NESTA’s Big Green Challenge
The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) is an independent body responsible for stimulating innovation in the UK.
Society Media was commissioned to deliver a media relations campaign to promote the finalists of a £1 million competition designed to stimulate local communities to develop their own solutions to climate change.
The Big Green Challenge had generated a string of inspirational stories about the ability of ordinary people in communities across the UK to achieve significant reductions in CO2 emissions. It provided a strong evidence base to suggest investment in the capacity of local communities could play a part in enabling the UK Government to achieve its tough targets on climate change.
Society Media was tasked with generating national, regional and trade media coverage of the ten challengers. NESTA also required Society Media to secure comment and opinion articles to underscore the need for Government to support community climate change initiatives.
Society Media developed a strong media campaign with NESTA. It created compelling media messages alongside commissioned case studies, photography, national and regionalised press releases.
National coverage was secured in The Times, The Observer, The Mirror, BBC Radio 4's You and Yours, BBC Online, The Telegraph online, and the New Statesman online. Coverage of the finalists was achieved in 23 regional newspapers and nine regional radio stations, and targeted trade sector press coverage.
Society Media also secured coverage of the Big Green Challenge campaign by providing reaction to the climate change bill, which was making its final passage on to the statute books at the time.
Chani Hirsch, head of external affairs at NESTA, says: “We were delighted to work with Society Media. They helped us to run a targeted media strategy around the announcement of NESTA’s Big Green Challenge finalists with outstanding results.”
