Several Australian states were developing their own push on the circular economy. South Australia has always been a leader in sustainability, and intended to lead this one.
For years, multinationals had been sending participants to Green Industries South Australia’s recycling and waste stream awareness programs. The next step was bigger – a Global Centre of Excellence, a not-for-profit co-designing programs with partners across academia, industry, government and international communities, working with the United Nations Centre for Regional Development.
The Centre’s visionary put me in charge of driving it – the name, the brand, the story, and the tools to engage a partner.
Strategy
The partners the Centre wanted already knew the work. What they needed was a way to say yes at an organisational level – to sign up and engage with the Centre rather than just attend its programs.
That’s a different job to awareness. It meant one unified body of work – the words written once, then carried through the prospectus, the website and the video – so a program manager in one office could hand the case to a decision maker in another and have it hold up.
With COP26 waiting, there was no time to do anything twice.
Action
Working remotely, I drove the whole build.
The name came first. Hundreds of candidates, crowd-sourced and refined to one – checked for permutations, short forms, trademarks and domains across the markets the Centre would play in. Circular360.
Then the logo and style guide. The tone of voice – how we say things at the Centre.
The prospectus – the first of the stakeholder engagement tools, integrating the logo, style guide and tone of voice with a concise body of words articulating the proposition.
The website – I took the strategic role at the interface between the board and the design and development teams, and held the build to a stage gate process so it launched on time.
The main video, compiled from interview clips of the Centre Director, refined and assembled with additional footage we sourced.
And underneath it, a client management process to profile potential partnerships – so when a company raised its hand, the Centre knew who they were and what they wanted.
Outcome
Circular360 was announced on November 3rd in Glasgow, as part of the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Forum, by the Minister for the Environment and Water – recognising South Australia’s position internationally as a leader in green industry development, the circular economy, recycling and resource recovery.
It officially opened at Lot Fourteen in Adelaide in January 2022.
If you’ve got a timeline and the world is watching – I can help you make it happen.
