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.
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 · Treat a conference as a funnel, not as a trip.
For COP28 in Dubai, from 30 November to 8 December 2023: eight partnerships worked in parallel, a day-by-day agenda, and for every slot a named contact and a written objective. The result: a panel at the Rwanda pavilion on innovation in electric mobility, with the company's chief executive.
2 · Build the impact base before you need it.
Impact figures were produced and broken down by subsidiary, then reused everywhere: the Zayed Sustainability Prize file in October 2023, the impact book, the indicators report. An institutional file is prepared months before the call for applications, or it is not prepared at all.
3 · Have the leaders carry the message.
An in-depth op-ed, signed by the chief executive and published in December 2023, setting out a thesis on the very definition of poverty. With these audiences, the signature counts as much as the text.
4 · Treat the field visit as a deliverable.
Delegations of investors and impact measurement bodies received on site in Rwanda in 2024: repair centre, urban shop, visit to a client, rural home of tomorrow. A route written to the half hour. What people see in the field weighs more than a deck.
5 · Measure, even what is not measured like acquisition.
The editorial coverage of the February 2024 visit was the company's third best LinkedIn post of the month: more than 4,000 impressions and nearly 800 clicks. An institutional audience leaves measurable traces, provided you know which ones to look at.
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.
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