Study Bergen: positioning Bergen as a city of sustainability

The city of Bergen, Norway

Bergen, a city on the West coast of Norway, is home to some of the finest expertise in issues related to sustainability. Co-ordinated by the Study Bergen team, a collective of eleven institutions across Bergen including universities, research organisations, and public bodies, have united to raise the profile of Bergen's excellence in sustainability. 

To begin, there was a need to identify:

• A consistent brand proposition for how the city would talk about sustainability and Bergen's strengths, particularly through the lens of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

• What Bergen's unique messaging to the world should be.

• Who they really wanted to reach and engage with this project and the messaging.

• Want content should be created.

• How twelve individual institutions could and should collaborate to bring this initiative to life, and sustain it over time.

Pickle Jar Communications was commissioned to facilitate those discussions, and offer training and support in developing the thinking and the plan. 

Our work began in December 2019 when we chaired a full-day workshop involving institutional leaders and communications professionals to start to determine messaging, priorities and an approach. During this workshop we focused on non-student audiences. 

In January 2020, we then hosted an intensive two-day workshop with communications and marketing professionals to develop an approach with a strong emphasis on student and stakeholder audience groups. 

By the end of the second workshop, target audiences were defined, personas developed, messaging set out, and creative content concepts had been developed, ready to become their fuller marketing and communications strategy and plan.