-month community-based social marketing (CBSM) campaign to increase the number of Eastside coffee shops accepting reusable cups, increase the number of people using reusable cups, and increase consistency and frequency among people that already use reusable cups.
Approach and impact
We surveyed residents and businesses in these cities to gauge their attitude and understanding of reusables, as well as barriers and motivators to using them—and used the results to inform campaign messaging. The project team focused in on promoting bring your own cup (BYOC) practices at coffee shops across the Eastside—which served to not only promote reusables, but also offered the opportunity for participating coffee shops to build a collaborative community environment and promote their own businesses. The campaign included branding and outreach materials development, media promotion led by Cascadia’s partner The Vida Agency, outreach to coffee shops across the four cities, in-person events, incentives distribution, a campaign pledge, and a “passport” program. The “passport” was a unique outreach material for residents to collect stamps at participating coffee shops and then submit to receive additional giveaways.
To evaluate the campaign’s success, we built in evaluation checks, including three checkpoints with participating coffee shop locations and pre and post surveys with pledge participants. Data from the surveys showed that residents increased, in one way or another, their engagement with BYOC by 54% after taking the pledge. In total, our team supported 14 outreach events across the four cities—including five at partnering coffee shop locations, collected 686 pledges, and directly reached around 1,000 residents.
