How DP World challenged a 100-year-old standard to address the climate crisis

Background

For 100 years, we have shipped frozen food worldwide at the globally recognised standard temperature of -18 degrees Celsius. Every degree has significant impact on global warming.

Insight: We asked, does the freezing temperature have to be that cold?

We ran initial research with our agency’s discovery analysts. Then we briefed independent academics at the International Institute of Refrigeration and the University of Birmingham, who after months of research came to a ground-breaking conclusion: A temperature change of three degrees wouldn’t harm the food inside the containers.

For the world outside? Transformative, promising energy savings of:

25 terawatt -hours annually (=8,63% of the entire UK energy-consumption)

17.7M tons of carbon annually (= 3.8million cars off the road).

Idea

As the world’s temperatures continue to rise, established business practices need to be challenged.

The Move to -15

An initiative led by DP World to challenge a 100-year-old standard.

In line with robust, independent research, we would raise the temperature of frozen food inside shipping containers by three degrees, from -15C to -18C. This change wouldn’t harm the food inside the containers but – when executed at scale across the entire cold chain and industry – would be literally transformative for the planet.

For this idea to achieve the desired scale and impact, we had to convince competitors to become allies. So we set about making that happen; we launched at COP28, shared our research with the world and started enlisting companies and competitors to sign up to the Move to -15, for the sake of our planet.

Strategy

After ensuring we had robust data showing how a temperature change of three degrees wouldn’t harm the food – our whole strategy focused on turning competitors to allies. Or current 18C standard would stay the same, no matter what our research showed.

So instead of asking ourselves how DPW would benefit from our findings, we asked how they could be embraced by the whole industry.

Our target audience was clear: Global companies within the shipping industry, specifically within the cold chain.

The approach was to make sure our initiative was perceived as neutral.

We had an unbranded neutral name (The move to -15).

We identified a neutral industry expert, Thomas Eeskesen, with 40 years’ experience at some of our biggest competitors – to galvanise support from industry stakeholders.

We chose a neutral place for our launch, one that was all about industry collaboration for the greater good: Cop28

Execution

Before Cop28, we published a comprehensive report, where we shared our research openly and freely with all our competitors.

At Cop28, we launched a 360 campaign.

We hosted an 15C event at the DPW House at COP28 where the academics shared more about their research. A panel discussion was had with key members of industry discussing theCoalition’s potential, and Maha AlQattan took part in a Q&A about it.

We wrote an open letter to urge companies to join our initiative.

We launched a dedicated microsite with our hero video, academic report, infographic and key messaging.

We created content that was shared on the social media channels of key DPW stakeholders, and we also ran paid campaigns on LinkedIn.

We drafted and issued a press release to international, UAE and trade media to announce the research and the launch of our Coalition.

Impact

We successfully challenged an industry standard that had reigned for 100 years.

60% of the global shipping container industry has signed up to our initiative, along with more global companies, including 17 of the world’s biggest food producers, refrigeration companies, haulers and warehouses.

4.4M views, organic and paid, for our hero video.

Trust for DP World went up with 11% after the campaign, measured by their year-on-year brand tracking from Brand Finance. This made it the most trusted brand within their competitor set.

Positive news in key global business media, including Forbes, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance.

Campaign landed strongly with the trade and sector media, including big coverage in specialist sector publications like Cold Chain News, The Lode Star, The Grocer and Just Food.

Former Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning Schmidt said: “It’s powerful to see competitors come together on something momentous, which doesn’t require new tech, just collaboration.”

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