Scottish Media Awards: Marketing Campaign of the Year

The Scottish Government, through the Natural Scotland unit, is faced with the huge issue of preserving the natural climate of Scotland and stopping it from undergoing potentially devastating change.

It is often cited that the best means of cure is prevention and with that in mind the Scottish Government seeks ways to communicate with the younger audience who will ultimately be responsible for the environmental health of Scotland in years to come. If it can communicate clear effective environmental messages to children, which they accept and take on board at an early age, they will hopefully adapt these processes as standard in later life.

The Government required a creative and involved means of communicating the message of climate change, biodiversity, energy efficiency and recycling and together with the Sunday Mail and artist David Faithful was able to create a series of four Eco posters to give away with the Sunday Mail.

Our future

The posters were aimed at children aged 7 – 13 and promoted a more environmentally friendly Scotland under the banner heading of “It’s Our Future”.

The Sunday Mail reaches an equalled audience of newspaper readers in Scotland with approximate weekly sales of 480,000 and a readership of 1.3m and was key to reaching the mass audience required, and artist David Faithful – who has worked on children’s animations and books – was able to create a format which would actively engage children and build together over the four weeks.

The posters were printed on recyclable paper sourced from sustainable forests in the UK. It was also produced locally and travelled only a short distance to the printers, thereby cutting down on carbon emissions.

In a marketplace driven by and judged on sales results, a campaign was produced that both met these objectives as well as providing a positive impact on the long-term effects of the surrounding environment.

Artist David Faithfull focused on the target market and how to reach them. “Together the posters form one massive poster but each one focuses on a specific environmental issue,” he said. “The idea was to have a huge circle in the middle of the poster representing global unity. I wanted to make it as bright and colourful as possible to draw kid’s attention.”

He also included games in the posters so they would grab children’s attention and make learning enjoyable. He said: “They are fun, challenging and informative. In the snakes and ladders game, if you land on a ladder square it will give a positive command like planting a tree or turning down the heating. The game has more ladders than snakes as I wanted to encourage the positive rather than the negative”.

The importance of this campaign and messages it is conveying is there for all to see.

Results: Visibility at almost all schools in Scotland ensuring legacy marketing. After the completion of the series in paper, all four posters were sent to all primary and secondary schools in Scotland.

Global issues

On taking the campaign to Our Lady of the Missions school in Thornliebank, a school which has won awards for it’s ecologically friendly approach and it’s policy of “reduce, reuse and recycle”, to road test the posters and their effects, head teacher Charles

Jamieson said: “This is a great way to get kids interested in global issues. Our school is very eco-friendly.

“We already have eco monitors – pupils who go round switching off lights, making sure waste is put in the correct recycling bins and encouraging pupils to bring in old ink cartridges and cards to be recycled.

“Children are our future and if we can help them to understand what they are facing, it might make a difference. These posters are a great idea and can be used in schools across the curriculum.”

From a purely sales point of view, increased sales over the four weeks of insert resulted in an uplift of over 60,000.

To see a list of all the winners check out the Scottish Media Awards website.