Paul Brannon's enthusiasm is palpable as he describes the mechanics of Christian Aid's latest campaigning tool: the "Cut the Carbon shoe lace".

"The people working in the next office are winding up the shoelaces on a garden hose," the charity's head of campaigns tells me over the phone. "You count up the length of the shoelaces the same way you'd count up signatures on a petition."

The organisation is calling for supporters to send in a shoelace as part of its Cut the Carbon march, a thousand-mile protest walk aimed at raising awareness about how climate change is affecting poor countries. When a thousand have been collected, the laces will be sent to Downing Street, along with a petition asking the government to commit to reduce greenhouse commissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050.

The charity has also produced a new shoelace for supporters wishing to replace the one they've donated - a limited edition Fair Trade product made of organic Egyptian cotton - in exchange for a voluntary donation.

Brannon says this ethico-chic way of showing your support for a cause - the fruit of a brainstorming session by the 11-strong campaigns team - offers a valuable new variant to the more orthodox campaigning tools of the march and petition. "There's nothing wrong with them, but they're a bit dull really," he says. Innovation is vital in today's tough campaigning environment, he says: "If you want to bring in new supporters, you have to do it."

Christian Aid isn't the only British charity busy thinking up new ways to grab the public's attention. Visit Save the Children's website and you'll find a novel approach to persuading the new prime minister, Gordon Brown, to back the organisation's anti-poverty agenda during his first 100 days. A dedicated section of the site reveals a clickable gallery of Gordon Browns resident in the British Isles - there are 841, apparently - with the injunction to "join Gordon Browns across Britain in calling on the new Prime Minister to make healthcare affordable for the world's poorest children."

The use of new, arguably elaborate ideas is part of a trend that is increasingly determining the nature of campaigns in the anti-poverty sector.

"It's partly driven by the media - everybody wants to get greater visibility for their campaigns," explains Murray Benham, head of campaigns at the campaigning group the World Development Movement (WDM). "It's probably a trend that people in the voluntary sector are unhappy about, but it's about trying to get a story in a part of the paper that wouldn't normally cover it."

Changes in the media - the loss of space for serious stories combined with a growing celebrity culture - have increased the pressure in recent years, he adds. "It's a very competitive context. You might have a substantial report about the World Bank, but that won't get coverage, even if it's an important issue for us. But if we get Jordan to wear a WDM t-shirt, we could potentially get two to three million people."

Jordan, for anyone unfamiliar with her, is a former glamour model, a minor British celebrity known mainly for her surgically enhanced figure and bad luck in relationships.

The rise of new media such as the Internet and mobile phones also means that non-governmental organisations (NGO) have to adapt their campaigning methods fast, particularly if they want to engage with a younger constituency. Virtual social networking, which involves people "meeting" via Internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook, represents new territory which many charities feel they have to enter if they don't want to be left behind.

WDM was the first British anti-poverty NGO to establish a presence on Second Life, a virtual world on the Internet which visitors enter in the form of an imaginary character called an avatar. WDM's foray into this weird world was a counter that clocked up the number of child deaths around the world due to avoidable poverty. Benham admits that this in-your-face approach struck some potential supporters as rather crude. "We anticipated that," he says, but thinks the shock tactics engaged a new audience. "It was part of our aim to get a broader profile for our issues."

Getting to the parts of the public that traditional campaigning approaches don't usually reach is central to the trend for innovation. This year, Oxfam organised the G8 wait", calling on supporters to gather in a cyberspace on MySpace, Facebook, photo sharing website Flickr and homemade video site YouTube and wait for Tony Blair's report on what had been achieved at the G8 summit of industrial nations. Some 6,500 new supporters signed up as a result. "We think it's 6,500 people who probably wouldn't have engaged otherwise," says Stuart McWilliam, Oxfam's campaigning manager in Britain.

But campaigners are aware that new isn't necessarily good. "We wouldn't innovate for the sake of innovating," says McWilliam. "We're very pragmatic. The test will always be the number of people you get involved."

His team has found that text messaging - a de rigueur campaigning tool in the age of new media - isn't effective. It doesn't work well, he says. "The numbers of people who respond are surprisingly low."

The white wristband which symbolised support for the Make Poverty History campaign also has some salutary lessons for anyone in danger of getting too enthusiastic about the shock of the new. Despite its undoubted success - 8 million people in the United Kingdom wore the band in 2005 - according to Benham, research shows that the understanding of poverty issues was lower after Make Poverty History than in 2004. "As a campaigner, in terms of changing attitude among the wider public, the results were disappointing," he says.

Back in Christian Aid's offices, Brannon admits that so far, it is unclear whether innovative approaches such as the Shoelace Campaign do indeed result in the kind of long-term, committed activists that the charity wants.

"It's really new," he says. "The evidence is that it does work, and that we can recruit people." But one danger is that some of the new campaigns are so easy to respond to that they attract the wrong type. "The question is, have you brought in a group who won't do anything for you, and you have to spend time and money servicing them?" he says.

When the follow-up process for the shoelace campaign begins, the channels for communicating with new supporters will be scrutinised for cost-effectiveness, with email and texts favoured above traditional postal mail-outs.

In the meantime, he is brimming with more ideas for the Fairtrade Shoelace. There are plans to approach a leading avant-garde artist such as Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin to see if they can create a cutting edge oeuvre with a thousand old shoe laces.

And it doesn't end there. "If you tie two shoe laces together, you can play cat's cradle," Brannon says. "If you attach it to the ceiling, you can hang a mobile from it."

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