Log your interest in the campaign and talk to relevant people in your organisation to ask for help, including those in charge of street cleaning and others involved in communication.

Engage and work with local businesses, retailers and schools

Getting local businesses and institutions actively involved in your campaign is a great way of creating greater impact on the local community. Here are a few suggestions of the types of people in the community you might want to get involved:

Schools (A-level or equivalent age), colleges and other places of higher education:

• Provide posters to display in communal areas such as common rooms and cafeterias

Universities:

• Provide posters to display in communal areas
• Use student radio and newspapers to help spread the message on campus by word-of-mouth
• Distribute disposal solutions at freshers’ fairs and similar events

Health / Community centres:

• Hospitals may find disposal solutions useful, as smokers often resort to chewing gum when they are unable to smoke
• Provide posters for display near exits

Banks:

• Provide stickers for ATM machines with the campaign strapline, encouraging customers to use their ATM receipts for wrapping their gum and putting it in the bin

Retail outlets:

• Retail outlets may be willing to display the campaign posters in their shop window
• Your target audience is predominantly female and aged between 16 and 34; fashion outlets may be the best places to target

Promote the campaign through local media

Media support

Getting local media support is a great way of building campaign awareness. Here are a few things you could try:

• Use your own media, local newsletters and other contacts to generate awareness of the campaign
• Encourage local TV, press and radio to attend your launch or to speak to councillors about the campaign
• Utilise council-owned media space – e.g. billboards outside the Town Hall

The launch

During the launch, why not organise an event or activity in your town or city centre to coincide with the start of the paid-for advertising campaign. This will encourage media support and raise awareness of the campaign.

Measure the effectiveness of the campaign

Monitoring the effectiveness of the campaign is a great way of showing local people and partners the impact it has made.

Measuring gum litter reduction

The chewing gum monitoring should take place as follows at each of the survey areas chosen at the start:

• 28 days before your campaign starts count the number of ‘blobs’ of gum that have built up in a designated area. This will tell you how much is being dropped without a campaign.
• At the end of the 28 days re-count the number of ‘blobs’ that are deposited in the area. The difference between the two numbers is your monthly deposit.
• At the end of the campaign, count the number of ‘blobs’ deposited in the designated area. The difference in this number will tell you the effect once the campaign itself has come to an end and therefore the impact over the month of the campaign.  You can monitor each month you run the campaign.