Nextdoor and the Eden Project's Big Lunch brought together neighbors to connect and celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

17M+

event attendees

490K

unique visits to the map

23K+

on-site clicks

31%

conversion rate

Objective

With the goal of reaching and connecting with new neighbors in the UK and encouraging them to support each other and build community, Nextdoor partnered with the Eden Project’s initiative The Big Lunch in 2022. Since 2009 The Big Lunch has been bringing millions of people together across the UK on the first weekend in June, to share fun, food and friendship. A Big Lunch can be anything from a small gathering or a cup of tea with a neighbor to a full-blown street party. This year, The Big Jubilee Lunch became part of the official celebrations for HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee – and we used that moment in June as our major tentpole campaign for 2022.

For many, The Big Lunch ignites a passion for doing more good things where they live and so the campaign had aims to work with Nextdoor to reach more people, create fun and inclusive activations and provide a lower entry point for participation through the platform. This was especially important as communities across the UK were still feeling the impact of Covid and the cost of living crisis and the Jubilee provided a much needed opportunity to come together. In fact, neighbors cited the following reasons for joining The Big Lunch events: wanting to do something to say thank you to neighbors and community members who were there for them during the pandemic; supporting an event which helps bring communities together; and lifting the spirits of neighbors after lockdown.

Solution

As part of our partnership with The Big Lunch, Nextdoor created a campaign landing page to build interest and provide an easy tool to join up and find information.

We also launched the Nextdoor Jubilee Events Map working with The Big Lunch and DCMS (UK Government Jubilee page) to encourage neighbors to add, share and find local Jubilee events happening near them. We created a targeted campaign across the UK engaging with over 200K small businesses as well as councils, police and NHS to spread the word and support with information and resources.

To encourage participation from neighbors, we launched an on-platform Big Jubilee Lunch competition where neighbors had a chance to win £200 to host a Big Jubilee Lunch by posting a message to their neighbors about why they wanted to bring the community together. Neighbors around the UK posted about The Big Lunch using the hashtag #celebratethejubilee to further drive engagement. Through our activities, Nextdoor also featured in the top ten drivers of traffic to The Big Lunch website - including pack registrations - and pages featuring partner hero content had over 600,000 views.

Results

For The Big Lunch, it was the first time working on such a scale with a social networking platform and being able to make hyperlocal connections was an amazing success. This year an incredible 17.2 million participants took part in The Big Lunch - 1 in 4 people in the UK - and 11.7 million friendships were made.

As official sponsors, alongside well-known brands PG Tips, Iceland and The Food Warehouse and Pears Foundation, this was a fantastic opportunity to reach a national audience to raise awareness of Nextdoor, encourage the power of hyper-local connections and "In Real Life" moments to drive engagement through content on our platform.

The Big Lunch helps brings neighbors together, providing a simple reason for connection. 81% of participants said taking part made them feel part of something bigger this year and 79% of Big Lunch attendees now feel a stronger sense of community. Moreover, 12.9M people said they’d be more likely to lend a neighbor a hand, 12.8M people feel closer to neighbors after going to a Big Lunch, and 11.4M want to keep in touch with people they met.

Nextdoor’s campaign landing page for The Big Lunch drove more than 75K unique visitors and more than 23K+ on-site clicks, resulting in a 31% conversion rate. 490K unique users visited the map during the campaign period 1.4K events were pinned to the map.

Additionally, Nextdoor promoted an on-platform competition where neighbors had a chance to win £200 to host a Big Jubilee Lunch by posting a message to their neighbors about why they wanted to bring the community together. The competition drove a total of 1.1K entries, 2.6K comments, 7.9K reactions and had visits from Nextdoor employees including our Chief Neighbor, Sarah Friar.