Convert street lighting into a public health campaign

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

Uludağ Enerji is an electricity distribution and retail supply company serving Bursa, Balıkesir, Çanakkale and Yalova, with more than 1,000 employees.

One in eight women worldwide carries a risk of breast cancer, and early diagnosis is decisive for the success of treatment. The difficulty is not the message but the channel: health awareness campaigns tend to reach the people already looking for health information, while the women least likely to attend screening are the hardest to reach through health channels alone.

A distribution and retail company holds two assets that health institutions do not. The first is public lighting infrastructure that every pedestrian passes on the way to somewhere else. The second is a monthly billing relationship with almost every household in the service area, already printed and already delivered.

The company's social investment approach treats both as communication platforms rather than as operational assets. The initiative was launched in 2018 during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, and was the first corporate public awareness campaign of its kind run by an electricity distribution and retail company in Türkiye. It has been repeated every October since.

Location of the initiative: Bursa, Balıkesir, Çanakkale and Yalova provinces, Türkiye

The campaign converts assets the company already owns into an awareness channel carrying a single message: early detection saves lives.

In public space, lighting poles are wrapped in pink fabric, supported by pink balloons and pole advertising, and street lighting is switched to pink. Sites are selected on the streets and avenues with the highest pedestrian and traffic density, so the message appears where people already are rather than where they would have to go to find it. A pink alarm clock image runs through the visual identity as the symbol of how much time matters in early diagnosis.

In the household, October electricity bills reaching 3.7 million subscribers are produced in a pink design carrying early detection and preventive health information. The bill is already printed and already distributed, so household reach is obtained for the cost of a design change rather than the cost of a mailing.

Inside the company, webinars with health professionals support employees' health literacy, so the workforce is an audience of the campaign and not only its delivery mechanism.

The scope has widened through continuous improvement. Pink bill boxes under the theme 'your bills are for your wellbeing' carry early detection messages into public institutions, reaching women managers in those institutions among other stakeholders. The same logic was later extended into a Social Bills application, in which electricity bills carry health, addiction prevention and social solidarity messages developed with civil society organisations including LÖSEV and Yeşilay.

What holds the model together is that none of it requires new infrastructure. The poles, the streets, the billing run and the customer channels exist for other reasons; the campaign gives them a second function for one month a year.

Figure 1: Street lighting on high-traffic routes switched to pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Figure 2: Field teams applying the pink treatment to lighting poles before the campaign month.

Sustainability impact

Climate

The initiative is a public health awareness measure rather than an emissions abatement measure, and no Scope 1 or Scope 2 reduction is claimed for it.

It is designed so that nothing new has to be built. The lighting poles, the streets, the October billing run and the customer channels already exist for operational reasons, and the campaign gives them a second function for one month a year, so in every year since 2018 it has added no new emission source to the company's own operations and no additional print or distribution run to the billing cycle.

What it demonstrates has an enabling value that has not yet been directed at emissions. An electricity distribution and retail company's monthly bill reaches 3.7 million subscribers inside their own homes every October for the cost of a design change, and the Social Bills extension shows the same channel carrying further messages developed with civil society organisations. That is a working household behaviour-change channel of the kind an energy transition depends on, but to date it has carried health content rather than energy or emissions content, so no enabled emission effect is measured or asserted.

Social

The campaign is measured on reach and continuity rather than on activity counts. Five areas are tracked: 1. digital media reach; 2. press reach; 3. partner institutions and civil society organisations; 4. annual recurrence as an indicator of institutionalisation; 5. awards and recognition received.

Digital media work produced a total reach of 22,584,369. Press coverage produced a total reach of 13,072,068, appearing across print, broadcast and online media on 48 television channels, in 228 newspapers and on 3,988 news websites. Reach extends nationally, with Bursa, Balıkesir, Çanakkale and Yalova as the core service area.

In October, pink-designed electricity bills carrying early detection and preventive health information reach 3.7 million subscribers in their own homes.

Collaborations run with public institutions and civil society organisations, principally two women's organisations — the Business Women and Managers Association, known as BUİKAD, and the Yoncadır Women's Association — together with the Ministry of Health.

Continuity is itself an indicator. Because the campaign is tied to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it runs once a year, and it has run every year since 2018.

