While we were very much inspired by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), who deserves full credit in co-creating Carrot Rewards, the OEE's use of Carrot Rewards is innovative in several ways: we adapted its use given our unique context and content; it's the first time the OEE has tested an AI-driven public engagement platform that integrates behavioural insights via a mobile app to amplify its impact; it demonstrates OEE going to where Canadians are, which is increasingly on their smartphones, as opposed to expecting them to come to us directly (e.g. to our website); and the pilot's impacts include significantly increasing OEE's reach, direct engagement with citizens, and improved service results. There's been an uptake in energy efficiency stakeholders showing interest in and working with Carrot to advance energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption (e.g. utilities), which is also opening up partnership possibilities.

The pilot is into its third year. Each phase has included engaging users to demonstrate and measure 1. AWARENESS of a particular energy efficiency topics and related services, 2. INTEREST in learning or doing more, and demonstrated 3. ACTION. We've also worked in collaboration with NRCan Communications colleagues to raise awareness of NRCan’s Generation Energy Dialogue and encourage users to share their views and ideas about Canada’s energy future. This year, along with engaging Carrot users with content on energy use in home and on the road, we're running two randomized experiments as part of the Government of Canada's Experimentation Works initiative. One experiment will test how different energy label designs might influence user understanding and another will test different message frames (like cost savings, home maintenance, and comfort) to encourage home retrofit actions, like contacting a home energy advisor.

The OEE learned about Carrot Rewards from PHAC officials and engaged other interested departments, like the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada. The OEE SIU collaborated with program divisions, who have expertise, content, service outcomes and users. For example, the SIU worked with partners on a user research project on energy use in the home to better understand home energy experiences and inform content ideas, priorities, and creation.

Carrot users pick the points that they want to earn as they engage with the content and demonstrate learning and action. They also get to pick the content that they want to learn about. Internal and external stakeholders view Carrot Rewards as a channel to directly engage Canadians and test ways to create value with their content and tools to improve energy efficiency and service outcomes.

Highlights from our pilot include achieving ~32K in app Energy Star® Homes Video views; ~27K in app Net Zero Energy Homes Video views. These results are significant when compared to the baseline of only 100s of views on NRCan's YouTube channel.
In one pilot phase, three rewarded link outs resulted in +760% new Twitter Followers, +2,156% new Facebook Likes, and +2,408% new Facebook Followers. There was also a 27% increase in awareness of Energy Star® (70% to 97%) among users who completed both baseline and follow up offers (n = 22,974). Over 300K of the 380K NRCan's Generation Energy Dialogue participants were reached through Carrot. In one case, we linked out to NRCan's portal and over 150 new ideas were shared within the first 48 hours of delivering an offer. This compares to an average of 5 new ideas created each day prior to the release of the offer. Other out of app conversions included 18K home energy advisor searches by users and 8.6K users taking an on-line ecoDriving course.

The aim of our pilot is to engage Canadians along an awareness-interest-action continuum for energy efficiency impacts. We require partners to directly influence the behaviour change required to reduce energy use in the home or on the road. This presents challenges. It requires 'joining up' policy and service delivery internally and externally. First, it was necessary to build relationships and a shared understanding of the Carrot Rewards potential to get buy-in from program colleagues to participate in the pilot. Working at the federal level often means that other jurisdictions, partners, and service organizations implement services using federal tools, like ENERGY STAR and EnerGuide. Second, working with our program colleagues and their stakeholders, we've opened up lines of communication to explore either partnerships or to welcome those who are in a better position to engage Canadians directly on energy use and reward them for learning and action to reduce it.

OEE senior management and program officials were open and allocated resources to testing new ideas and approaches to engaging Canadians on energy efficiency. Carrot Rewards is grounded in behavioural insights. It harnesses the popularity of smartphone technology and loyalty points to reward Canadians for doing positive things that improve individual and collective health and wellness. It has a lot of functionality built into it, including quizzes, goal setting, info-sharing and two-way engagement, geo-mapping and location targeting that can be used to personalize content that Carrot users can choose from. It had established relationships with points providers–creating your own points system is cool...if people actually value it. In this case, Carrot offers points that people are already collecting. Carrot was also willing to to expand its initial focus on health to encompass a broader notion of health and wellness as it relates to people, communities and the planet.

Carrot Rewards is being used across Canada by various federal departments, jurisdictions, and private and non-profit organizations across a number of public health and wellness domains. Energy efficiency stakeholders are also exploring and working with Carrot Insights on pilot projects in their contexts, including as a result of OEE's pilot.

1. There are ways to engage citizens beyond one-way public opinion research or marketing methods. We've piloted the use of a new digital platform and set up the offers so we can track and report demonstrated knowledge retention, learning, and action. We’re learning what resonates with users and their attitudes towards energy use and efficiency. We can engage Canadians in a much more targeted way and know if we're reaching them.

2. Go to where Canadians are. In government, we can sometimes expect Canadians and other stakeholders to come to our website and click through lots of pages and content to find what they're looking for. In the digital age, we have to do better. Using Carrot Rewards has demonstrated a way (there are others) to go to where Canadians are as opposed to assuming they'll come to us.

3. Give users choice of what they want to engage in and how. In our last pilot phase, we started out with a general introductory offer and then followed it by giving users a choice of topics and content to engage with based on their preferences and context: energy efficiency in the home or on the road. It offered a more customized experience. If a Carrot user doesn't own or drive a car, the energy use in the home content would likely be the preferred choice.

4. You may not need an app. If you do, there may be others are better positioned to (help) create it. It may already exist. Recognizing that Canadians are increasingly on the smartphones, we can sometimes jump to the "let's build an app!" idea quite quickly when brainstorming. From a digital innovation perspective, the OEE has a few things going for it, like users, data, and content. To create value we can work with others with digital skills and business models to reach Canadians in engaging ways and deliver services that realize energy efficiency outcomes.

Broadening our energy efficiency perspective is a good thing. The relationship between NRCan's OEE and Carrot Insights has helped broaden the notion of health and wellness to include Canadian's relationship to energy, comfort, and the environment. At the same time, the OEE is pushing its own boundaries beyond the lens of just energy efficiency and seeing Canadians as 'energy consumers' by seeing them in a more human-centred manner.