Case studies / Low Carbon Hub

Using content to raise the profile of retrofit for Cosy Homes Oxfordshire and Energy Solutions Oxfordshire

The UK’s buildings are old and inefficient, contributing a significant amount of our total carbon emissions. That includes our housing stock as well as corporate building such as offices, warehouses, and manufacturing plants.

Retrofitting these buildings to ensure they are energy efficient, minimising wasted energy and eliminating reliance on fossil fuel heating, is a vital part of climate action – plus it reduces energy bills and ensures a more comfortable living or working environment too.

But, whilst photos of zero waste shopping and wind farms are common in the eco-conscious space, wall insulation, window draughting, and heat pumps don’t occupy as much space as valuable individual climate solutions.

From 2019 to 2021 I was Marketing Manager at the Low Carbon Hub, an Oxford-based community energy social enterprise.

During that time, the Low Carbon Hub had two grant-funded retrofit projects – one focused on home owners, and one focused on businesses. I was marketing lead for both projects, and content played a key role in the success of both brands.

Cosy Homes Oxfordshire

Cosy Homes Oxfordshire is a one-stop whole house retrofit service for homeowners in Oxfordshire. It was originally grant-funded by the UK Department of BEIS as a pilot project led by the Low Carbon Hub – and I led the project’s marketing as part of my role as Communications and Marketing Manager at the Low Carbon Hub.

This included creating educational content on whole house retrofit to help an audience of environmentally-minded homeowners understand the return on investment of retrofit for the planet, for comfort, and for the value of the home – working alongside brilliant freelancers in graphic design, video production, and website development.

Explainer videos

Scripting and directing a series of short explainer videos about home retrofit hosted on YouTube – which have continued to drive organic traffic to Cosy Homes Oxfordshire:

Educational webinars

Planning, scripting, promoting, and hosting a series of introductory webinars on home retrofit.

The webinars were recorded and turned into video content: both the full webinars and short clips – which were then distributed across the Cosy Homes Oxfordshire marketing channels (website, newsletter, Linkedin, Twitter, local low carbon community groups). Again, these videos have also continued to grow views and drive organic traffic over the years via YouTube.

Interactive house

Managing the development of an interactive house tool to show different retrofit measures, including summary pages with detailed information on the measures and their impact.

The interactive house was also repurposed into a blog series of explainers on different retrofit measures, from biomass boilers to triple glazing to floor insulation, and more.

And an infographic too.

Case studies

Creating a series of three case studies with Cosy Homes Oxfordshire customers who had gone through the process of retrofitting their homes. The case studies were repurposed into three different formats to ensure maximum potential for distribution within our network: website page, downloadable PDF, video.

Here’s an example: retrofitting a Didcot home to be warm and comfortable all year round

Blogs and retrofit news

Written content on home retrofit to educate homeowners and drive organic traffic to the Cosy Homes Oxfordshire website:

Learning and impact report

As Cosy Homes Oxfordshire was a pilot project grant funded by the UK Government, it was also important for us to share the learnings from the project to demonstrate the project’s impact and to help other, similar projects to build on our experience.

At the end of the grant-funded period I wrote and designed a learning and impact report to fulfil this need. This was distributed both to our government funders (BEIS) as well as to the local low carbon community groups across Oxfordshire who helped to support and promote the project in its pilot phase.

Energy Solutions Oxfordshire

In 2020 the Low Carbon Hub was awarded grant funding to create a complete energy efficiency service for businesses, alongside project partners EP Connect and Oxford Brookes University.

I led marketing for the project, building the Energy Solutions Oxfordshire brand identity and voice from scratch.

This included developing the brand guidelines, core messaging, website copy and development, marketing collateral, and more.

In terms of content, the priority was to develop brand expertise and social proof to add weight to a brand new organisation:

  • Energy Pioneer Award
  • Case studies
  • Expert-led webinar series

Energy Pioneer Award

The Energy Pioneer Award by Energy Solutions Oxfordshire is an award programme open to any business that works with ESOx to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings and reduce their carbon emissions.

It offers a way for businesses to demonstrate their climate progress to customers and stakeholders, whilst also helping the Energy Solutions Oxfordshire brand and impact to spread further through word of mouth.

Case studies

I developed a series of three written and video case studies to tell the stories of businesses that had actively improved the energy efficiency of their buildings through the Energy Solutions Oxfordshire service.

Expert-led webinar series

One of our project partners on Energy Solutions Oxfordshire was the Oxford Brookes University’s Environmental Information Exchange team, who were already well-known and trusted as energy experts by businesses in the Oxfordshire area.

We ran a series of introductory webinars to introduce the team and to cement the expertise of the ESOx brand: