SOCIAL MEDIA ZEITGEIST

 

BDP’s The Good City campaign won this year’s AJ100 Communication Initiative of the Year Award. Beedier talked to group marketing and communications director Sharon Steward and marketing and communications manager Samantha Smith about how the project came together.

 

Beedier: How did The Good City campaign come about?

Sharon: We have three global strategic initiatives that allow us to talk about our business in a consistent way, and The Good City is one of these.

The subject was chosen because 56% of the global population now lives in cities and urban centres, and that figure is estimated to rise to about 68% by 2050.

The campaign is about how we can help these cities to respond to the challenges they’re facing in terms of climate, health, quality of life and how integrated urban design solutions can help them to shape better cities for the future.

Our parent company, ID&E (formerly part of the Nippon Koei Group) focuses on large infrastructure projects whereas BDP focuses on buildings, places and city-scale urban design. As a collective, we were able to come together with a broad range of multidisciplinary expertise to develop a single actionable framework that can help people to design better cities.

 

Building a global campaign for better cities

Beedier: What are the aims?

Sharon: The overarching aim is to help design cities that are better for everyone. The Good City has a very structured approach that looks at ten universal challenges that all cities need to address on various levels if they’re to reach their full potential. Each theme is supported by a range of design solutions and case studies that demonstrate how we’ve already helped clients to improve the impact they can make on their cities.

Beedier: What audiences are you targeting?

Sharon: The primary audience is government bodies and city leaders. The structure of the campaign allows us to discuss the challenges they are facing in their cities at a strategic level. For example, how to design a city to be more resilient in the face of extreme weather events, or how to reach net zero targets by 2050. It’s also relevant at a property developer level – talking to developers about how they can improve biodiversity for example, or how to deliver buildings to the highest sustainable design standards.

We support our leadership team to communicate the messages in The Good City framework at meetings, presentations and conferences. They say that the campaign has opened doors in terms of who they’re engaging with. We can measure this in two different ways – the marketing metrics of how many people open our emails and engage with social media, and the commercial opportunities arising from the campaign.

Beedier: How does the campaign fit into BDP’s overall marketing strategy?

Sharon: BDP’s overall brand purpose is to design a world that’s built for good. For me, The Good City is that in action. The framework resonates with city leaders around the world, so it’s also a fantastic tool for building BDP’s brand globally, promoting our leadership as a shared voice, and amplifying our multidisciplinary expertise. As a single strategy, it touches a lot of different levels of what we’re trying to achieve with our marketing.

Beedier: What are the various strands of the campaign?

Samantha: The Good City framework sets out the vision and a structured thematic approach to ten universal challenges. The communication team’s task was to articulate this to build global influence and engagement. We developed a communications platform around the three pillars of authority, engagement and advocacy.

For authority, we collaborated with The Academy of Urbanism on The Good City Papers series, created with our studios in Tokyo, Lima, Toronto, Rotterdam and New Delhi (so far). These explore city-scale issues and solutions and were written by our studio experts and practitioners, as well as by academics and others on the ground in these cities, adding the credibility of respected, independent voices.

For engagement, we created opportunities for meaningful dialogue. We launched the platform globally, held The Good City signature events, and presented The Good City vision at various forums.

We’ve also extended the conversation into a podcast with authors of The Good City papers, which is a good example of how we are conveying content in different formats to engage different audiences. For advocacy, we activated our own teams to share the places, projects and ideas that define their Good City, launching #MyGoodCity.

Sharon: We really wanted to engage our own people in The Good City and we were delighted with the response we had from colleagues all over the world who wanted to participate in the #MyGoodCity campaign – we got some great videos and thinking from different generations. We set up the campaign idea for the videos and promoted it to colleagues, who grouped together in teams to use their own creative thinking to talk about their own city – what they feel is important, and how they could improve it.

It actually reached the attention of senior city leaders in the Middle East, who ended up coming to London to talk to us about urban design.

Sam: We also have The Good City microsite as the central hub of the campaign, and we weave The Good City messaging into targeted coverage in national, local and trade publications.

 

From creative strategy to measurable impact

Beedier: What role did good design play in getting the messages across?

Sharon: The design for The Good City was on two levels. Level one was about how we took these very complex urban design challenges and solutions and developed a very clear structure that made it easy for clients to engage with. On a second level, we selected a vibrant yellow from our brand palette as the core colour, and combined that with a collage design which helps it stand out within our industry. Merging different building typologies, places and city landmarks into the imagery really catches the attention of our audience.

Also, the circular graphic we developed really shows how the different themes are connected in a simple and effective way to communicate the ten themes that make up The Good City structure. We’ve made the website very simple and easy with only five menu options. We’re fortunate to have a multidisciplinary communications team with different skill sets from PR to graphic to web design – it’s like having our own design agency in-house.

Beedier: What measurable reach has it had?

Sharon: I think The Good City has helped to open doors and allowed us to engage with city leaders through these strategic discussions. It’s been fundamental in building relationships, and has led to us being involved in a number of different projects.

Samantha: It’s been really useful for our teams to use it as a tool for dialogue, and has unlocked real projects and opportunities – we’ve secured six actual projects around the world.

Our digital hub has had an engagement rate of 81%, and we had a 39.2% monthly follower growth on LinkedIn and Instagram during the first month of The Good City campaign.

Lessons learned and what comes next

Beedier: How long will The Good City campaign last – what’s coming up next?

Sharon: We focus on each campaign for at least three years to make sure it really resonates with our key influencers and clients. We’re half way through. It’s about getting those important key messages consistently across.

Samantha: In June, we started The Good City Dialogues, where we’re engaging external parties through a series of workshops, panel discussions and roundtables that bring together leaders and policy makers, influencers and designers to explore the forces facing future cities. We’re also developing The Good City Diagnostic Tool with our urban design team to assess a city’s performance across the ten themes of the campaign.

Beedier: What have been the biggest challenges?

Sharon: Aligning our experts with the right external partners to work with on a particular issue – it can be challenging making sure that everyone’s aligned on the desired outcomes. And getting The Good City Papers written – things always take longer than you think.

Beedier: What went particularly well?

Samantha: Personally, I liked #MyGoodCity as an opportunity to hear voices from different people from across the global BDP organisation, from the director-level executives to those just starting their careers. It was great to see them all talking openly about what makes cities good for them.

Sharon: Because The Good City was such a clearly defined strategic initiative, we’ve been able to clearly identify the commercial opportunities that have arisen, which sometimes can be difficult to establish.

Beedier: How do you hope it will benefit BDP as a practice?

Sharon: The Good City is operating at a different level to normal communications campaigns. It is a fundamental strategic initiative for the whole practice and has provided a tool that our leadership team can really optimise to engage with our clients. Its forward-thinking approach really resonates with its target audience, and that’s what’s been crucial to its success.

 

Sharon Steward is Group Marketing Director at BDP, where she leads the development and implementation of the practice’s global marketing and business development strategy. With experience across finance, private healthcare and professional services, she advises BDP’s leadership team on growth across international markets, sectors and disciplines, while leading the global marketing profession in delivering strategic initiatives.

Samantha Smith is a Marketing & Communications Manager at BDP, shaping sector marketing and growth plans and strategic multidisciplinary initiatives across its global practice. She connects ideas, people, and opportunities to strengthen BDP’s profile and create meaningful engagement to support the practice’s business development and wider growth objectives