When the audience is not a customer but an investor
An off-grid energy group does not only sell to households. It also speaks to investors, development-finance institutions, ministries and prize juries. Those audiences do not click, do not convert and cannot be retargeted. Between 2022 and 2024, as group marketing and communications director at Bboxx, I held that register alongside acquisition.
In practice that meant the group's presence at COP27 in Egypt and then COP28 in Dubai, a crowdfunding campaign, a Zayed Sustainability Prize submission, a substantive op-ed signed by the chief executive, and hosting investor and impact-measurement delegations in the field.
What these have in common: none of them is won with a media budget. They are won with an agenda held contact by contact, impact data that survives verification, and a prepared executive voice. This page details the constraint, the system and what it produces.
Bboxx was raising capital, publishing impact figures and operating in countries where the regulator is a daily counterpart. Consumer marketing spoke to off-grid households. But the company had a second audience, smaller and more decisive: investors, development-finance institutions, institutional partners and the juries that decide whether an energy-transition player is credible. That audience reads everything, checks everything, and forgets nothing.
Nothing that works in acquisition works here. You do not target an investment director with a lookalike audience. A climate conference is played out over a nine-day agenda where every slot is negotiated in advance with a named contact, with no guarantee of landing a panel. A prize submission is judged on impact indicators that have to hold up in front of a committee. And every published figure commits the company in front of people with the means to check it. There is no room for approximation.
1 · Week one: listen and decide.
On site. Understand what the cooperative does, what its buyers and partners need to believe, and what the members are proud of. Positioning written and validated in the room, not by email.
2 · Week two: build the identity.
Visual identity designed against the positioning: name system, marks, colours, typography, and rules simple enough to be applied without a design team. Every choice tested against one question: does this raise institutional trust?
3 · Week three: ship the assets.
The working kit the cooperative actually needed: documents, signage, presentation materials, templates. Delivered with a short guide and a working session so the members could produce their own materials next month.
4 · Spend where perception changes.
The budget went into the few physical touchpoints partners actually see. Nothing was spent on deliverables that flatter the consultant.
Bboxx group scope, 2022-2024.
- Group presence built across two consecutive climate conferences, COP27 in Egypt in 2022 and COP28 in Dubai in 2023
- COP28: eight partnerships worked in parallel, a nine-day agenda run contact by contact, a panel secured at the Rwanda Pavilion
- Crowdfunding campaign supported, with a lead generation system over the warm-up period
- Zayed Sustainability Prize submission filed in October 2023, built on the group's impact indicators
- Substantive op-ed signed by the chief executive, published in December 2023
- Investor and impact-measurement delegations hosted in the field in Rwanda in 2024, with a written route and editorial coverage
- Coverage of the February 2024 visit: third best LinkedIn post of the month, over 4,000 impressions and close to 800 clicks
A marketing director who can only speak to customers gets hired as an acquisition lead. Companies that raise capital, deal with development-finance institutions or operate under regulation need someone who holds both registers, and who knows the second one cannot be improvised. If your company has an audience that decides without ever clicking, it needs a system, not a campaign.
An audience that decides without ever clicking?
The first call30 minutes. We talk about your traction and what is blocking it. You leave with 2 or 3 moves you can act on. No pitch.