In two of our recent posts, we described to you our engagement with an international foundation that wanted to appropriately communicate new findings about the links between meeting the unmet need for family planning and climate change mitigation. (If you missed these posts, click here and here to read them.) Read on to know about the final phase of this project.
After the Baird’s CMC team and the client completed the repackaging of the idea and created new and targeted communications materials, the foundation felt it had the all the necessary ingredients to launch a global campaign to raise US$ 4 billion a year for meeting the unmet need for family planning across the world.
Before launching this, however, they asked Baird’s CMC to test the waters with European leaders and policymakers. Our objective was to gauge the expected reactions of the European community to this research and deduce whether the campaign was likely to have any success. Additionally, Baird’s CMC advised the client strategically on what the campaign should focus on as well as what to avoid to ensure European policymakers accept this research. This phase of the project saw us conducting high-level qualitative research and using our long-standing policy and development expertise to develop strategic guidelines that were fact-based, insightful, and actionable.
Why was this project important to us? “Well, the research findings are important because there is a pre-existing and well-documented need to tackle the unmet need for contraceptives and family planning. As for the aspect of climate change mitigation, if the world doesn’t change its development pathway, we will continue to approach the point of no return for catastrophic climate change,” explains Aditya Bahadur, our climate change expert.
The communication strategy adopted for such significant research is also critical. If not communicated appropriately, it can attract a lot of negative attention in specialist circles and popular media, not only leading to problems for the client but also preventing marginalised women everywhere from accessing family planning services.