There is something in the air,
a serious problem…
Air pollution is a health emergency, accounting for approximately 900 deaths in Birmingham each year.
Birmingham’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ) was set to be the UK’s vanguard for introducing charges for private vehicles entering roads in city centres. With the eyes of the country – and the world – watching, we took up the brief to launch the CAZ.
A comprehensive social media audit and interviews with key journalists, revealed low awareness of the CAZ with a largely neutral or negative sentiment.
But we needed to go beyond just awareness – inspiring residents, businesses and visitors to get behind the city’s CAZ and support it with better travel choices.
With COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing a factor, we needed a multi-channel campaign that could reach our audiences at home – with a standout ‘moment’ that could be shared on socials and broadcast media. With a plan to use local influencers and advocates, our moment would have to give them a reason to share the CAZ and the climate emergency detail that backed its introduction.
We created two ‘moments’ backed by a full suite of highly shareable content that spoke to people about the risks to their, and their children’s lives, if we did nothing.
Our cinematic film #BrumBreathes – A Better Birmingham was designed as an emotive piece telling the story of our proud city’s journey with air pollution – and its effects on people’s health – making a compelling case as yet untold.
Residents, children, schools, businesses, health and council leaders, green transport figures and business owners were interviewed, with artistic and aerial shots.
Released three weeks before the CAZ launched, the film, and its trailer, were seeded out to 400 influencers and stakeholders.
We needed a visual event. A focal point for media, particularly broadcast, and social cameras alike.
Taking inspiration from spur-of-the-moment citizen journalism, our ‘moment’ saw us release a harmless organic and very colourful smoke compound from the iconic yellow ‘funnel’ of the Library of Birmingham, equivalent to the NOx the CAZ would save every 10 seconds across the city.
To ensure it was ‘seen’ and mitigate against being able to draw a crowd due to COVID-19, we invited broadcast media, photography and social influencers to view the stunt from Centenary Square to ensure opportunities for powerful images.
We also coordinated our film team to shoot the stunt from several city rooftops – and got a drone up – just in case. Our resulting film was again seeded across social influencers and stakeholders and the Council’s owned channels.
We also designed and distributed online toolkits that provided social media content,to all stakeholders – and cleverly tied in influential social media accounts in the region such as Police, Ambulance and Fire services.
Four films including a trailer, main film, drone stunt footage and round-up CAZ launch film
Social media – A full schedule of supportive creative posts
Stakeholders and influencer engagement – with more than 400 backing our campaign throughout
Photography – 20 of the region’s most prominent photographers on Twitter and Instagram positioned to view our stunt from key Brum vistas
pieces of national, trade and regional coverage online and broadcast
billion online readership of coverage
million estimated coverage views
million total social media reach of stunt video
YouTube views of the cinematic hero film launching the CAZ
website hits during the campaign burst
“We achieved just that with the activity we carried out with Story Comms. Birmingham was the subject of news coverage nationally and images from the activity were shared far and wide. Our engagement on all of our online channels also peaked to some of the highest we’ve seen on record.”
Head of Clean Air Zone – Birmingham City Council