Global Cool, the climate change charity backed by celebrities including Sienna Miller and Leonardo DiCaprio, has appointed mobile marketing company Sponge to drive its fundraising campaign.

The aim of the charity, which is based in London and Los Angeles, is to encourage one billion people worldwide to reduce their carbon emissions by one tonne through simple energy reductions. Consumers can sign up to receive video clips on their mobile phones for just £3 per month, which show celebrity supporters such as Josh Hartnett and Rosario Dawson telling people how they can help. Subscribers receive two mobile video clips each month.

Sponge is powering the mobile subscription service, which is currently running in the UK, US and Ireland. The campaign will be rolled out globally over the next two months.

Subscribers’ monthly £3 fee (minus network charges) will be donated to the Global Cool Foundation, a UK registered charity that is responsible for investing in activities that will have a major impact on tackling climate change.

“Mobile is the perfect platform to bring the serious issue of climate change to the public’s attention and raise awareness of what’s going on,” said Douglas McDonald, Client Services Director at Sponge. “People are familiar with subscription services, and those signed up will get unique celebrity content delivered to their handsets for agreeing to the monthly donation.”

Sponge has also built a WAP site to enable subscribers to choose Gift Aid, which means that the charity gets a further 28p for every £1 raised.

Richard Kilgarriff, COO of Global Cool said: “Mobile phone communications are an essential part of our campaign to reach one billion people worldwide. We are confident that the service Sponge provides will be a key enabler in helping us reach this goal. Throughout the course of our campaign we will have more messages from more celebrity faces encouraging us all to sign up and save a planet.”

Source: Sponge