PleaseCycle: Design a ready-to-go communications package to increase the number and frequency of staff cycling to work

PleaseCycle is a website and app that measures cycling miles covered by staff. It calculates the carbon savings of this and is sold to businesses and organisations (such as Reckitt Benckiser, and Camden Council) as a way of satisfying their carbon use as part of their CSR reporting. The package has practical information about biking, planning safe routes, logging daily trips, & competing against colleagues.

Our challenge was to design a ready-to-go communications package for all current and future PleaseCycle clients to download and use (while changing only a logo) that will increase uptake of staff cycling to work – yielding more miles, more frequently.

The first and only question we asked was what are the barriers to commuter cycling – however so executed. Pouring through tens of thousands of words of peer-reviewed research we found that there seemed to be a large difference between what people think the barriers to cycling are, and what they actually are.

Broadly, the perception of cycling was an unachievable, all-or-nothing, fast, young, male, equipment-orientated activity; general expressions of inclusion were needed. Specifically messages that salved; fears about looking silly, how to manage weather, understanding it doesn’t have to be everyday, fear of being thought of as an outsider, and more, were needed. (For more on this research, ask us.)

Outputs are both overt and covert, and in a form suitable for any business off-the-peg.

• The overt outputs included posters which illustrate a solution to a barrier, linking it to a function of the PleaseCycle product. These are added to the client ‘dashboard’ on the PleaseCycle website.
• The covert outputs included directions on where to position cycling paraphernalia in the business, such as putting bike racks out front because images of prevalence drive behaviour (the ‘image’ made by real people in the real world, rather than on a poster, is arguably more powerful for not being synthetic). This and more are included in a pack for our client and their clients. Additionally, a cheat-sheet of real-world behavioural influences is included.

In practical terms we delivered:

• 5 posters
• 1 email structure
• 4 Architectural / system changes