The Climate Reality Project #ImTooHot Project – Bronze

As the saying goes, Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. With its #ImTooHot campaign, the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit organization devoted to educating people about manmade climate change, worked to change that.

The year 2012 was the hottest on record in the United States. August is generally the hottest month of the year. And Austin, TX, and Washington DC are two of the nation’s hotter cities. Working with agency match action, the Climate Reality Project gave away ice pops in those cities for two weeks in August 2012 to help people cool off immediately and also discussed ways to help cool off the planet for the long term.

An ice cream truck emblazoned with #ImTooHot and the organization’s logo traveled throughout each city, and sidewalk vendors set up spots as well. While giving away the icy treats, dubbed Climate Pops, Climate Reality Project staffers distributed information and encouraged visitors to go to the group’s website and tweet their thoughts about climate change using the #ImTooHot hash tag.

The organization kept people updated via its tour blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, and other social media channels. For instance, the group set up a chalkboard and asked passersby to finish the sentence “I’m too hot to…”; their responses on the board were photographed and posted online.

During the two weeks, Climate Reality Project gained 1,217 new Facebook likes and 6,605 new followers on Twitter. The nearly 3,000 #ImTooHot-tagged tweets reached an audience of 20.5 million, well over the group’s goal. More than 100 news outlets picked up the story, garnering 36,709 impressions, while social media generated 9.8 million impressions in all. And rather than giving away 20,000 Climate Pops as hoped for, Climate Reality Project distributed 22,000, showing that when it comes to educating people about a hot topic, sometimes it pays to stay cool.