SF Climate Action Plan

The San Francisco Climate Action Plan (CAP) charts a path for San Francisco to realize net-zero emissions by 2040. The Plan impacts almost every aspect of life in San Francisco, yet, most San Franciscans had never heard of it.

Our challenge: How do you make San Franciscans care about a “Plan”, and get them to adopt the many actions it prescribes?

First, we established a brand platform and visual guidelines, so that the Climate Plan became a recognizable and trusted “brand” over time. Next, we dug into research that revealed how years of negative news had rendered many residents disengaged and pessimistic about climate change, when, in fact, the everyday actions San Franciscans were taking had made a remarkable positive impact: Climate pollution in SF was down 48% since the Climate Plan was enacted.

We decided to anchor our campaign around a singular, encouraging message to every San Francisco resident: “Thanks to you, the plan is working.”

The campaign encompassed TV, out of home, print, radio, events, social and digital, all in English, Spanish and Chinese, and drove to an ADA-compliant, multilingual website where visitors discovered why the Plan was working, checked out an interactive dashboard where they could track the City’s progress toward net-zero emissions, and watched videos showing how they could help.