New HQ gives Saint-Gobain the chance to strut its stuff

One of the world’s largest building materials companies and manufacturer of innovative material solutions, Saint-Gobain (SG) is dedicated to creating great living places that improve daily life. When SG developed its new corporate North American headquarters using its own building materials, it saw an opportunity to study the impact on SG’s own employees by creating its own “Living Laboratory”—and the SG communications team saw a chance to tell the company’s biggest story yet, leading to a first-place win in the “Data-Driven PR Campaign” category of PR Daily’s Digital PR and Social Media Awards.

Collaborating with the University of Oregon’s High Performance Environments Lab (HiPE), SG embarked on a 36-month longitudinal study—the first of its kind based on size and scale. The results revealed that a systems-based design approach using multiple solutions and strategies can have a stronger collective impact on a building’s ability to optimize occupant comfort.

The team used earned media to drive awareness with national, regional and trade media. Other tactics included sponsored content in Architect Magazine to increase awareness of the study results and drive web traffic, and the launch of a Living Laboratory landing page on the SG North America website to house all information related to the results. Internally, the team developed and distributed communications to employees and stakeholders encouraging them to visit the site to learn more about the study results.

The effort secured 18 earned editorial placements, including 12 media interviews. The Living Laboratory landing page scored 1,100 page views through the Architect Magazine sponsored content campaign, and 6,056 page views driven by integrated campaign initiatives. A paid Facebook campaign earned 287 clicks, 751 engagements and 32,531 total Facebook impressions.

Congratulations to the entire team for a winning effort.