The Brief

• Innovate UK is the Government's innovation agency, supporting business-led innovation in all sectors, technologies and UK regions, advancing the levelling up agenda.

• The Innovation Accelerator pilot invested £100m between 26 transformative R&D projects, aiming to accelerate the growth of three high-potential innovation clusters (Glasgow City Region, Greater Manchester, and West Midlands). Led by Innovate UK on behalf of UKRI and DSIT, this game-changing pilot takes a new, co-creation approach to investment and seeks to bridge the gap between national strategies and locally empowered decision-making and insights.

• Innovate UK approached Perceptive to deliver a compelling six week campaign to raise awareness of the Innovation Accelerators programme, demonstrating early stage impacts as the projects reached their half way mark.

Our Approach

• Using the halfway mark as a news hook, Perceptive developed a campaign which highlighted the value of the Innovation Accelerator approach. Perceptive worked with the Heads of Communications for Glasgow, West Midlands and Manchester to select and highlight some of the most advanced or newsworthy projects, demonstrating outcome and impact.

• To effectively reach target audiences, Perceptive developed an umbrella press release for national media and three local releases, tailored for each region and focusing on an impactful project. Content was supported by key stakeholder quotes, including The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, as well as local Mayors, council leaders and project representatives.

• An opinion piece from Dean Cook, Exec Director of Place and Levelling up at Innovate UK allowed for deeper exploration of the programme, including a focus on co-creation and place-based R&D.

• Amplifying the campaign over social media, Perceptive developed a two minute hero video covering the project approach and outcomes. This was supported by organic social content for Innovate UK, as well as shared by project partners and regions.

• To reach new target audiences, Perceptive developed a focused, paid LinkedIn campaign to increase reach and engagement of the hero video. This delivered engagement amongst target audience outside of IUK’s follower network.