Recognition includes four awards: the Association for the Fight Against Cancer Award, the Social Benefit Award, the 14th Traditional BUİKAD Award and the KalDer Sustainability Grand Award.

Employee webinars delivered by health professionals extend health literacy inside the workforce alongside the public-facing activity.

Business impact

Benefits

The strongest business benefit is that social value is produced from assets that are already paid for. Lighting poles, street furniture, the billing run and the customer communication channels exist for operational reasons; the campaign adds a second function without capital investment.

The customer relationship gains content beyond invoicing. A monthly bill is normally a transactional document, and giving it a health message once a year changes what the company represents in the household without any change to the billing process.

Relationships with municipalities, public health institutions and civil society organisations are strengthened, which supports the company's social licence across its licensed service area — a practical asset for an operator whose work occupies public space all year.

Recognition from four external awards, sustained press and digital visibility, and employee participation in the health webinars support internal engagement and external reputation. The results feed the company's sustainability, corporate communication and social investment reporting.

Costs

The cost base consists of pink fabric wrapping, balloons and pole advertising production, the design and print changes to the October billing run, the employee webinar programme, photographic and video documentation for the corporate archive, subscriptions to social media analytics and media monitoring services, and the coordination time required with municipalities, public institutions and civil society partners.

There is no capital investment in new infrastructure, which is the defining cost characteristic of the model. The lighting assets, the streets and the billing runs already exist, so the campaign spends on treatment and content rather than on assets.

The main recurring dependency is coordination rather than money. Public space applications require agreement with municipalities and public institutions each year, and the campaign cannot be scheduled independently of them.

Costs are contained by concentrating activity in a single month, by standardising the visual identity so materials are reused between years, and by taking content from health institutions and civil society partners instead of commissioning it.

The annual campaign budget is TRY 1,145,000, divided between public space treatment (TRY 475,000), billing design (TRY 180,000) and measurement services (TRY 490,000).

Impact beyond sustainability and business

Co-benefits

The approach proved transferable inside the company. The Social Bills application extends the billing channel to health, addiction prevention and social solidarity messages developed with civil society organisations including LÖSEV and Yeşilay, so one campaign produced a permanent communication capability.

Partner civil society organisations obtain public space and household visibility they could not fund themselves, which is a direct transfer of value from an infrastructure operator to the health sector.

Municipalities gain a ready-made public space campaign that requires coordination rather than budget, and public institutions hosting the pink bill boxes reach their own staff, including women managers, with the same message.

Potential side-effects

The most important limitation is what the measurement can and cannot show. Digital and press reach record exposure, not behaviour: the campaign cannot demonstrate that more women attended screening or that any diagnosis was brought forward. The company is explicit that the indicators are communication indicators, and the health outcome remains an assumption.

A commercial brand attached to a health message can be read as marketing. That risk is managed by taking the message content from the Ministry of Health and from women's health civil society organisations rather than writing it in-house, so the clinical content is owned by the institutions qualified to own it.

Concentrating everything in October gives the campaign visibility but also makes it seasonal. Early detection is a year-round behaviour, and a single month of communication does not sustain it, which is part of why the bill box and Social Bills extensions were added.

Public space treatment depends on municipal agreement each year, so the reach of the physical element is not fully within the company's control.

Typical business profile

The model suits asset-based utilities and infrastructure operators — electricity, gas and water distributors, network operators and municipal service providers — that own visible public space assets and hold a recurring billing or customer contact channel across a defined service territory.

It is most relevant where the operator has a licensed service area, an established local presence and a corporate communications function with an annual budget, because the campaign is delivered from existing assets and existing procedures rather than from new investment.

Delivery engages corporate communications, field operations, customer billing, public relations, and press and digital media functions, working with municipalities, health authorities and civil society partners. The maturity required is low in technical terms and high in coordination terms.

Approach

1. Audit the assets that already touch the public: List the physical and customer-facing assets the company already owns — lighting poles, streets, billing runs, customer service points, social media accounts — and assess each one as a potential communication channel rather than only as an operational asset.

2. Anchor the campaign to an established awareness period: Choose one health message and one month, in this case breast cancer early detection in October, so the campaign joins a public conversation that is already happening instead of competing for attention on its own.

