City of Columbia Office of Sustainability
As Digital Specialist, I worked with my AdZou team, Clover to create a campaign that helps local businesses want to become more sustainable. I exercised my role by creating and implementing social media strategy that the City of Columbia Office of Sustainability could execute to achieve its goals. Throughout the semester of Spring 2023, I examined web analytics and evaluation metrics to determine the best digital components to utilize for our big idea. Coursework at the University of Missouri.
Key Insights
Our government to business campaign required detailed research on Columbia, Missouri’s community. Clover and two other teams conducted surveys and focus groups with Columbia college students, residents and business owners that led us to polarizing results.
While Columbia college students and residents believe sustainability is an important issue, local business leaders are solely focused on profit and are more eager to take shortcuts when it comes to transparency on green practices. This divide in action provided us with a clear definition of our targeted local business leaders.
Target Profile
We coined our target market the Penny Pinching Business Professionals. Predominantly white males that are 45 years of age and older, these business leaders recognize the importance of sustainability, but don’t want to lose money on complex solutions. Penny Pinching Business Professionals find conversations regarding green business practices can be misleading or confusing, an area that the Office of Sustainability has potential to shed light on. The executive, decision-making traits of our target profile plants them in the social media realm of LinkedIn and Facebook. They are eager to be in the know, but on a smaller scale.
The Big Idea
While Columbia consumers want to shop where sustainable practices are taking place, they don’t know or trust what businesses are actually doing. Local businesses could be reaching consumers and building loyalty in this way, but they don’t know how, and some business leaders have admitted that they don’t know what the Office of Sustainability does. Clover’s big idea to bridge this gap is the Shedding Light Campaign. With the Office of Sustainability leading the way, our plan is to encourage businesses to implement small eco-friendly changes, be transparent with their customers about their sustainable practices, and ultimately grow their green by glowing green.
Campaign Tactics
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Newsletter
The existing newsletter will be refreshed to shed light on how the office can help businesses with technical information like where to find office members at local events, sustainability participation opportunities, funding, and more. It would also provide eco-friendly tips from local businesses who are glowing green. These changes will lead consumers to eco-friendly businesses, thus building customer loyalty.
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SWAPS
“Swaps” is a social media campaign using graphics to highlight small steps business owners can take towards sustainability. Each stepping stone in the graphic represents a swap they can make for a non-sustainable business practice. These will move from smaller steps to larger steps on the path to sustainability.
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Event Booths
We will have a booth for the office at local events. Columbia has many well-established annual events that are frequented by locals and visitors. Having a booth at these events and partnerships to impact the sustainable efforts practiced there are a great way to increase brand awareness
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Interactive Quiz
Our “Go Green” quiz will ask questions regarding business sector, energy usage, and waste management. The quiz will have results based off of the answers that recommend next steps business owners can take to implement sustainable practices. It will also include links to resources the office provides about changes they need to make. This way, business owners can receive information about sustainable changes in one, easy place while driving traffic to the website.
