Our work C40 Cities
C40 Cities is a global network of cities committed to bold climate action. Its ‘Students Reinventing Cities Competition’ is dedicated to transforming cities in the face of the climate crisis through collaboration between cities, students and academia.
Students from across the globe were challenged to pioneer creative, imaginative, and tangible ways to develop new models for green and thriving city neighbourhoods, based on concepts such as the ‘15-Minute City’. They work on live projects centred on 18 cities across five continents. The competition also aims to showcase how green transition can create better life for local communities.
Ambition
In November 2020 C40 Cities’ Climate Leadership Group approached Four Marketing Agency to lead a global launch of the inaugural student contest. It was to be a wide-ranging PR initiative encompassing the 18 cities located all around the world – Athens, Auckland, Barcelona, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Dakar, Delhi, Dubai, Quezon City, Quito, Madrid, Melbourne, Montréal, Paris, Reykjavík, Seattle and Washington DC.
Action
Four's role was to carefully communicate the key messages and drive awareness of the competition among student, academic, urbanism, architecture, environment, business, real estate and engineering media titles and communities.
We launched to the media globally while co-ordinating individual city announcements, developed a media toolkit and media release issued by all cities involved in the competition. A team of three co-ordinated the full launch and synchronized releases to hit morning news desks across each time zone.
Result
A successful launch of the contest to a comprehensive target list of international media, specialised sectors and national and international journalists.
Four secured over 40 pieces of international coverage, across student, academic, architecture and environmental titles, were achieved in just two weeks. Highlights included World Architecture News, The Architectural Review, Australian Design Review, FE News, Environmental Technology. The story spread across the globe from the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand to Africa, Spain, Poland, France and Iceland, reaching a total circulation of more than 8million.