Challenge

The COP26 Summit in Glasgow in 2021 was the planet’s final chance to avert a climate catastrophe.

But here’s the thing. Some companies saw it as an opportunity to pull the wool over the world’s eyes.If we left them to it, it’d be nothing but an orgy of greenwashing. An avalanche of disinformation. A week-long corporate pat on the back. All with no real results.

We worked with Quadrature Climate Foundation and Iris London to make sure this didn’t happen.And to tell the people at the top that the rest of the planet was watching them

Insight

Companies that benefit from the burning of fossil fuels have a history of greenwashing, shifting the responsibility for climate change away from them.

The oil industry, climate delegates and media platforms need to be held accountable.

Solution

To protect COP26 from these naughty narratives, we recommended an Out of Home takeover. One that blocked the greenwashers and would be impossible to ignore.

By tracking delegates at every turn, we planned and activated a campaign they would see everywhere they went (in public, obviously).

We were visible from the moment they arrived in the UK, and throughout the summit across multiple touchpoints. From Paris, to London, to Glasgow.

We plastered Iris’s creative over transport hubs like Heathrow Airport, London City Airport, St. Pancras, Euston, Glasgow Central Station and Glasgow Airport.

We had multiple formats around Glasgow and Edinburgh to reach delegates throughout the summit.

This included a takeover of Buchanan Street Station, Exhibition Station, multiple roadside formats, and street level panels surrounding the conference centre.

Execution

Our strategy was all about using impactful formats to stop people in their tracks. Then combining this with more cost-effective ones, to give us broadcast level reach around Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Artwork with longer copy was placed in long dwell environments like airports and train stations, meaning they were more likely to be read in full.

Shorter, snappier creative messages were used for smaller panels as a way of driving high frequency and creating the impression that wherever delegates went, we were there too.

Results

Our strategy of picking the key transport hubs meant that the world's media could see the work, then share the work.

It's almost as though we saw the extreme weather coming.