Recent news makes a clear case for sharing your city’s sustainability stories.

While companies that take climate action reduce the cost of capital, those that don’t speak up about that and other change-making action risk negative impacts to the growth of both trust and investment opportunities.

Framing and presenting your story is an exciting challenge. To encourage you, in this blog post, Jess Henson, Marketing and Communications Manager, GDS-Movement:

• gathered a few fantastic communication campaign examples to kickstart your creativity and
• followed that with some real-world case studies of single-step sustainability solutions to a more regenerative destination.

Cool Communications Campaigns

Using Dry Humour to Showcase Destination Attributes

Funny how differently we experience a place depending on our mode in it. Context is everything in city stays, and there’s nothing like a seasoned local to point that out.

Oslo shows off the best of its offerings through a very apposite “opposite gaze”. Its clever campaign attracts visitors who crave what’s perfectly ordinary to someone in the (questionably?) privileged role of (temporary!) resident. Is it even a recommendation? Depends what you’re looking for…

Via Janie Neumann, Relationship Manager (UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria) & Destination Climate Action Expert, GDS-Movement

Using Negative Emotion to Showcase Opportunities for Positive Change

Ever lost your temper and your tongue? You’re not alone, you’re a regeneration-loving human! Rude words in the right place can be very effective when it comes to bringing public attention to practises that need to change for the better.

Open-net pen salmon farming damages the natural environment and destroys endemic natural heritage. In this wildlife conservation campaign, actor and activist, William Shatner, embodied the first four letters of his celebrity surname in a pointed commentary. Citizens across Canada chimed in to support him.

Via Jess Henson, Marketing and Communications Manager, GDS-Movement

Encouraging (Climate-kinder) Behaviour Change through Shared Interests

You’re hardcore about having a good time. Why would you take a boring bus? Because it means more heavy metal (with fewer carbon emissions).

Copenhagen draws more support for emissions-slashing mass transit transport by celebrating the sub-culture that attracts huge crowds to a music event in a campaign. Like the energetic onstage performers that enthusiasts are flocking to see, the messaging roars at you to “go to hell” – and back – compliments of its bus line.

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A post shared by Trafikselskabet Movia (@movia.dk)

Via Anne Seeberg, Director, Operations, GDS-Movement

Incentivising Participatory Tourism in a Sustainability-Led City

Responsible practices seem so much more rewarding when you’re rewarded for them, isn’t it?

Copenhagen clinches the concept of a sustainable tourism capital in a campaign that invites tourists to engage the city in a more authentic and responsible way. The campaign rewards positive action with freebies and discounts to deepen the visitor experience and leave this special city better than they found it.

Via Andrea Nicholas, Founder, Green Tourism

Free Kayak for Conservation

It’s cool to kayak the city canals of Europe, but even cooler to do it for free (and leave the waters in your wake cleaner).

Green Kayak has 80 canoes across various European cities that take trash instead of money as payment. Users can tap into a sense of purpose-driven, temporary community while they grab litter and share virtue-signalling selfies at the same time.

Warming up to Winter to Ensure a Better Visitor Spread

What if you didn’t have to go far to escape cloudy winter days? For Europeans, that’s Nice!

Climate change is intensifying the peaks and troughs of the visitor season. To ensure a more sustainable spread of visitors throughout the year, the “Nice Côte d’Azur in Winter” campaign attracts visitors to a “new” season based on its abundant sunlight and its status as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s a climate-plus that it’ll also discourage long-distance flying to tropical climes.

Many Landscapes; One Land

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go somewhere that has it all? It might not be heaven, but Mongolia is pretty near to it.

This campaign uses visual proof and mistaken identity to show off a wide variety of scenery inside one national boundary. Mongolia’s geography includes upland steppes, semi-deserts, and deserts, ticking multiple boxes of your travel bucket list, and you wouldn’t be crazy for deducing from this campaign that it is a bit like the world in one country. With just one flight in and out, it’s a lower-carbon experience of diverse geographies, ecologies, and cultural celebrations…especially if you cycle it in summer!

While destination sustainability requires the input of all interested parties, and can be challenging to plan, fund, execute, measure, report on, and continuously improve, the journey to regeneration can also start with a single step (especially if it’s guided by a sustainability strategy!)

Here are some real-world examples of individual initiatives that speak volumes when it comes to telling (rather than selling) your destination sustainability story through user experience.