Copper Consultancy has appointed Hannah Jarrett to the position of Digital and Social Media Manager to provide additional expertise to clients in both paid and earned digital marketing.
Hannah has more than five years of cross-sector experience with global teams delivering high quality social media, event and marketing campaigns. Alongside social media expertise, she is skilled in content marketing, building target audiences and using analytics to optimise marketing campaigns.
Starting with Walt Disney World during her placement year at university, Hannah has worked with global teams in a range of sectors including luxury cruise company Royal Caribbean, and most recently leading the delivery of RSK Group’s social media strategy.
Having joined Copper from RSK Group, Hannah is well versed in the sustainability landscape and understands the complexity of working with a wide variety of clients.
Commenting on her appointment, Hannah said: “The growing demand for public engagement in major infrastructure development and for businesses to build genuine networks means digital has as big a role as ever in helping us reach our target audiences. Keeping my finger on the pulse, as social platforms and digital channels evolve, I am relishing the opportunity to apply my skills and support clients as we all work towards a net zero society and more sustainable economy.”
Annabel Beardsmore, Director, Strategic Communications, said: “With Hannah joining the team, we are able to provide additional value to new and existing clients by amplifying campaigns and messaging through targeted digital and social media. Hannah joins Copper’s strategic communications team and will collaborate with teams across the company to create cohesive marketing messages and reshape the company’s digital approach to help keep clients ahead of the curve.”
Copper’s Strategic Communications team provides public affairs, public relations and corporate strategy support to some of the largest organisations in the UK at the forefront of the UK’s drive to net zero.
Copper expresses our deep condolences to the Royal Family. The Queen has given immeasurable service to the United Kingdom, and will never be forgotten.
Copper’s programme of webinars with experts across our industry is continuing with a bumper September.
From freeports and decarbonisation to data and local transport, we’ll be joined by some fantastic panellists.
Join us for a panel discussion bringing together experts from outside the infrastructure industry to look at what applications, techniques and thinking we can borrow to better use data to understand our audiences and connect us with the people that infrastructure serves. Sign up here.
The latest in our sustainable travel webinar series where we’ll discuss the next steps for transport projects in the UK, including how to overcome barriers to delivery and a shift away from large, strategic transport projects to local schemes. Sign up here.
A panel made up of several disciplines and hosted by the Green Alliance, we’ll unpack changing policy, whole-life carbon, greening roads and net zero targets and what it means for the construction industry. Sign up here.
Thursday 15 September, 11am: Freeports – what’s next for government’s flagship idea
Government’s plans for freeports are set to create national hubs for global trade and investment, hotbeds for innovation and an opportunity to level up communities around the UK. Successful freeport bidders are now creating business cases with formal designation expected later in 2022. Join us in talking to industry experts about what’s next for freeports. Sign up here.
- Engagement with infrastructure projects across the UK is generally low, with nearly 1 in two people (49.2%) saying that they have never taken part in a consultation about local services, issues or projects.
- People who have lived in their property for a year or less are more likely to have taken part in a consultation within the last five months than someone who has lived at their property for 10years or more.
Today (04 August 2022), Copper Consultancy released the final report in its latest three-part Attitudes series. The report explores the connection between “belonginess” and closeness to community with levels of engagement with infrastructure projects.
Findings show that the closer and more connected someone feels to their community, the more likely they are to participate in consultations about local, issues, services and projects.
The report, title ‘Does community matter?’, uses several questions to identify how close people feel to their community, including questions about how much they trust other people in their community, if people feel they can influence things locally and how actively engaged they are with their local area.
Data shows that those who have higher levels of trust; feel they have more influence about decisions in their local area people; and report that they are active members of their local area are far more likely to engage than the national average.
Based on a nationally representative UK sample of 4,004 respondents, 49.2% said that they never taken part in a consultation about local services, issues or projects. This figure dropped to 40.4% for people who said they trust people in their local area, dropped further (35.2%) for those who said that they feel like they have influence over things that happen in their local area, and dropped further still (20.1%) for those who said they were active members of their community.
The report also explored If time spent living in a property contributed to engagement, with surprising results.
Data suggests that those who have lived at their property for less than a year are the most likely to have taken part in a consultation about local services, Issues or projects. 62.2% of people surveyed who had been in their property for less than a year said that they had taken part in a local consultation within the last five months. Whereas only 14.5% of those who have lived at their property for 10 years or more said they had taken part in a local consultation within the last 5 months.
Annabel John, Director of Strategic Communications & Creative at Copper Consultancy, reflected on the series of reports saying: “This series of reports confirmed some things that we knew, challenged some deep-rooted perceptions which we thought to be truth and uncovered insights and intelligence that will help reshape the way we engage with people and communities in support of our clients.
“The value of investing in research to better understand audiences and stakeholders cannot be overlooked and if we were to take one thing away from this work, it would be that it’s time we started communicating with people as people, taking account of their differences, traits and behaviours, rather than thinking of them as sections of the planning act.”
You can read the full report here.
The third in our three-part Attitudes series exploring how different people think and feel about infrastructure.
