Amplifying EUIPO’s voice: Strategic engagement across Europe

ICF Next's campaigns for EUIPO have addressed illegal streaming, counterfeiting, IP rights, and the Play Fair campaign during the 2024 Paris Olympics. These efforts aimed to boost public awareness and consumer loyalty, involving media mapping, press releases, and interviews across EU member states.

From 2022 to 2024, EUIPO faced challenges around raising public awareness about illegal streaming, counterfeiting, and intellectual property rights. Achieving significant media coverage was another hurdle, which made localisation crucial in adapting campaigns to different languages and local contexts. With engagement as a key focus, EUIPO wanted its campaigns to engage with media outlets to effectively disseminate findings. Flexibility was essential, ensuring adaptability with launch dates to avoid clashes with major news events and exploring other markets to maximize the impact of the campaigns.

Specifically in 2024, EUIPO needed to be up for the challenge of engaging a younger, digital-savvy audience who are often the primary consumers of counterfeit goods. This demographic is highly active on social media and influenced by online trends, making it crucial to tailor the campaign to their preferences and behaviours.

To address these challenges, the ICF Next team implemented several strategic solutions. We conducted media mappings and briefing sessions to identify key media outlets and journalists, ensuring that the right channels were targeted. We also tailored and localised press releases to the target audience and to resonate with local contexts.

In order to maintain media interest and secure additional coverage, our team scheduled interviews with native spokespersons who provided valuable insights and helped answer media questions effectively. Additionally, we used visual materials to enhance the effectiveness of press releases, making the content more relatable and engaging for the audience.

In 2024, ICF Next engaged social media influencers—leveraging the reach and credibility of popular social media personalities to amplify the campaign's message and drive engagement. The influencer activation campaign had two goals: to raise awareness about EUIPO's initiatives (e.g., combatting online piracy of live sporting events) and to educate young people about the importance of purchasing authentic products. With a target audience of 15-25-year-olds, our team engaged 13 content creators from six countries (Romania, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, and Italy), reflecting a diverse European representation.

We organised a detailed briefing for the influencers to clearly outline the campaign goals and content expectations. This briefing session provided a valuable opportunity for influencers to interact with EUIPO, ensuring everyone was well-prepared and aligned for the campaign.

Our campaigns successfully generated extensive media coverage, with thousands of articles published across digital, print, radio, and broadcast media in all EU member states and beyond. This widespread attention ensured that the message reached a diverse audience, raising awareness about intellectual property rights and the dangers of counterfeiting and piracy. The campaigns achieved a significant reach, touching millions of people.

Moreover, we secured numerous Tier 1 media interviews that enhanced the visibility of the studies’ findings. This proactive engagement helped to disseminate the information effectively and ensured that the key messages were communicated clearly. ICF Next’s reports to EUIPO featured precise monitoring and comprehensive analysis. We also included valuable recommendations for future campaigns, emphasizing the importance of further localising press releases, exploring other markets, and creating a yearly calendar of studies and publications to maintain momentum and maximise impact.

Our pilot influencer portion campaign in spring of 2024 resulted in posts from 13 content creators across the six focus countries. The 13 creators put together 29 pieces of content, including reels, stories, TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and a Twitch insert. Their work reached over 665,000 people and got more than 1 million impressions. The content was played over 700,000 times and received more than 39,000 engagements, including comments, likes, shares, and saves. The influencers were able to effectively reach a diverse audience, educating young people on the importance of purchasing authentic products to support both their health and the integrity of the sports industry.

Importance of localisation and trendy topics

The success of these campaigns highlights the importance of localisation and having a trendy topic. By adapting content to local languages and contexts, we ensured that EUIPO’s message was relevant and resonated with the target audience. Additionally, focusing on trendy topics such as sports events and counterfeiting helped capture the audience's attention and drive engagement.