Marketing Update May 2018

There is a lot that went down in May. To keep it short and to make the reading and digesting easy, please let me give you a brief overview in the bullet points below:

1. South Pole merchandise: by now, many offices should have received some of the new South Pole-branded pens, mugs and polo shirts. If you haven’t seen any of this and would like to receive some merchandise for your office, please reach out to your local Marketing person, or contact Nisa (a.aryati@southpole.com).
2. ‘What are carbon credits?’ video: for those who haven’t seen it, we released this video earlier in the year, featuring our one and only John Davis, the (English language) voice of South Pole. We are currently working on a Spanish and a German version of the video. If you speak these languages and are keen to also become a ‘voice of South Pole’ by doing the voice over for any of these versions, please reach out to Amelie (a.wachner@southpole.com). On that note, please also check out the South Pole youtube channel for more videos to watch on a Saturday night at home.
3. Global reach: the Australia and the Colombia landing pages, as well as the Swedish fact sheet are ‘live’ already. Make sure to check our ‘global reach’ page where we will soon launch landing pages for Sweden and Switzerland as well. Further landing pages for the UK and the Netherlands are also planned.
4. Crisis communications: in case you come a topic that is sensible and contentious for South Pole as a company, or you read bad press about South Pole, our work with clients, or our projects, please contact Nadia (n.kahkonen@southpole.com)
5.  Innovate4Climate and CMI Melbourne: South Pole had a strong presence featuring stands and hosted sessions and workshops at these two key carbon events in the Northern and Southern hemispheres respectively. Marketing supported with social media, communications and campaigns before and after the events. Right now, we’re preparing for our presence at Sustainable Brands Vancouver from 4-7 June.
6. CROF Marketing: we are preparing a campaign send-out and a website revamp regarding this offering ahead of and in the wake of an upcoming CROF webinar in early June
7. Corporate presentation: we have created two versions that shall help everyone to present South Pole.
   • Please find the long-form corporate presentation here. It features 60 slides with an extensive “about us” section, as well as descriptions of all of the areas we are working in, and the products and services we offer. Please bear in mind that this is meant to be a comprehensive overview that represents who we are as a company, what we stand for, and what we do. It is a collection of slides that you can use for your purposes. When working with it, please make a copy of it, and then edit your copy by tailoring it to your needs. For your copy, you can add and remove slides as you see fit. If you need more detail on the products and services, please get in touch with the Product Heads.
   • Please find a concise ‘at a glance’ presentation here. It features a short, 19-slide overview of who we are, as well as a higher-level overview of the area we’re active in, inspired by Renat’s recent strategy presentation featuring the systems we’re touching with our work in the ‘vertical’ dimension, contributing to various SDGs, and a ‘lateral’ dimension describing the actual topics we’re occupying across these systems.
8. Marketing for clients: Marketing work for clients is becoming ever more important. The kind of Marketing-related services clients are asking from us is changing. While in the past, we focused mainly on marketing support by producing fact sheets and videos, clients now ask us in some cases to actually do communications on sustainability for them. This is leading to Marketing building a new offering termed “Strategic Marketing” and to package and to price it accordingly. We will be back soon with info on this once it is final.
9. KAM feedback: We have set up a regular feedback process with the KAMs for all of the geographic regions we’re operating in for sales purposes (LATAM, UK, DACH, Scandinavia, Australia). The KAMs are giving us amazing input, such as on updating our case studies, creating industry sector-specific content, or clearer information on who does what in Marketing for example. We are working on implementing necessary changes based on these inputs and will get back to the people who gave the respective inputs soon.
10. Snapshot relaunch: the next edition of our trusted monthly external newsletter will come in a streamlined, redesigned and cleaned up layout. It will include clear prompts for the reader to interact with South Pole and the content we produce. Watch your inboxes and please feel free to give Gabby, Nadia or myself feedback on it.
11. GDPR: the new EU data protection regulation entered into effect on May 25, 2018. South Pole Marketing has adapted the company’s privacy policy for handling data. We have used this event to build a strong list of people who want to continue to receive our monthly snapshot in our CRM (over 3,000). We did this by asking these people to ‘opt in’ by giving us their consent to be contacted by us regularly. For one-off send-outs, e.g. before or after events, or to vote for us in the Environmental Finance rankings (which should be coming up soon), we can still use ALL of the contacts in the CRM (about 24,000).
12. Contribution to our newsletters: Finally, if you also want to write a blog post for the Penguin Carrier and still aren’t sure how, or you wish to contribute to our monthly external newsletter, the Snapshot, please reach out to Gabby (g.warden@southpole.com).

Best regards,

Tom 

Thomas Schröder, Director Marketing & Communications