Branding and Building Awareness
Smith developed the Asia LEDS Partnership brand identity and an extensive set of promotional materials including brochures, videos, and a knowledge-sharing website.
Asia LEDS Partnership
USAID + Partners
Overview
THE ISSUE
With over half the world’s population and expanding economies, the energy, transport, and consumption patterns developing in Asia have a huge impact on future greenhouse gas emissions. To support sustainable growth, USAID initiated a global effort to promote low emission development strategies, or LEDS.
01
OUR APPROACH
Within’s Stanford Smith developed a a communication strategy to promote the new Asia LEDS Partnership. It emphasized regional sharing of experiences and expertise. Based on over a decade of working in Asia, Smith recognized that governments and local organizations were most interested in learning from countries with similar challenges, cultures, and levels of economic development.
02
WHAT WE DID
Smith led communications for a new regional network for cooperation on low carbon growth, the Asia LEDS Partnership. He helped to launch the promote the network, engaging with government, non-profit and private sector partners in more than a dozen countries, from Pakistan to Indonesia.
03
Creative Communication
To reach a wider public with messages about climate change, Smith coordinated participation of the well-known “shadow play” dance group El Gamma Penumbra for a special production at the annual Asia LEDS Forum in the Philippines. The YouTube recording has over 1 million views.
Regional Learning
Smith also designed and promoted regional dialogues and learning events, such as a session at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit. Dr R. K. Pachauri, past Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, called it the most useful session of the event.
Project Highlights
A Sustainable Platform
USAID funding supported the establishment of the Asia LEDS Partnership over ten years ago. The branding and promotion has enabled the network to grow and transition to local management. Currently, the South Asia office in India of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability serves as the Secretariat, with activities led by partners ranging from regional Asian institutions such as APEC to research institutions to private sector firms such as TATA.
Seeding Good Practices
Smith focused on identifying regional good practices and successful examples of low carbon development, and then shared them through multiple channels and formats including live events, technical briefs in multiple languages, videos, and trainings.