Mere weeks away from the Finnish national elections, the parties about to win had set their mind on banning combustion engines. Bad news for Neste, a globally leading producer of renewable fuels and major fuel retailer in Finland. Also counterproductive for reaching climate targets as relying solely on electric vehicles would severely delay emission reductions.

The objective was to enable the next government to deflect from banning the combustion engine. The key to this was to call for faster and more ambitious emission reduction targets – a pace that would require all solutions, including the combustion engine.

But time had run out on traditional public affairs. A creative idea was needed to fast-track public debate. Furthermore, the idea of banning combustion engines was simple and compelling to environmentally motivated voters – our own key target group. How could achieve our objectives without compromising Neste’s climate-driven brand, but rather strengthen it?

To show that simple answers would not pass the test, we decided that we should dramatically first fail it ourselves. A cast of climate researchers, journalists, influencers, and Neste’s own CEO were ripped out of their comfort zone and subjected to a polygraph test on climate change.

Of course any “yes” or “no” answer on questions as complex as climate change were doomed to fail in a polygraph. The experience of sitting hooked up to the machine resembled any politicians situation prior to elections, struggling to find simple crowd-pleasing solutions.

The campaign film demolished the idea of one single solution to curb emissions. Instead, our test subjects – shaken and frustrated by the test context – delivered a disillusioned argument for the need to utilize all solutions, as well as faster and bolder emission cut targets for which the new government and companies could and should be held accountable for.

To move the Overton window for politicians and voters on combustion engines, we positioned the technology as a self-evident tool to achieve emission reductions in road traffic in time, rather than in the future. The key message was simple: we need all technologies, we need to utilize them starting today, and we should set ourselves faster emission targets. As a bold add-on, we suggested targets to be measurable during one government’s term.

Simply educating stakeholders on combustion engines’ potential may not have worked, as Neste could have been seen to be biased. We might have also caused a pushback and lose important environmentally conscious supporters and customers. To position ourselves on the right side of the argument first, we therefore devised a digital targeting strategy where we would not only preach to the environmentally conscious, but also knowingly trigger climate skeptics’ anger. This would have to hurt a bit.

With a campaign film shot and a website constructed within days, we launched the campaign through a Twitter hashtag takeover of the Helsinki climate march on 6 April, a mere week before elections.

The reaction was love and hate at first sight. After infuriating climate-denialists and being blacklisted by social platforms due to the sensitive subject, we quickly edited and relaunched a censored version of the film to underpin just how hard it is for anyone, including politicians, to find balanced answers in the current discussion environment.

This first burst of PR positioned us clearly on the side we wanted to be on – Neste’s climate-skeptic customers were cutting in half their loyalty cards. This gave us the right backdrop to do a second round of media, this time talking openly about the opportunities and future fuels combustion engines could utilize.

With the elections over and a new government in place, Neste’s renewable products received a major business driver as the government introduced an internationally acclaimed target of reaching climate neutrality by 2035. The planned combustion engine had been dropped from the government’s agenda, protecting Neste’s renewable business and its 4.2 BEUR retail business.

The 4.6M media reach across Finnish press alone marked a 140% return on the marketing investment, first by covering the campaign and the ongoing climate discussion, and then by highlighting the future potential of combustion engines to achieve emission reductions. Online, key influencers publicly positioning Neste on the right side of the debate. Tweet engagement reached as high as 2.7%.

As for the original challenge to deliver on the public affairs objective while maintaining integrity amongst climate conscious consumers, the strategy provided 100%. Neste became a company whose CEO is ready to subject himself to a polygraph just to push for tougher climate targets.