About the Project

The project set out to drive the uptake of net zero energy/carbon homes in the Australian residential sector through application of a consumer mass media campaign in collaboration with a range of industry participants.

The communications strategy was developed around the creation of flagship TV show, ‘Renovate or Rebuild’, that was designed to increase consumer awareness of the benefits of net zero energy/carbon homes and to ultimately drive consumer demand and sales of net zero energy homes in Australia as well as renovations of existing homes to achieve net zero energy/carbon performance.

In The Beginning – 2014 to 2017

The development of Renovate or Rebuild dates back to 2014 and extensive industry deliberation facilitated by the Department of Planning and Environment (previously Office of Environment and Heritage) through its Collaborative Sustainable Housing Initiative (CSHI). The CSHI identified a desire amongst industry to activate this market, and to harvest the resulting commercial and economic growth opportunities.

Through this engagement industry agreed a vision of the CSHI to:

“Create mainstream demand for quality homes that are comfortable and healthier to live in, are affordable, and have a positive impact on our environment.”

This vision aimed to develop a mainstream market for homes that were differentiated by their superior environmental performance over the existing housing stock. The goal was to grow construction industry jobs and revenue, as home buyers and renovators invested more in the construction aspects of higher quality homes.

Unfortunately, experience and industry opinion was that this market did not currently exist, and that consumers were ignorant of (or do not value) the benefits of environmentally sustainable housing features.

However, a significant body of research demonstrated favourable aspirations for energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, amongst Australian home buyers and renovators. Virtually all studies indicate a positive relationship between better energy performance and increased property value.

Furthermore, research showed that there was substantial latent desire for the “co- benefits” that environmentally sustainable housing can bring such as comfort, health, community, and affordability.

Whilst the research demonstrated consumer interest in energy efficient housing the challenge of how to stimulate market demand from consumers remained unresolved.

An Idea was Born – 2018

“In 2018, new social science research insights emerged from the Low Carbon Living CRC (LCLCRC) and revealed that the current ‘top down’ education approaches aimed at changing consumer behaviours to adopt sustainable housing options (including concepts like net zero energy homes) have been largely ineffective.”

One of the key findings arising from the examination of the social research undertaken by the LCLCRC is that sustainability should be communicated in a more mainstream way and in particular there was an opportunity to learn from mainstream broadcast media with an emphasis on entertainment and story-telling that has been shown to resonate with homeowner/renovators’ aspirations and lifestyles – and reflects and shapes the ordinary cultural context for home ownership/renovations.

Based on the evidence from the social research and feedback from extensive industry engagement a proposed concept for a mass media communications project was developed. The concept was to use mass media style content to generate demand from consumers and to help housing industry partners achieve product differentiation through the integration of sustainability and use of brand driven storytelling techniques with the ultimate goal to drives sales of high performance sustainable homes.

The concept had two key objectives:

• To stimulate desire in consumers for sustainable solutions; and
• To create a path to market for sustainable designs by showcasing of projects by builder/s with the intent of setting key design trends that the broader market aims to mimic.

To achieve this outcome an implementation plan was developed in which the concept for Renovate or Rebuild was created with the goal of creating a broadcast quality TV show about sustainable housing supported with an integrated communications framework to drive demand for energy efficient housing in Australia.

The plan sought to develop a commercially self-sustaining model due to the long timeframes required for system level change.

The project secured funding from the CRC Low Carbon Living in November 2018 to develop a pilot a TV show pilot in order to test the key elements of the proposed business model and validate the behavioural science. The pilot episode was called “Renovate or Rebuild’ and was targeted at the existing residential building stock. This project validated that a reality television show, with a supporting behaviour change framework, can influence consumer decisions towards more sustainable housing.

In mid 2018 ASBEC and the CRC for Low Carbon Living also developed Growing the market for sustainable homes – a roadmap outlining four steps to build momentum:

• differentiate sustainable housing in the market
• train and reward the construction industry
• build awareness (the mass media approach)
• broadcast the positive business case

Growing the Market for Sustainable Homes: Industry Roadmap acted as a key catalyst to bring together key stakeholders to implement the mass media project.

In addition to the above, economic modelling undertaken by the CSIRO indicated that this demand driven approach has the potential to create a rapid uptake in sustainable housing and would yield the following benefits by 2030:

• Half of all homes built to zero energy standard (increasing to two thirds by 2040)
• Deliver more than half a billion dollars of extra investment in the construction industry
• Create over 7,000 new jobs
• Save Australians $600 million on their energy bills.

The economic modelling also suggested that the mass media communications strategy proposed for this project is able to achieve a catalytic impact at a much lower cost to government ($20 million) compared with providing subsidies under the ‘incentivised transition’ scenario ($500 million).

Economic modelling by the CSIRO suggests that the use of a mass media campaign and the demand driven approach is 25 times more effective than an incentivised transition using grants and subsidies.

Pilot Episode

Research Findings

The CSIRO undertook a study to understand consumer thoughts and reactions to the first season of ‘Renovate or Rebuild’. Specifically, the study employed a series of focus groups and surveys with the following aims:  

• To understand the impact of the TV pilot on the audience;
• Level of brand awareness before and after the show; and
• To understand what behavioural intentions the audience have after viewing the TV show.

The following are the key research findings:

• Statistically significant increase in desire to have a home with home energy rating above the minimum standard for Australia – 23% for non-viewers compared to 39% for viewers of the show.
• Average increase in brand awareness of 349% for brands featured in Renovate or Rebuild
• The content was engaging for the target audience and viewers generally wanted more information about design considerations and energy efficiency features
• The audience was highly engaged with 52% of YouTube viewers watching the full 30-minute pilot episode (typical retention for a 30min video on Youtube is 10%). The data also indicated that if someone watch to the end of the first segment then the show had 100% audience retention after this (this demonstrates the show was engaging and maintained people’s attention).

The following are some of the key outcomes from the project:

• The strategy employs a systems level evidence and science-based approach to driving the mass market uptake of sustainable housing.
• The communications framework can be used for any sustainable product or service.
• Renovate or Rebuild delivered our sustainability message to 3,241,328 viewers in its premiere season and was the top-rated TV show on Channel 9Life.
• The research shows that we can increase desire for home features and products in a targeted way.

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