Creating a Climate Change Brand for UNFCCC – Part II
Geeta Sundaram
Ex-Ogilvy, Brand Strategist & Creative Director/writer, over 20 years in the business; open to relocating anywhere
Last month, I shared my thoughts on how UNFCCC could leverage the power of a brand in its fundraising activity from the private sector for climate change. In that blog post, I shared my idea for a new product concept, its brand identity, as well as the brand strategy for building the new climate change brand, Reneworld. All this from scratch.
This time, I will be sharing my thoughts on a brand communication strategy for Reneworld as well as creative ideas for its launch around the world. Needless to add, the launch campaign will be the brand campaign for Reneworld in its first year at least. Just to remind ourselves of the product concept behind Reneworld, it is about making donations to UNFCCC’s climate change initiatives, for the sakes of people we know and care about. The branding Reneworld itself signals the positive attitude of renewing and shaping a new world, rather than fighting climate change. This, because as I said earlier, people find themselves helpless against climate change, and also because the benefits of combating it are too far in the future for people to feel the need to act now.
Despite the concept behind Reneworld being about wishing well for others and being unselfish, I must admit I have a selfish interest in pursuing this particular strategy for UNFCCC. Having studied, lived and worked in Delhi, India’s capital city for more than half my life, I have seen and experienced first-hand how unbearable life in the city had become. The perpetual haze that hangs in the air for most of the day, the toxic air pollution which has become much worse in recent decades thanks to paddy stubble burning by farmers in Punjab, Haryana and UP, as well as vehicular traffic, toxic diesel and petrol fumes on the roads, and its extreme weather and temperatures are all signs of a world that needs to change.
In many ways, I am glad to be away from Delhi and in Goa with my aged parents, even though I have been unemployed for too long and would like nothing more than to be back in my full-time career in advertising and brand communications. Climate change, though, is about more than air pollution; it is equally about extreme weather events that are more intense and frequent taking a toll on people’s lives, livelihoods and infrastructure. Most cities around the world are ill-equipped to cope with such events, and in India, what with our population pressure, climate pressure becomes just too much to handle. The bigger threats in our country are from melting glaciers in the Himalayas that will flood the fertile plains, wreaking havoc on farming, on cities and villages, excessive rain during monsoons and rising sea levels across our large peninsula. It sounds apocalyptic, I know.
Amid these dangers posed by climate change, one can only hope that our businesses and governments have the foresight and the will to effect change as soon as possible. Time is running out. In a somewhat different sense then, the brand communication strategy and the creative ideas for Reneworld find a way to leverage this. By making people think about climate change in a totally different way. At an individual level, it is about tapping into the human connection that we all share with those we know and care about. About wishing well for them, and making small or whatever donations we can to renew and reshape the world.
The communication strategy positions Reneworld as the most thoughtful present you could give people that you care about. While the creative strategy is to urge each one of us to think about others and wish well for them by donating a gift. The creative idea taps into the power and potential of a wish and how such good wishes can spread around the world by connecting us more strongly in purpose with those who mean a lot to us.
While working on the campaign ideas for television/video, I initially thought of using a real garden gnome as a device that surprises us by speaking to us about climate change. Then, I discovered that a travel company in the US, I think, called Travelocity had used a roaming gnome in their brand campaign years ago, and I decided against it. It was supposed to be a viral campaign launched in 2004 and even won an Effie in 2005, according to the website of ANA (Association of National Advertisers) in the US. I don’t know how it could have ever won an Effie Award, and it looks like unprofessional PR agency mischief from India. In the case of the Reneworld campaign, I didn’t want the garden gnome to become a mascot for the Reneworld brand. I thought it would be better still, to have nature herself speak to us through her spirits even as we go about our daily lives. The use of fantasy imagery allows these spirits of air, water, earth, flowers and trees, birds, fish, butterflies, etc to communicate with us and also be our messengers of good wishes to each other.
While exploring the kind of music that would be appropriate for the TV/video adverts, I discovered the works of a French classical composer called Olivier Messiaen from the mid-20th century who I had never heard of before. His music draws on a spiritual connection with nature and he even used bird sounds and calls as musical notations in his work. Perhaps work in Messiaen’s tradition backed by a small orchestra that creates a sense of mystery around nature would be lovely for the Reneworld launch campaign. Or else, even compositions inspired by the music of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré would work well.
In the print and digital campaigns, I use a slightly different approach even though the creative idea remains the same. Here, the idea of the spirits of nature communicating with us is only hinted at subtly, through art nouveau illustrations used as watermarks in the background. You may read my brand communication strategy and ideas for Reneworld launch in the document below. It also features a new thought on Reneworld’s brand identity.
I am not a designer or an art director, but I have designed layouts for the print campaign as well as the digital campaign which you can read in the documents below. I am sharing a gif of one of the digital adverts for Reneworld, just to give you all an idea of how subtle animation can work.
Besides the creative idea and the Reneworld launch campaign having to work across several media, there is also a need for many communication disciplines to come together, both at the time of launch and in future communication. I have shared my thoughts on how the different communication disciplines of mass-media advertising, public relations and digital/direct response ought to work together to launch Reneworld among ordinary citizens as well as the second, equally important audience of private sector companies. In the case of companies, PR and direct response will play a bigger role, with annual industry-level conferences and regular communication being the main features of communicating with the corporate audience.
And finally, just to tie all this back with my first blog post on how private capital can be raised for climate finance, the Reneworld brand can also be used for the Reneworld Climate Debt Fund suggestion of mine. The debt fund would require separate communication, of course, targeting investors from the private sector.
Extreme weather events, flooding and rising sea levels pose serious dangers to our lives and our cities. Decades ago, when I visited Venice and Tuscany on holiday from India, I remember reading that the city of Venice built on a lagoon, is sinking each year, threatened by rising levels in the Adriatic Sea. I hope it doesn’t suffer the fate of Atlantis. With all the strides made in modern architecture, construction materials and technology, I don’t see why raising Venice on some kind of permanent platform hasn’t been attempted yet. If we can build road and high-speed rail tunnels under the sea, a la The Chunnel that connects Britain and Europe, surely we can save Venice.
Time to renew the world!
The stock images used in the print and digital advertising campaign ideas for Reneworld, including the art nouveau illustrations, are from Pixabay and Unsplash and I am thankful to them. The design elements used in the Reneworld brand identity idea are from Canva and the UNFCCC logo is from Wikimedia Commons and I thank them as well.
This article was originally published on my blog on February 10, 2025.