EU climate innovation agency
100+ city partners, global programme
50+ countries
Climate innovation / civic engagement
Full-time Digital Marketing Lead
Climathon is a global citizen ideathon run across 150+ cities simultaneously. City organisers across 50 countries depend on centralised brand assets to run their local events. A rebrand had been planned. The launch deadline was fixed. It could not move, 150 cities had committed dates.
The problem
My manager left for a month during my first week at Climate-KIC. Very minimal handover. No documentation. No clear brief. The Climathon rebrand was already in motion and I had inherited it with zero context.
Missing the deadline would have broken commitments to city organisers on 6 continents. They had already promoted their events. The assets they needed didn’t exist yet. I had 30 days.
What I did
Mapped the critical path on day one.
What was irreversible if wrong? What would unblock the most people? The rebrand assets were the critical path — everything downstream depended on them. That clarity meant every subsequent decision was obvious.
Designed a 4-layer system.
Not a file delivery. A system. Layer 1: global brand assets. Layer 2: city organiser toolkit. Layer 3: social media templates in multiple formats. Layer 4: awards ceremony communications. Each layer was built so city organisers could localise without needing to contact me.
Worked backwards from the organiser deadline.
Not from my own comfort level. Every decision was evaluated against one question: does this unblock the next person in the chain? That cut all non-essential work immediately.
Produced and distributed the complete toolkit.
185+ downloads in the first campaign cycle confirmed organisers actually used it. They didn’t revert to old assets. The system worked.
The results
| Metric | Results |
|---|---|
| Cities rebranded | 150+ |
| Deadline | Met. Zero cities missed the launch window |
| Toolkit downloads | 185+ in first cycle |
| Social reach | 23 articles, 580K media reach |
| Press coverage | +45% YoY, 47% open rate in average |
| Time | 30 days, working alone |
Why it worked
The instinct under pressure is to start producing immediately. That instinct is wrong. The first day was entirely diagnostic — what exists, what’s missing, what’s on the critical path. Once the critical path was clear, every subsequent hour was spent on things that mattered. The 4-layer system design added a day of thinking upfront and saved two weeks of organiser support requests. Systems built for the people downstream of you, not for yourself, are the ones that actually get used.
Frequently Asked Questions
Start with a critical path audit, not a task list. Identify what is irreversible if wrong, what has the hardest external deadline, and what unblocks the most people downstream. In this case, the rebrand assets were the answer to all three questions. Everything else was secondary. Triage replaces a brief when a brief doesn’t exist.
Design for the person at the end of the chain, not for yourself. In this case, 150+ city organisers needed to localise assets without contacting headquarters. The toolkit was built around that constraint — editable templates, clear usage guidelines, pre-formatted social assets. 185+ downloads in the first cycle confirmed adoption. If organisers can use it without asking questions, the toolkit is working.
A modular communications system separates global brand standards from locally executable assets. In this case: Layer 1 (global assets) set the standard; Layers 2–4 gave organisers everything they needed to execute locally without deviating from the brand. The system ran across 150 cities with no central coordination required after launch.
