Rapidly building brand awareness for sustainability tech firm Risilience
Risilience puts the power of risk science into the hands of global enterprises. Spun out of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Risk Studies, the firm combines globally respected academic rigour with astute commercial practices and has quickly built an enviable blue-chip client list across fashion, FMCG, aviation and more.
Its unique ‘digital twin’ software allows organisations to stress test the impact of both long-term physical risk, such as global temperature increases, and short-term transition risk, including legislative and consumer changes. Armed with this insight, clients are able to properly plan and derive opportunity from the low-carbon economy.
Having spent many years in R&D, the company, founded by prominent catastrophe modeller Dr Andrew Coburn, engaged Element to quickly build brand awareness and media validation for its industry-leading approach, against a backdrop of established global competitors.
What Risilience needed:
As with any fast-growing tech company looking to rapidly build share of voice in the media, close relationships with influential journalists, alongside an understanding of the tactics and channels to achieve results, is crucial. In response, Risilience’s campaign was built upon two core pillars of activity:
International and national media
While events like the UN’s climate change conference (COP) create a groundswell of awareness, sustainability is never far from the global news agenda. Building relations with relevant producers, planners and reporters to quickly establish CEO Andrew Coburn as a leading commentator on climate risk was a crucial goal, alongside sharing knowledge and expertise with prominent journalists to shape coverage of the most pertinent issues in global sustainability efforts.
Trade media
Risilience has expertly curated leading specialists across technology, climate change and international policy. Creating a consistent stream of insights to feed the trade media ensures a consistent stream of coverage in industry media, as well as influential podcasts. This trade media engagement allows Risilience to move beyond the macro trends covered in national media and provide insight directly to industry decision-makers.
Topics and themes included:
Element’s strong relationships with national and international media resulted in Risilience CEO Andrew Coburn writing sought-after opinion editorials in both The Times and Reuters, discussing climate risk and the role of technology in enabling businesses to adapt.
Detailed profiling has been secured in The Wall Street Journal and the BBC, with both lifting the hood on Risilience’s technology and revealing how it works to the company’s expansive audiences. The former highlighted the importance for businesses to manage both physical and transitional climate-related risks, while both Risilience and client Reckitt appeared on BBC Click’s ‘Green Special’, which explored the sustainability firms shaping the low-carbon economy.
Throughout COP27, Element comprehensively positioned Risilience’s climate policy analyst, Andy Garraway, as a leading commentator, having previously worked alongside Alok Sharma on negotiations for the UK’s presidency of the COP26 event in Glasgow. This resulted in an interview on CNBC Europe and a briefing with the Financial Times, as well as commentary in leading trade publications.
Having developed a speaker matrix to leverage insights from Risilience’s international leadership team, Element has established key spokespeople as sought-after thought leaders through articles, feature contributions and interviews with sustainability, risk and industry media.
In 2023, Risilience secured a $26m Series B funding round, which Element announced exclusively with global publication TechCrunch, before achieving over 35 pieces of coverage in Risilience’s target media.
Peter Hay
Head of Brand and Content
