Londoners know the air quality of their city is poor. Research conducted by
City Hall showed high levels of awareness about pollution, but very low levels
of awareness about what the Mayor is actually doing to address the problem. 

This campaign aimed to cut through the cynicism and inform Londoners about the measures being taken by the Mayor of London to tackle the city’s toxic air crisis. Policies like ULEZ, the greening of London’s bus fleet and mass tree-planting.

The creative juxtaposes bad and good air quality scenarios, both visually and through the copy – spelling out the environmental policies being implemented to get us from one to the other. The main media chosen – digital escalator panels – made brevity essential, so the creative needed to work hard to arrest attention
and get the message across quickly. 

On one panel we see children playing in an exaggeratedly smog-bound playground, with the headline ‘limiting pollution, not young lungs’ as the smog clears.
In another, we see a congested road with a hybrid bus wiping the screen,
and the headline ‘lowering emissions, not life expectancy’. 

The body copy follows on stating in simple terms what the Mayor is doing about
it. For example: ‘ULEZ is expected to reduce air pollution in London by 45%
in 2 years’. 

Our air quality campaign delivered a world-first policy with successful joint
comms from City Hall and Transport for London. It also activated a large
city-wide stakeholder group. 

Since launching 74% of vehicles detected in the central zone are compliant, meaning they have met ULEZ standards over a 24hr period. This means a large reduction in the number of older, more polluting and non-compliant vehicles (9,400 fewer of these vehicles detected on average each day in April compared to March). And this in turn translates to real world improvements in air quality, including a reduction of approx. 20% in NO2 roadside concentrations in central London.

- Reach and awareness of London’s toxic air and ULEZ has increased as a result of the campaign.

- After week 1 of launching the Policy awareness of the scheme was up to 82% amongst Londoners, and positivity was on the rise despite drivers having to
set up payment (+5ppt from the previous month).

- The campaign delivered 10.7M impressions, and over 14.5k page views
after week 1.

- There were over 4 million vehicle checks with TfL and over 40,000 social media engagements after week 1.