Sheffield Is My Planet; the City Council's climate change campaign

Team Rckt scored another win recently by beating off stiff regional competition in a competitive pitch to redesign the web presence for the Sheffield Is My Planet (SIMP) campaign.

A bit of history
Sheffield Is My Planet is a campaign run by Sheffield City Council to encourage Sheffield's public, private, community and faith sectors to take action to reduce carbon emissions within the city. Launched a couple of years ago, it was identified that the existing site and material were simply not up to the job... all a bit clichéd and not particularly engaging or up to the task in hand.

A focused site
The site could easily have been a simple silo of government issued information. It could have been complex and calculated lots of figures relating to CO2 that may, or may not mean much to anyone. However this would have missed the point, largely because these things already exist in large numbers on t'interweb and secondly because this initiative isn't about that.

The part of the brief we decided to focus on was the concept of citizens making a promise to do their small bit for the greater good. It was something we refined down to a tight, straightforward process which makes it easy to engage, and ends in the user not just filling in a form and forgetting about it (to be filed in a dusty draw in a council office) but being given advice on how to achieve their promise; information about the resources the council has available (from all departments) to help them, and making it easy for them to tell all their friends and family about it.

The social aspect was very important – the promises are about making a public statement, and we encourage users to share this with their online friends.

Design
It was a pleasure to have an almost blank canvas, a rare opportunity indeed and one to be cherished. The only factor in place that we had to work with was a logo. So it fell to Rckt to create the concept and design.

Our response was to create an environment that offset (there's a pun in there somewhere!) the  corporate feel of the logo by developing a rich, warm and welcoming environment representative of Sheffield as a place. The simple reason for this is that the stake-holders are about as broad as you can imagine, everyone from child to grandparent needs to be able to understand and engage. It was also intended to be fun – something often missing from “serious” public sector communications. Each promise is attached to a floating hot air balloon; you can browse through the promises filling the air above Sheffield's skyline.

The website landscape accomplishes the desired effect and has already (only two days after launch) come in for high praise – we love it here and look forward to developing it in the future.

To make your promise, and to check out Rocket's fine work visit: www.sheffieldismyplanet.com