Change on two wheels

Who Colab, Peshkar and Oldham Council

Objective When Oldham Council approached Peshkar and Colab, its cycling rates were the worst in the country. Oldham Council invested in improved cycle routes, but it found that people still weren’t cycling. Colab, a communications agency that specialises in collaborative campaigns with a social purpose, found this was largely due to lack of awareness. Colab and Peshkar, a charity that brings art and culture to young people, sought to create a campaign both with and for young people in the Oldham area. They hoped to raise awareness of cycling as a legitimate method of transport and as a fun pastime. 

Strategy Colab came up with a collaborative campaign through meeting with it target audience of 13 to 26 year-olds. It turned out that the best way to reach young people was through online visual media. The campaign was built around Facebook and relied on peer-to-peer sharing. John Shewell, founding director of Colab, says, “The digital media was a very important aspect of the campaign, principally because of budget but also because it was relevant to the audience.” By showing that cycling is fun and exhilarating, and avoiding the uninspiring health-focused message sometimes favoured by councildelivered campaigns, Colab and Pushkar succeeded in changing the travel behaviours of young people in the Oldham area. The organisations are now pursuing the next step of the programme; ensuring that the 10,000 people engaged by the campaign are actually getting on their bikes.

Rationale Shewell says, “The campaign was really about young people celebrating the outdoors and doing fun things on their bikes. We wanted to start with why cycling is a lot of fun and we did it in a very image-rich way to showcase young people doing tricks, jumping around, and just having fun.”