UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative

THE CHALLENGE

The UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) organizes its Global Roundtable (known as the GRT) every year, bringing together decision-makers, experts and thought leaders from the finance industry to discuss trends in sustainable banking, insurance and investment.

Although it is traditionally an in-person event, the pandemic changed the situation completely, and the team had to organize a fully virtual event for the first time.

In light of these challenging new circumstances, UNEP FI hired Nicholas to support the team and manage the digital marketing and communications for the event.

THE SOLUTION

UNEP FI wanted to spread their message far and wide to connect with the global finance community, so one of Nicholas’ first initiatives was to develop media partnerships with like-minded organizations. These complementary partnerships helped to diversify the reach of communications while increasing the quality and quantity of event registrations. Nicholas worked closely with partners to encourage their email newsletter subscribers to register to the event, with pre-written messages and customised calls to action.

Training and technical issues on the event platform was also necessary, so Nicholas created a written guide for speakers and a video tutorial. He also organized personalized sessions with each panel before the event to ensure everyone was comfortable with the new technology. Over 120 speakers participated in a total of 45 sessions, with numerous regional breakout groups from different time zones, so the preparations required a great deal of teamwork and coordination.

Nicholas put together a social media campaign with a clear and easy-to-use Social Media Pack that was distributed to all UNEP FI members and partners, and he created a personalized campaign called “Join me at the GRT” that helped high-profile speakers to easily spread the word and encourage their followers to register for the event.

THE RESULTS

The Global Roundtable was a resounding success with over 4,500 registrations from 140 countries on the platform, and a total of 3,300 live attendees. The quality of participants was also high with 1,300 Director-level and over 540 C-Suite level attendees. See the event summary.

Media partnerships established before the event helped to reach new audiences. In fact, over 80% of registrations were from non-members. The email newsletter strategy also worked: newsletters accounted for over 50% of event registrations.

The “Join me at the GRT” campaign worked well: high-profile speakers like Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank, Kristalina Georgieva of the International Monetary Fund, and Inger Andersen of UNEP all encouraged their followers to sign up for the event. On Twitter, UNEP FI beat records with 223,800 impressions during the two-day event, and on LinkedIn there was two times more traffic during this period.

Feedback from the post-event survey was very positive: “Excellent online sessions as a solution to events during the Covid-19 pandemic”, “Great discussions in the virtual format – better than the live event would have been!”

After the GRT, Nicholas created a micro-site that included recordings of all the sessions available on demand, and he produced an inspirational summary video (see below). He also led a post-event campaign on social media to drive traffic to the new micro-site.

Finally, in an effort to repurpose some of the cutting-edge content from the event, Nicholas transformed some sessions into stand-alone videos on YouTube, and he wrote a series of blog posts like this one with Peter Thomson, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean.