Future Cities Catapult
Creating digital content packages to share knowledge with industry, demonstrate cutting edge research and generate business leads
Engagement with government, companies and the public sector to build relationships, support funding and generate leads for consultancy and training services
The brief
The Open Data Institute is a not-for-profit that demonstrates the impact and value of data, and offers high-level training and consultancy services. Throughout 2019 – our eighth year working with the ODI – we were tasked with developing and delivering a campaign to:
- Significantly raise the profile of the ODI
- Position the ODI as data governance thought leaders
- Increase inbound requests for ODI consultancy and training
Allegory has helped us achieve a significant impact in the data sector, positioning the ODI as thought leaders in our domain. As a result, the ODI has been able to make the most of the profile-raising opportunities, weaving in messages about our work on data ethics, data infrastructure, data institutions and data governance.
ODI Summit 2019 at Kings Place Copyright Paul Clarke, cc by 4.0
Our response
Telling the data story can be challenging, so we developed a campaign that would bring it to life for our target audiences – public sector leaders and C-suite executives in FTSE 500 companies. We aimed to show how data helps governments develop better public services, enables businesses to create new products and services, and helps people make better decisions.
As part of our campaign, we clustered activity around key milestones throughout the year; using these as hooks for news stories, thought leadership, events and speaking opportunities. The campaign was a truly collaborative effort, working with the ODI in house team and events specialists the Business Narrative, and visual creatives Philpott Design. Highlights included a YouGov survey on public trust in data, an event around pioneering new ‘data trusts’, a manifesto encouraging engineering companies to take safety data more seriously, and the 2019 ODI Summit.
Standout achievements include:
- Securing keynote speaker slots for ODI CEO Jeni Tennison at global events, reaching over 50,000 delegates from the campaign’s target sectors.
- Placing a thought-leadership piece on Data Institutions in The Financial Times.
- A social media campaign for the Data Trusts event which reached over 1,300,000 people on Twitter, and engaged the Mayor of London and Sir Tim Berners-Lee in the conversation.
- Using the results of the YouGov survey to secure 15 pieces of news coverage on the day of the ODI Summit, including in the Daily Telegraph, Computer Weekly and New Statesman Tech, and a further 45 in the following week.
The outcome
The campaign secured 116 pieces of media coverage and reached 21 million people. Highlights included exclusive interviews with major influential media outlets: such as BBC Breakfast, BBC Tech Tent and The Financial Times’ Podcast.
Our combined campaign efforts contributed high value bookings for consultancy work with governments, charities and SMEs, amounting to a significant return on investment for the ODI. The ODI also saw an increase in inbound requests for data consultancy and advice from international public and private organisations.
The campaign also prompted two major global brands to join the ODI’s partnership programme and several others to integrate the ODI’s tools into the strategic planning and practises.
See more of our work in the data sector here, or contact us to explore how Allegory can help your organisation with a campaign like this.
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