Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Business Network
In 2010, the SUN Movement was launched to support national leadership to scale up nutrition for the world’s poorest populations. The SUN Business Network (SBN) supports the SUN Movement and SUN countries by brokering partnerships and collaboration between business and all actors on nutrition at the national, regional and global level.
In May 2020, WRENmedia was approached to provide SBN with a communications proposal to support their upcoming, virtual SUN Pitch Competition following recommendation from a colleague from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. The aim of the Competition was to connect 21 small and medium-sized enterprises from Africa and Asia with business investment for growth. WRENmedia was contracted to develop and implement a media plan that would include the creation of eye-catching communications products to: raise awareness of the event and generate a positive buzz; increase online attendance; ensure sponsor visibility; and share post-event successes.
Competition communications
Between mid-June and the end of August, WRENmedia produced a portfolio of creatively-designed outputs, including a 40-page ‘Pitchbook’ developed on Canva to outline the background and aims of the competition, and introduce the finalists and their nutrition businesses in a bright and professional format. To increase traction with the online event and generate conversations on social media, colourful infographics depicting impactful key messages around global health and diet challenges were created, as well as multi-coloured banners for each contestant that included a profile image and quote on the impact of their nutrition-focused business.
Media coordination
A series of pre- and post-event press releases, content pieces with the event sponsors, including Cargill and Royal DSM, and articles on the competition finalists were also developed to enhance the event profile. To promote these articles to press publications, WRENmedia connected with media contacts in Africa (over 400) and Asia (over 130), providing the final article text, images and captions, via Mailchimp. This approach resulted in articles being published over 50 times across media outlets in these regions.
Regular updates were also sent out to registered attendees through Mailchimp in the run-up to the Competition to provide information on the sponsors, finalists and prizes, and to announce the winners.
The competition stories were also shared on the SBN Twitter page, which we managed during this time, including live-Tweeting on the day of the event to increase social media interaction. Numerous Twitter polls were posted, for example, asking followers to vote for their favourite contestant, as well as announcements and comments from the judges and finalists in real-time.
“Thanks so much again for your brilliant support on Twitter today – the event was a great success... And thanks to you, Susanna and the whole team for such a mammoth effort! It was a pleasure working with you!” - Hannah Rowlands, Communications Associate, SBN.
Post-event highlights
To demonstrate the impact of the media – and social media – engagement, a post-event report was produced to include Twitter analytics, a summary of the Mailchimp open and click rates as compared to industry averages, and a media outreach overview with readership figures. The analytics revealed that WRENmedia’s management of the SBN Twitter account increased tweet impressions by 274%, profile visits by 162.3%, mentions by 36.5% and followers by 75, when compared to June.