From the Nominator

"COP26 in November 2021 was regarded as the last chance to keep the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C alive. While the coronavirus pandemic still preoccupied governments and the media, hundreds of researchers across Oxford were unwavering in their focus on the dual climate and biodiversity crises.     

Working in and across disciplines, they took on complex global questions, including what needs to be done to keep warming below 1.5°C, how climate change will affect our weather, how we can know net zero targets are credible, and how we can stop deforestation. Their answers had crucial implications for the policy discussions leading up to and during COP26.      

Oxford University’s Public Affairs Directorate (PAD) was tasked with a campaign to ensure the university’s research and researchers made it in front of policymakers, and to support the university in building a strong financial foundation for future climate and biodiversity research. The True Planet campaign achieved this with an audience-focused approach. We positioned our outreach around the COP26 conference themes and identified where policymakers and the media had a need that our researchers could meet.    

The campaign saw our researchers actively shaping the policy debate. Media coverage made us more visible to policymakers and achieved 95% of share of voice compared to our competitors, with a global spread. Two of the academics we focused on during the campaign have since received grants of £10 million to fund their research into climate and biodiversity, while another received a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire."

From the Judges

The messages that came across in this campaign were so clear. The judges commented on the work and discussions that would have had to go on behind the scenes to select the research and facts to present, the best speaker to communicate those, and the visuals to go alongside of this. It seems that each decision in that process was as close to perfect as possible. this campaign tackled a subject that has been in the public eye for years and yet this campaign seemed fresh and appealing. Congratulations!