Our Challenge
The EE-HUB is a platform which brings stakeholders from business, education and policy-making with a view to fostering entrepreneurship education in Europe. As the EE-HUB’s grant is coming to an end in January 2018, JA Europe was keen to raise awareness about the missed opportunity of the lack of entrepreneurship education for European jobs and growth, to secure future funding.
FleishmanHillard, working for JA Europe on a pro-bono basis, was tasked with the job of developing a creative campaign to make the EE-HUB stand out as the leader and go-to place of European entrepreneurship education, bringing publicity and in turn support the organisation secure public and private funding to the EE-HUB.
Solution
In order to create a campaign which galvanised the support of EU policy-makers and existing affiliates to take a more active role in supporting entrepreneurship education, FH’s strategic approach aimed to strike a balance between provocation and being memorable. Using a mix of tactics and tools to keep momentum, the campaign sought to produce a drumbeat of content and results that could be shared with supporters and partners over time.
The ‘Switch On Europe’ campaign was thus launched in April 2017 with a public stunt in front of the European Parliament and a simultaneous online campaign to get attention for the cause of Entrepreneurship Education, from both European policymakers and businesses. To keep momentum, a series of high level events gathering Members of the European Parliament, European Commissioners and national Ministers were organised, supported by an ongoing online campaign.
Results
The stunt gathered 30 participants with signs and masks that called upon EU policy-makers to support entrepreneurship education. With hundreds of onlookers, FleishmanHillard filmed the stunt in front of the European Parliament which enabled JA Europe to further leverage the act online. This caught the attention of both public and private actors and as a direct result 24 MEPs from 16 Member States have committed to endorse and promote recommendations of EE-HUB through their policy work. The campaign was also endorsed by VP Katainen and Commissioner Navracsics.
Around the EE Summit the hashtag #SwitchOnEurope was used in more than 400 Tweets, reaching over 770,000 Twitter users in just one day. The Switch On Europe campaign continues to serve as a call for action to support JA Europe secure funding for the EE Hub going forward.
