The challenge: The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) wanted to publicly launch its new Future Seeds genebank in Colombia in March 2022 to raise awareness of the facility and celebrate the contribution of genebanks to broader crop research and conservation.
Our approach: To support the opening of the genebank, which was officially launched by Colombia’s President Duque, Marchmont developed a phased media outreach campaign, including:
- Facilitating a site visit for a small group of international journalists to see the facility and prepare coverage ahead of the official opening.
- Leading a wider embargoed outreach campaign to alert journalists to the facility and coordinate coverage to coincide with the opening.
- Developing a series of three op-eds to articulate different aspects of the genebank’s work and value.
Outcomes:
The integrated media outreach resulted in more than 80 pieces of coverage, which included articles from Devex, the Financial Times, the Hill, Inter Press Service, Mongabay, Reuters, and SciDev.
Shortly after the opening of the genebank, the Bezos Earth Fund announced it was investing $17 million in the facility and its work.
