Client: Climate and Ocean Observation European Metrology Network (COO EMN) — NPL / EURAMET

The Challenge

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Climate and Ocean Observation European Metrology Network (COO EMN) is a collaboration of European national metrology institutes (NMIs) established to embed metrological best practice across climate and ocean observation — spanning GCOS Essential Climate Variables and GOOS Essential Ocean Variables, measured both in situ and by remote sensing across Atmosphere, Ocean, and Land & Earth Observation sections.

Taking on the role of Communications Manager for the network, two communications issues emerged. First, the practical: the initial burdens of the newly-formed network were complex and largely technical and had meagre communications infrastructure. Also, a fragmented identity, and limited capacity to sustain outreach across a distributed partnership of 32+ institutions. Second, and more fundamentally, the strategic: a draft ‘strategy’ conflated strategy and operational planning, so only partially considered audience needs or behavioural objectives, which gave no basis for evaluating whether communications were working. It had abundance of ideas about making noise but wasn’t sure how that could promote ways to change behaviours outside a core community sufficient to generate meaningful ‘impact’.

The network’s subject matter sits several steps removed from the visible outputs of climate research, yet underpins the credibility of every observation on which climate policy and science depend. Communicating its value without inadvertently implying that existing climate data was unreliable — and thereby risking reputational and political damage to EURAMET and the European Commission — required a messaging framework precise enough to navigate a line consistently across every piece of content the network produced.

The Approach

I led the end-to-end development of the network’s communications capability across three phases:

Phase 1 — Strategic redesign

• Diagnosed structural issues with the existing draft strategy and rebuilt the strategic (high-level ambition) aspects from first principles: separating strategy (a concise outward-looking statement of intent aligned to EURAMET 2030 and the network’s scientific objectives) from an operational plan — a distinction that gave the network clarity about what communications were for, who they were aimed at, and how success would best be measured
• Focus on promoting meaningful outcomes for members: future research partnerships — by encouraging messaging around mutual benefit, via a members blog platform and a capability directory, of expertise in researching improved measurement of the ‘Essential Climate Variables’
  

Phase 2 — Consultation and strategic buy-in

• Built the strategy through structured consultation with partners across member nations, including facilitated workshops at Annual General Meetings in Brussels, Berne, and Paris — using the strategy development process itself as a mechanism for building shared ownership.
• Secured Steering Committee approval for the foundational strategy document, establishing it as the governing reference for all subsequent communications activity and giving the network a first common framework it could build on.
  

Phase 3 — Infrastructure and delivery

• Designed and launched an update version of the network website, structured to serve both technical EO and climate science practitioners and higher-level stakeholder audiences in parallel
• Established a differentiated content model distinguishing News (EURAMET-facing programme outcomes) from Blog (audience-specific engagement content), each with its own editorial workflow and approval process — including a two-tier blog classification system managing EURAMET’s reputational and legal exposure around third-party references and implied institutional positions
• Wrote a blog style guide and writing framework for network contributors, enabling scientists across 32+ member institutions to produce communications-quality content without central bottlenecking — including structured guidance on storytelling, audience calibration, and the ‘three Es of engagement’
• Demonstrated and had approved a dynamic, interactive, and flexible online capability directory, demonstrating member expertise in researching improved measurement methods for the CEOS ‘Essential Climate Variables’.
• Produced and distributed a regular membership newsletter; managed SharePoint communications infrastructure for internal coordination and asset management across the partnership.

Relevance To Your Organisation

This project shows that strategic communications thinking in a technically demanding and politically sensitive environment. The ability to diagnose issues with an existing approach, rebuild it from first principles, secure buy-in across a distributed partnership, and deliver an infrastructure for sustained communications is possible at scale.

This is directly applicable to any organisation working across multi-institutional networks, intergovernmental structures, or complex stakeholder ecosystems where communications requires a balance of technical credibility and clarity.