The most direct way to motivate a company to take climate action, is to cut the middleman out, and let climate speak for itself.

That’s what we did in this campaign. Thanks to a diverse set of data sources, we could target our prospects with a message tailored to the state of nature in their specific area. And thus motivate them to get into contact with Veolia about how they can play a role in the ecological transition.

Veolia is a big and established brand in France and European leader. But in Belgium it’s hardly known. Belgians don’t know the brand, let alone that they know what the company does or what it stands for.

A second important element that gave direction to our creative idea, was the fact that certain environmental phenomenons are part of our recent culture. Belgium has a very high density (375 inhabitants/km2, 32nd place in the world). So that means there’s lots of congestion, lots of concrete, industrial zones next to living zones, etc. And that results in phenomemons like draught in the summer, floods in automn, peaks in exhaust during the day,…. Recently, more and more, newsmedia report about that.

Since a few years, the French company Veolia is present in Belgium. Despite its authority on the French market, the brand is little known in Belgium. Those who are aware of it, know it from the weekly garbage collection performed by Veolia branded trucks.

But Veolia is more than that. The company is active in the most important domains to fight climate change: treatment of water, treatment of waste, treatment of energy.

Our briefing was to create interest for Veolia and its services within the community of industry leaders, and secondary with the broad population.

No hard objectives were set, as Veolia is a new advertiser in the Belgian market. We did perform a zero measurement, that we will repeat end of this year to measure effects and progress.

We created the first ever campaign that is directed by nature. Litterally.

If we want to fight climate change, every issue is important. But we cannot be everywhere. That is why we let nature decide where to campaign and with what message. Because nature knows best where the most urgent problems are.

On a custom setup and public data platform www.pulseofnature.be, we combine 8 data sources (ground water levels, use of energy, use of gas, population, industry density,…)

resulting in a unique visualisation of the state of climate in Belgium, through a Top10 list of priorities. Showing us where in Belgium the most urgent climate challenges are, and ‘telling’ our campaign where to be present through digital billboards and geo targeted digital advertising with what specific message. Inviting the local industries and authorities to get into contact to help solve the concrete local issue.

Before we started, we did a zero measurement to measure the awareness in Belgium. The research showed that only 23% of Belgians knew Veolia, much less than their direct competitors. Also the knowlegde of the brand was poor. So we had two tasks: reach a broad audience, and generate interest for the services.

Given those objectives and our limited budget, it was quite clear to us that we needed a campaign that we could support through PR (free media). And an idea that could make Veolia relevant for a Belgian audience.

In our strategic thinking, we compared Veolia’s services with an ecosystem. Waste is taken out of polluted water. Waste gets recycled into energy and polluted air into clean air. Much like nature itself.

These thoughts led to the Pulse of Nature. An innovative campaign that raised attention, and explained the business of Veolia, in a very locally relevant way.

The campaign was executed on a national scale during 3 waves (3 weeks + 2 weeks + 2 weeks), through Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) and digital performance media.

We used DOOH like we would use digital performance media. Not in fixed periods, but in an ON / OFF modus depending on what the data on our platform (pulseofnature.be) suggests.

We kicked off with a press conference in which we gave the stage the renowed professor Eric Lambin (UCLouvain) as a spokesperson for the campaign.

This approach made the campaign visible on a broad level, reaching Belgian citizens, thanks to our PR reach, and on a targeted local level, reaching industry leaders and policy makers, thanks to the performance driven DOOH and digital media.

The campaign was considered as a success for the local client as well as the Veolia Headquarters in France.

Our strategy to get free coverage on our campaign worked. Our campaign got articles in major newsmedia, worth €270K, and it was shared by opinion leaders. Reaching an extra 14% of Belgian adult population on top of the paid campaign that ran.

And the numbers show that we also succeeded in generating interest for the services of Veolia. We saw an uplift in site traffic of 934%, an increase of 321% in businesses who showed interest and the campaign contributed to a business growth of 16,2%. Also, as a nice side effect, the recruitment campaign that was part of this platform, performed 300% better than previous recruitment campaign, which can be seen as an indication of a better brand reputation.

Our data came from diverse open sources; mainly local and federal governments.

In determining the areas in Belgium with a problem in terms of climate change, we needed to be sure that what seemed a problem really was a problem. To do so, we combined 8 different data sets. Each data set created a context for the other. If for example a region showed lots of CO2 exhaust, we could see if that was normal or not by crosschecking data on for example the presence of industry in that region. If there were high levels of CO2, and few industrial activity, we knew there was an issue in that area.

And that was our targeting strategy. By being present in those areas, we could actually motivate the right business to take action (with us).