Engaging the public with climate change

Since 2020, Freshwater has delivered the Welsh Government’s annual Wales Climate Week; which includes five days of virtual events. The free, live broadcasts and interactive events feature national and global policy makers, pioneers and innovators, who come together to discuss and interrogate actions for tackling the climate emergency.

During our partnership, we have delivered digital advertising to promote the events and produced more than 100 case studies showcasing low-carbon initiatives across Wales.

The Welsh Government commissioned Freshwater to organise and oversee a programme of events that would engage the public around the climate challenge and inspire businesses, universities and citizens to play a role.

We were tasked with creating a series of free, digital and interactive events to enable anyone passionate about climate change to join conversations with national and global policy makers, campaigners, and innovators.

Our in-house digital marketing specialists, design team and copywriters were also tasked with marketing the events and producing supporting content.

We designed an event platform that includes a daily programme, speaker profiles, useful resources, live content and an on-demand area. Over the period, our event platform has continually evolved, with the introduction of more interactive features and enhancement of the user experience, including the ability to share toolkits with stakeholders and a place for organisations to upload climate pledges.

We manage all correspondence with the hundreds of speakers taking part each year, and provide technical drop-in sessions to ensure everyone is familiar and confident with joining the speaker line and using the audio-visual facility. We’ve also held one-to-one technical sessions with high-level speakers, such as the United Nations’ Nigel Topping and Patricia Fuller, Canada’s ambassador for climate change.

We have broadened our audience outreach efforts to encompass under-represented groups and stakeholder collaboration, working with the Welsh Government to identify all target groups, such as members of the BAME community, senior citizens and people with a disability.

Our marketing strategies are adapted to various audience groups. Our digital advertisers create profiles for each audience, including a broad consumer group that has interests in the outdoors, nature and climate change, as well as business groups in Wales, and maximises the targeted advertising capabilities on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Our events and design studio also work together to create marketing toolkits which are shared with stakeholders in order to tap into their own audiences.

To further raise awareness of the events, we deliver a press and media programme and engage with Welsh influencers who are passionate about climate change and sustainability.

In one year, we produced 83 written case studies and a video case study in only four months, achieving the required geographic and thematic spread required by the Welsh Government.

Throughout our multi-year partnership with Wales Climate Week, we have consistently adapted and expanded the event to drive significant awareness and participation in the fight against climate change. Each year, we’ve built on the success of the previous edition, creating a platform that fosters crucial conversations about climate action and low-carbon initiatives in Wales.

The events have been widely successful in fostering acute public awareness and inspiring citizens and organisations to play a role in meeting the climate challenge. Climate change groups and internal stakeholders have been delighted with the wide-reaching platform the events have provided.

In a single year, we can expect the weekly programme to involve almost 4,000 attendees, over 200 speakers, and around 40 sessions and 10 fringe events.

Each year, we run post-event surveys. More than 80% of attendees have found the event platform, programme timing and speakers “good” or “very good”. Over 60% have given an eight out of 10 score for how successfully the event enabled them to engage more effectively with climate change issues.

Digital advertising has been extremely effective in driving traffic and promoting the events to wide-reaching audiences in a short space of time. For example, we have secured 4.5 million impressions through advertising and over 100,000 views on animated videos in a single year, and reactions on Facebook campaigns have been overwhelmingly positive.

The hashtag #WalesClimateWeek has also trended at number one in Wales during the event.