The brightest young minds from Scottish marketing and communications agencies have been challenged to create a global climate change campaign that will reach and inspire fellow 16 to 24-year-olds.
The best campaign will be presented at the New York Times Climate Hub as part of the COP26 summit.
Teams have been assembled from creative agencies including Outlaw Creative, BIG Partnership and Weber Shandwick, as well as in-house specialists and students.
The challenge has been set by social enterprise Fuel Change and the New York Times and will see the teams working with industry mentors over the next six weeks to come up with a concept for a multi-media campaign.
The teams will also have the chance to test their ideas out on groups of young professionals from China, India, the USA and the wider UK.
Fuel Change aims to empower young people to create a carbon neutral future for the next generation.
The organisation is fast gaining traction among government, industry and the education sector, with the ambition to eventually become a global platform that galvanises young people into taking meaningful action to address climate change, protecting the planet for their future and their children’s future.
Fuel Change chief executive David Reid said: “Fuel Change was set up to give young people a meaningful voice and the opportunity to do something tangible to help tackle the climate crisis.
“The anecdotal evidence suggests many of the next generation do not respond to a figurehead such as Greta Thunberg and the current messaging just isn’t engaging enough, so we have called on young marketing professionals to devise a campaign that will resonate with people of their own age.
“This is an opportunity to show the world that they care about sustainability while empowering their organisation to be part of the climate action movement. We are thrilled to have partnered with the New York Times and to be able to offer the chance to present the best ideas at COP26.”
Each of the campaigns will be showcased at an event at the Arnold Clark Innovation Centre in Glasgow at the end of October.
The winning campaign will then be taken forward after COP26 to be developed further.
Among the mentors is creative lead Lee Fitzpatrick, managing director of Edinburgh-based brand strategy agency Outlaw Creative.
He said: “The climate emergency is the challenge of our times and it’s accelerating faster than we all imagined. When David approached me to be the creative lead for this campaign, I knew I had to be involved, because every conversation, collaboration and small action matters right now.
“The challenge we have set stems from the need to figure out how to communicate the climate emergency in a way that resonates and inspires the younger generation to take action.
“The Scottish creative scene is bursting at the seams with talent, and to be able to help co-ordinate a group of young creatives to make a real positive impact is an honour. I’m expecting a real diverse mix of solutions to come out of the challenge and I’m excited to see what bold ideas the teams come up with.”
This is the latest in a series of Fuel Change challenges, which were established to spark a means by which the Scottish economy can shift to Net Zero, while using the innovative ideas to create wider commercial, economic benefits.
The challenges offer an opportunity for apprentices and young people to develop innovative, but practical, solutions to real low-carbon challenges.
The main aim is to help hit the target of a low-carbon Scotland by 2045 and create real solutions, which can be implemented by the partner companies in Scotland and potentially across the world.
Fuel Change also runs a schools programme, which is focusing on introducing the issue of climate change and ‘carbon literacy’ into every subject on the curriculum.
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