Eco-friendly Red Noses prove a winner for Comic Relief

Connor IbbetsonData Journalist
October 14, 2020, 1:36 PM GMT+0

CharityIndex Metrics for Red Nose Day have soared since the announcement

Comic Relief has announced that from next year, its iconic Red Noses will entirely plastic-free for the first time. The news follows 18 months of work using a material called bagasse, a by-product of sugar cane.

YouGov CharityIndex shows major improvements in several metrics since the news was announced on October 5th. Red Nose Day’s Buzz score – which measures whether respondents have heard something positive or negative about a charitable organisation in the last two weeks – has risen from -0.5 on October 4th to 6.3 as of October 12th (+6.8).

Among Brits who are willing to pay more for products that are good for the environment, Red Nose Day performed even better – with scores increasing by 13 points from -0.4 to 12.6 over the same time period.

The charity’s Attention score (the overall percentage of respondents who have reported hearing anything, either positive or negative about a charity over the past two weeks) has also risen among both groups: increasing by 7.8 points among the general public and 12.9 points among those concerned with purchasing sustainable goods.

The changes were announced after Comic Relief received letters from schoolchildren asking them to ditch the single-use plastics previously used in Red Noses. Red Nose Day’s CharityIndex Awareness score (which asks which of the following charities have you ever heard of) has also seen a boost from the news, rising 3.8 points to a peak of 95.5 on October 11th.

Swapping to the sustainable bagasse material even improved Donation Intent scores (which measures whether respondents would be likely to donate £1 to a charity if the charity asked tomorrow) for Red Nose Day, with a small boost of 2.1 points to a peak of 20.0 in the days following the announcement.

Learn more about YouGov CharityIndex here

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