Not only is sustainable heating better for the environment, it also has a positive impact on your energy bill. That is the starting point of a new communication campaign we developed within Mechelen’s heating strategy. This campaign created greater awareness of efficient and safe heating, aiming to increase the share of Mechelen residents who heat sustainably. With a boiler set at a lower temperature, a service check, or the ‘50-degree test’, we guided the target group to their own sustainable (provisional) solution. After all, while not every home is suited to a heat pump, there is a lot you can do.

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We helped Mechelen Klimaatneutraal (Mechelen Climate Neutral) turn these different goals into a clear campaign. We addressed the audience directly on social media and via mailings, with an emphasis on clear language. This way, all target groups learned about the advantages sustainable heating can offer them. We also took a close look at the entire Mechelen Klimaatneutraal website, and overhauled it to provide the reader with a clear path through all the information.

If you want to activate an audience with very diverse backgrounds through a single campaign, you will need it to respond to many different needs. That is why we invited all the stakeholders to a workshop: city administration departments were joined by organisations working on inclusion and a better living environment to participate in the development of personas. By collaborating with them, we were able to create reliable and realistic personas for all target groups. We combined those conversations with the insights of Hanan Challouki, a pioneer in inclusive marketing and communication.

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The result was a strategy that not only anticipates counterarguments, but also considers the different ways in which people (can) absorb information. To create more awareness, we designed the ‘boilerpeople’, who follow the audience in their ‘customer journey’. They tie in with the existing visual identity of Mechelen Klimaatneutraal, but are equally recognisable on their own, within the current campaign. This multimedia approach also resulted in an asset that Mechelen Klimaatneutraal will be able to use for many years to come.