PUMA

Conference of the People

COP 26. Conference of the Parties. A meeting of the world’s leading governments, corporations, scientists, and pressure groups to discuss the future of our planet.

With one missing voice. The people.

The Challenge: Ensuring PUMA continually makes its business more sustainable, and giving Gen Z a
voice, and a space to be heard.

So much of today’s climate debate fails to engage the generation that is inheriting the world we’ve created, and the very generation that can affect the greatest change. We set out to change that.

PUMA is a recognised world leader in sustainability. It completed its first environmental P&L audit in 2011, valuing its impacts at $145m. The business invested heavily and made sustainability a core pillar of its operations and brand.

Cut a very long story, very short, it didn’t work.

What we did

We set out to create an honest platform for sustainable progress, raising awareness of both our sustainability evolution and our ongoing challenges in a style that would engage our core Gen-Z audience.

Our PR strategy was simple. Let's apply the same levels of creativity as we would to a new trainer drop to engage a Gen Z audience in our sustainability story. Our key audience was young people aged 18-25 who felt they didn't have a platform to voice their concerns about fashion and the environment. We also wanted to reach corporate audiences and the wider industry, to share PUMA’s knowledge and inspire.

This meant making Gen Z a co-conspirator in the platform and ensuring their voices were the loudest. It meant bringing them together with industry experts in a unique meeting of minds. For the rest of the industry, this event marked an opportunity to learn and be inspired.

1 day. 5 conversations. This was the red thread that we weaved through the entire campaign which sat across paid, earned, owned, and shared.

In order to facilitate real conversations, we needed real voices. Gen Z renegades positioned at the intersection between fashion and sustainability. We enlisted a diverse range of young talent from passionate sustainability influencers to climate storytellers whose profiles frequent the likes of The Sunday Times to drive our paid PR activity.

All led by our hero talent, Cara Delevingne and Naomie Harris who drove interest amongst national media across the UK, US and worldwide and facilitated organic, earned coverage.

We scattered communications with the media across the 10-month campaign execution. A launch moment across business and consumer media. A talent announcement to raise the profile of the event, and a formal invitation to UK based media to attend and see the day in person.