The project Together4Cohesion aims to amplify communicative practices in regions and strengthen AER’s efforts in improving cohesion policy in Europe
Many citizens in the regions are inadequately informed about the impact of cohesion policy in their daily lives. In an effort to improve the communication of these benefits, AER and mc Group have partnered up for the project “Let’s rEUnite: Together for Cohesion”. On June 5th, the project was officially launched in Larnaca (CY) together with its partners and AER members during the General Assembly.
Magnus Berntsson, President of AER, opened the event and stressed the importance of AER members as relevant amplifiers for cohesion policy.
Whether it’s transport, healthcare, communication, leisure activities, community life – Cohesion Policy aims to reduce economic and social disparities and to promote sustainable development. In sum, many examples can be found to demonstrate how European Cohesion Policy Funds support people’s daily lives.
Mathieu Mori, Secretary General of AER, then introduced the project partners: mc Group and AER’s Project Unit. More generally, AER’s work on cohesion with its taskforce and as member of the Cohesion Alliance already invested efforts in cohesion policy. Six AER member regions have taken up the challenge of becoming core partners: Varazdin (Croatia), Csongrád (Hungary), Trentino (Italy), Timis and Alba (Romania) and Catalonia (Spain).
Then it was the turn of mc Group to explain their role in the project. Elisa Lomonte, International PR, and Jan Pycha, Project Manager, presented their insights on target groups, how to build a house of communication as part of an integrated campaign. They focussed in on what is meant by a 360-degree communication campaign, creating synergies and cross-promotional effects through specific communication tools.
mc Group also introduced 4 action steps for the implementation of the project’s campaign:
1) What regions are already doing?
2) What really innovative regions can do?
3) Citizens on board! The Messengers for Cohesion and
4) Blowing Cohesion policy positive effects over European regions: the “For Cohesion: let’s rEUnite!” campaign. Bringing in both citizens and stakeholders is a key objective of the communications.
The presentation was followed by an interactive quiz. The attendees answered four questions on EU Cohesion Policy, namely:
1. What percentage of the EU budget does cohesion funding represent?
2. The Cohesion Policy is delivered through three main funds, identify them.
3. By 2020 the EU aims to meet five concrete objectives in regard to its Cohesion Policy, identify them.
4. Who can apply for the EU Cohesion policy benefits?
Would you know the answers?
Afterwards, the participants were asked to vote for the official name of the campaign. The options were:
- Cohesion In The Regions – #CohesionRegions – cohesionregions.eu
- Together For Cohesion – #Together4Cohesion – together4cohesion.eu
The pilot regions’ representatives, mc Group, and members from the AER Project Unit joined President Berntsson and Secretary-General Mori “on stage” to reveal results of the vote. The winning campaign name was #Together4Cohesion!
A highlight of the launch event for participants was the reveal of the future wesbite landing page!
Finally, Mathieu thanked the attendees for their presence and announced the further work in the Knowledge Sharing Workshop on 6th June to capture the best-practices from communication campaigns, AER members analysed campaigns and voted for best-practice examples.
We look forward to officially start with the campaign and cooperate with European regions – let’s unite our efforts and act Together4Cohesion!
