Innovative ideas to protect the environment and increase sustainability are critical – but without a solid marketing and public relations plan to help gain exposure, they could be the best ideas no one hears about.
To celebrate Global Recycling Day, we’re highlighting the amazing sustainability-focused organizations GAVIN has been fortunate to partner with and featuring the work we did to help elevate their brands and gain attention for their products.
Product promotion: recycling plastic to strengthen construction projects
It isn’t every day that an organization discovers a way to reduce plastic waste around the world and turn that plastic into a product that can strengthen concrete for the construction industry.
But that’s exactly what CRDC Global has done. Recognized by Fast Company as a World Changing Idea, the nonprofit works with local, community-based organizations and governments in several countries around the globe to collect unrecycled plastic waste which would otherwise end up in incinerators, landfills or the ocean. Then, CRDC transforms it into a product known as RESIN8™, which can be added to concrete for use in construction projects. RESIN8™ helps strengthen the concrete while also reducing the overall weight of the project.
GAVIN’s expert public relations team worked with CRDC to identify key stories to help simplify the explanation of how RESIN8™ works and its impacts. GAVIN connected CRDC’s leadership with national and local media outlets including Forbes and the regional NPR station, along with elected officials, to drive news stories and community buy-in around the opening of the organization’s first U.S. facility while attracting business partners and featuring RESIN8™ as a leading, innovative construction technology.
The results speak for themselves. Thanks to GAVIN’s efforts, CRDC had 54 million media mentions and 203 individual media placements in 10 months, along with an advertising value equivalency – the dollar value of the media coverage – of $3.12 million.
Strategic integration to disrupt the recycling market
When Penn Waste, a leading regional waste management company in south central Pennsylvania, wanted to launch a new campaign to increase recycling among its customer base, leadership tapped GAVIN’s PR team to lead the charge.
The team at GAVIN developed Penn Waste’s new recycling campaign’s leading character, Herb, based on feedback from focus groups and rooted in the overall messaging. Herb was crucial in delivering Penn Waste’s recycling message to customers. From non-traditional, disruptive marketing to digital marketing, Herb acquired an authentic personality. He was featured on a variety of billboards, in several commercials and plastered across social media.
Penn Waste wanted to hit events and locations to attract attention. The GAVIN PR team designed a 15-foot kitty litter bucket and oversized recyclables to make the company’s message impossible to ignore. Digital and print outreach was supported by a comprehensive PR campaign that enlisted local media to broadcast the message.
After the nine-month campaign, we garnered 187 million media impressions, 334 individual media placements, $15.88 million in advertising value equivalency for the company. To top it off, recycling increased by 15 percent.
Getting social for land preservation
The York County Planning Commission chose GAVIN to create and implement a social media campaign to boost public awareness and collect public sentiment on the various challenges to land preservation in an increasingly urbanized and developed region.
GAVIN came up with a two-prong approach over the three-month campaign to overcome the lack of knowledge about protecting land in the area to drive residents to fill out a survey from the planning commission.
Among our efforts, GAVIN designed persona-based messaging to efficiently reach the target audience; built an informational landing page for the campaign; developed engaging advertising; and created the “Protect Open” tagline and campaign brand mark.
To drive survey responses, we produced educational and attention-grabbing videos, distributed geo-tracked content across platforms to reach target audiences and strategically monitored campaign success rates through A/B testing to create the highest possible response rate.
When the campaign was finished, more than 1,700 digital surveys were taken, and we achieved more than 961,904 impressions and 13,241 ad clicks.
We’re ready to dig into your PR and marketing needs
Whether you’ve discovered a novel way to help reduce waste around the globe or are working at a local level to help protect our planet, GAVIN’s public relations team has the skills and the tools to promote your campaigns and bring your ideas to the audiences that matter to you most.
Contact us to today to learn how we can elevate your work and help shine a light on your world-changing work: [email protected].