- Age does not necessarily correlate with levels of involvement with local issues.
- Only 24% of the UK population are actively engaged with projects that impact in their local area.
- Younger people are more likely to engage with projects as a result of increased use of digital.
Copper Consultancy has today (28 July 2022) released the second of three reports in its Attitudes series. The new report looks at the impact of age on levels of engagement in infrastructure projects and shows that the correlation between age and engagement is not as strong as expected.
A common assumption in the infrastructure industry is that individuals who typically engage with planning applications and consultations are from an older age demographic. However, Copper’s research, informed by a nationally representative survey of 4,004 people, tells a different story.
The report “Does age matter?” found little correlation between the age of individuals and their level of engagement with projects impacting their local area. Around 40% of people between the ages of 16 and 45 say they would get involved if there was a problem in their local area – this dropped to around 30% for older age demographics.
In fact, younger demographics were more likely than older people to consider themselves an active member of their local area. This was further evidenced when respondents were asked how often they take part in local consultations. Over 50% of people aged between 16-24 said they had engaged with consultation about local services or issues in the last 5 months, for individuals over 55 this fell to 14.61%
Increased engagement from younger age groups is an encouraging sign for our industry, but Copper urges caution to those considering pivoting towards wholly digital consultation.
The uptake of digital communication methods, like virtual meetings and consultation spaces, following the pandemic has increased the number of engagement tools at our disposal, but digital is not a panacea for low levels of engagement. Providing engagement opportunities for younger demographics to engage through digital means needs to be one element of a multifaceted approach to engagement – a one size fits all approach could lead to a lack of representation of older people in the built environment.
Annabel John, Strategic Communications and Creative Director at Copper Consultancy said: “Our new report shows the link between age and involvement with projects is not a strong as we previously thought. This shows the value of using data and statistics to uncover deeper insights into the various audiences we engage with.
“Our insight suggests projects should combine digital engagement and traditional approaches to achieve greater reach. In doing so, we can encourage better inclusivity and representativeness of the views and opinions we collect during the application and consultation process.”
Copper Consultancy is constantly seeking to build an even deeper understanding of the infrastructure industry by investing time and resources to understand how people think and feel about the built environment that serves them.
Copper’s ‘Attitudes’ series of reports are designed to take a deep dive into the UK population to better understand audiences and help clients create the legacy that projects wish to leave behind.
You can read the full report here.
The second in our three-part Attitudes series exploring how different people think and feel about infrastructure.
The first in our three-part Attitudes series exploring how different people think and feel about infrastructure.
Copper abides by a fundamental principle: we build understanding before we act.
We’ve measured public attitudes to infrastructure for over five years, seeking to build a picture of the perception of infrastructure and development in the UK. We’ve looked at everything from what people think about net zero and solar energy, to the public’s understanding of freeports and attitudes to infrastructure in Brexit Britain.
We are constantly seeking to build an even deeper understanding of our industry and invest time and resources to understand our clients’ audiences because we care about the challenges people face and the legacy that projects wish to leave behind. Above all, we seek to understand what people think and feel about the infrastructure that serves them.
That’s why in the latest of our Attitudes series we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve taken a deep dive into the UK population to unearth the attributes, attitudes and willingness of people to engage with projects affecting the built environment. Using information derived from an in-depth research project into the UK population, we’re launching a report series that tests:
- Hypothesis 1 – are people more likely to engage with projects if they are more knowledgeable about infrastructure and the built environment?
- Hypothesis 2 – are older people more likely to engage with infrastructure projects?
- Hypothesis 3 – does a person’s sense of connection to their local area impact how likely they are to engage with infrastructure projects?
In this three-part series of attitudes reports (released over the next two weeks), we’ll explore our hypotheses and identify some of the elements that lead to higher levels of engagement in our sector.
What is Audience Segmentation?
Alongside the reports, we’ve carried out a study on the UK population to develop a deeper insight into what people think and feel about the infrastructure that serves them. The purpose is to categorise the population into segments to identify people’s key drivers and behaviour patterns to help shape the best ways to communicate.
Marketing professionals have used audience segmentation since the 1950s and the concept is a simple one: people are different. We all have different wants, needs, attitudes and behaviours and, therefore, we should employ different approaches to move people to “action”.
Traditionally, “actions” might relate to consumer behaviours like buying a product, but audience segmentation is used increasingly across a wide range of sectors, from B2B marketing to election campaigns.
While no two people are the same, there are inevitable demographic, geographic, attitudinal and behavioural commonalities across the UK population. By collecting a large enough sample size, and employing advanced statistical analysis techniques, we’ve identified patterns in our data to group people based on shared characteristics and responses.
Grouping people in this way provides insights into how different people think and behave, and this approach provides us with layers of information that we can use to tailor our communication and engagement strategies around infrastructure and development projects, helping to differentiate content and messaging and select communication channels to better resonate with different audiences.
To find out how our data could help your project, get in touch with annabel.john@copperconsultancy.com or james.hillier@copperconsultancy.com