SSE Airtricity, Ireland’s largest provider of 100% green energy, are sustainability partner to Dublin Zoo and work closely with them to educate children on the role of sustainability in the preservation of the planet. This can be seen through The Eco Explorers Trail at Dublin Zoo which details at each stop steps that Dublin Zoo and SSE Airtricity are taking to be more sustainable.
As Covid-19 hit, Edelman developed The Eco Explorers Club an online resource to educate kids about sustainability.
STRATEGY AND EXECUTION
INSIGHT
Across the world, parents are adjusting to a new normal. Schools have been shut for a number of weeks to limit the spread of Covid-19. This has created an enormous strain on families and has left parents searching for valuable content to educate kids.
We saw an opportunity to bring SSE’s name into these family homes by helping parents to entertain, educate and inspire their children.
APPROACH
We decided to bring young eco explorers online and create a 10-week educational program for primary school children which would allow them to continue their sustainability education at home—effectively positioning SSE Airtricity as parents' trusted partner on sustainability.
Over the 10-week program, five topics would be discussed every two weeks, with three pieces of content being released per week. These five topics were areas that are relevant to SSE Airtricity and Dublin Zoo and where they were making active changes, as well as being areas of the sustainability conversation that are particularly prescient, including:
- Lesson 1: Biodiversity: What is Biodiversity?
- Lesson 2: Biodiversity: Protecting Nature
- Lesson 3: Energy: What Fuels our Planet
- Lesson 4: Pollution: Protecting our Planet
- Lesson 5: Sustainability: Caring for our Planet
The content is being amplified through the below executions to ignite children’s interest and imagination, helping them learn about important topics through fun executions and visually exciting content:
- Video Assets introducing the week’s topic.
- Storytime with Reuben lessons on the topic from Rueben the Entertainer and SSE Airtricitys Head of Sustainability.
- Virtual Tours of Dublin Zoo showing the behind the scenes.
- Influencer Activity with her family getting involved with the content series.
- Draw Alongs featuring Irish artist and environmentalist Don Conroy.
- Yoga Exploration and Relaxation to end a busy week of learning.
OUTCOMES
The campaign has already enabled SSE Airtricity to position themselves as a trusted partner in sustainability education for kids.
The social media campaign is ongoing but the results from Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 already show strong interest in the campaign and traffic to the website hub:
Lesson 1 Digital Campaign Highlights
- Unique reach of 293k which is 48% of SSE's audience
- Strong CTR averaging 0.78% (above 0.5% benchmark)
- Website Hub 4,992 visits with average time spent on page 6.23 minutes
Lesson 2 Digital Campaign Highlights*
- Unique reach of 258k which is 43% of SSE's audience
- CTR averaging 0.82% (above 0.5% benchmark)
- Website Hub 3,772 visits with average time spent on page 7.36 minutes (time spent on page increased by +1.13 minutes)
- YouTube programmatic ads performing above average at 79% completion rate
(*Second week of activity was paused for Black out Tuesday)
Earned Media Highlights
The earned media announcement surpassed KPIs when issued to media and received great traction. In line with the launch of The Eco Explorers Club, we issued a press release to trade and general news media. The news release has received considerable coverage with 14 pieces featuring in online and broadcast media to date, achieving a reach of over 5M, including additional reach via media outlets' social platforms. Interview opportunities provided SSE Airtricity an opportunity to talk about the sustainability partnership with Dublin Zoo and to communicate messaging around the value that SSE Airtricity is bringing to homes across Ireland.