3. Take the content from health institutions rather than from communications: Develop the early detection and preventive health messages with the Ministry of Health and with women's health civil society organisations, so accuracy and social sensitivity are guaranteed by the bodies that own the subject.

4. Select public space sites by footfall: Apply the lighting pole treatment on the streets and avenues with the highest pedestrian and traffic density, and agree the locations with municipalities and public institutions before the month begins.

5. Use the billing run as the household channel: Redesign the October bill in a distinctive colour carrying early detection information and issue it through the normal distribution process, so household reach costs a design change rather than a mailing.

6. Bring employees inside the campaign: Run webinars with health professionals for staff, so the workforce receives the same health literacy content it is helping to distribute.

7. Measure reach on independent data: Track reach, impressions, engagement and content performance through the social platform's business analytics, and track published article count, potential reach and total readership through a media monitoring service, then include both in the annual performance review.

8. Institutionalise it in the annual cycle: Place the campaign inside the annual corporate social responsibility programme with allocated budget and named coordination, analyse reach, visibility and stakeholder engagement at the end of each period, and use that analysis to set the following year's scope and tools.

Stakeholders involved

• Project leads: Senior management sponsors the campaign and the Group Corporate Communications Directorate coordinates it. Placing it inside the annual corporate social responsibility programme, with strategic planning, resource allocation and implementation built in, is what has made it independent of individual initiative and kept it running every October since 2018. Planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting follow the company's procedures for events and corporate social responsibility, communication strategy, external stakeholder management, public relations, and press and digital media, which gives the campaign a documented governance route rather than an informal one.

• Company functions: Corporate communications leads content, visual identity and media relations. Field operations teams carry out the public space applications on lighting poles and streets. Customer billing produces the pink October bill within the normal billing cycle. Public relations manages coordination with municipalities and public institutions, and human resources supports the employee webinar programme. Annual monitoring and evaluation results are integrated into the company's sustainability, corporate communication and social investment reporting.

• Main providers: Public space production — fabric wrapping, balloons and pole advertising — is delivered by contracted production suppliers, and reach measurement uses a commercial social media business analytics platform and a commercial media monitoring service. None of these is material to the model, which rests on the company's own assets rather than on a purchased solution, and equivalents are available in any market.

• Other: Municipalities and public institutions coordinate the use of public space — avenues, squares and lighting poles — so the physical campaign can be installed where footfall is highest. The Ministry of Health and women's health civil society organisations, including the Business Women and Managers Association and the Yoncadır Women's Association, contribute subject expertise, message accuracy and their own reach. Public institutions host the pink bill boxes that carry early detection messages to their staff. LÖSEV and Yeşilay partner on the Social Bills extension. Feedback from public institutions, civil society partners, field observation, communication performance data and public response is collected into the annual evaluation and used to update the scope and tools of the following year, which is how the campaign has changed shape without losing continuity.

Key parameters to consider

The campaign has run since 2018 on a continuous improvement basis, once a year, tied to Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. Annual recurrence is treated as an indicator in its own right, because a campaign that survives more than one budget cycle has been institutionalised.

All activity is documented with photography and video and held in the corporate archive, which is what allows year-on-year comparison of reach and visibility.

The reach ceiling is set by the size of the service territory and the subscriber base rather than by campaign spend, so an operator with a smaller licensed area should expect proportionally smaller figures from an identical design.

The model transfers to other geographies through municipal coordination for public space, content partnerships with health institutions and civil society organisations, and effective use of the lighting infrastructure, which is what keeps the additional resource requirement low.

Implementation and operations tips

Start from the asset register, not from the campaign idea. The reason this works is that the poles and the bills were already there; a campaign designed first and then given a channel would have cost far more for less reach.

Let the health institutions own the clinical content. It protects the accuracy of the message and it protects the company from the perception that a health issue is being used as marketing.

Agree the public space locations with municipalities well before the awareness month. The physical element has the longest lead time and the least flexibility.

Be honest about what the numbers measure. Reach figures describe exposure, and presenting them as health outcomes would misstate the result; keeping the distinction visible is what makes the reporting credible to health partners.

External links

• Sustainability report

• Awareness month campaign post