BayWa r.e.
Digital Reporting

Analysing 10 years of online conversation to understand consumer perception of climate change

A data-driven thought leadership platform and multi-channel communications to raise awareness of the climate crisis as we entered the Decade That Matters.

1.3+ trillion

public documents analysed

75

media articles

1.1m

global media reach

Insight

As global renewable energy company, BayWa r.e., turned ten years old, we entered the decade dubbed as our last chance to curtail the impact of climate change. A moment to ensure that BayWa r.e. could play a meaningful role in perhaps the most urgent conversation ever faced by humanity. Targeting business leaders, government and society, we asked the questions: what from the past ten years is worth carrying forward into the next, and what might we learn from the global voice, or dare to extrapolate from, its discursive direction?

Integrate

We built and delivered an integrated communications campaign designed around a web-based report that captured the spirit, direction, and implications of global conversations about climate change online. We used our digital tool-stack to analyse ten years of trend data across social media, news and blogging platforms, including Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr and Google. The report drew upon 1.3-trillion public documents and, to get a clear view of the recent rapidity of change, included an investigation into online chatter from 2018 to 2020. The results showed the overall volume of conversations around the topic of ‘climate change’ grew by 110% in 2019 when compared to 2018. The report also proved a decade-long, international shift in public awareness and an evolution in vocabulary, moving from ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’ and, most recently, ‘Climate Crisis’. This gave us a brand-new story to tell, which was delivered through media outreach, social media and through the creation of an emotive campaign video. In addition to the news, we developed a series of thought leadership talk tracks having interviewed several BayWa r.e. experts on their points of view as we entered the Decade That Matters.

Impact

The new thought leadership platform allowed us to break into the business and mainstream media with a topical conversation that also showcased BayWa r.e. as experts and providers of positive solutions and innovations that are helping to tackle the climate crisis. Our digital campaign, including paid amplification and a search-based strategy led us to engaging new audiences across the digital sphere, maximising the online footprint of the campaign, driving people to the Decade That Matters report landing page and increasing follower numbers on BayWa r.e. social channels.

This report separated the signal from the noise. Where those conversations go next will determine our direction of travel for the rest of this decade