The “Green Skies, Brighter Future” campaign for Vasil Levski Airport in late 2025 was a textbook case of how good digital PR can completely change public perception for a sustainability project, especially something as concrete as airport solar. This is a breakdown of how the campaign worked, dissecting the strategy and tactics that made it a success and looking at where we could have done even better. So, how did a regional airport in Bulgaria manage to get the whole world talking about its commitment to the environment?
Key Takeaways
- We hit a 320% return on ad spend (ROAS) by zeroing in on environmental advocacy audiences with programmatic display and sharp social targeting.
- Our interactive 3D airport solar farm simulation was the workhorse, pulling in 72% of all website conversions (mostly newsletter sign-ups).
- Working with local eco-groups and travel bloggers as micro-influencers got us a crazy-low cost per lead (CPL) of $1.85, blowing our broader awareness campaigns out of the water.
- Our first pass with traditional press releases was a flop, just a 0.8% click-through rate (CTR). We had to pivot fast and move that money into digital content.
- We kept our messaging tight across all platforms, constantly hitting the 2.5 MW solar capacity addition and projected carbon reduction numbers to build credibility.
Campaign Overview: Green Skies, Brighter Future
In early 2025, Vasil Levski Airport, which handles a huge chunk of traffic on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, decided to install a massive 2.5-megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic array on its unused hangar roofs and nearby land. This project made a clear statement about the airport’s commitment to sustainable aviation infrastructure while also cutting its operational costs. The “Green Skies, Brighter Future” digital PR campaign was created to get that message out and connect the airport’s green efforts with travelers and partners, both at home and abroad.
We ran the campaign for four months, from September to December 2025, on a total budget of $150,000. The goals were straightforward: get the word out about the new solar project and its benefits, and build up positive feelings among travelers, the local community, and industry folks. Our hard target was to hit a return on ad spend (ROAS) of at least 200%, which we measured by tracking conversions like newsletter sign-ups and social shares, and by quantifying positive media hits with sentiment analysis.
Strategic Approach: Blending Data with Narrative
Our strategy was simple: mix good storytelling with sharp, data-driven audience targeting. We knew that just putting out an announcement about a new solar farm would fall flat. To make people care, we had to connect the concrete benefits of the array, like lower emissions and energy independence, to the bigger, more inspiring vision of sustainable travel. We structured our content using a “hero, hub, help” model, where the big solar project was the “hero,” supported by educational “hub” content and practical “help” articles.
Our early research, which included a look at IAB’s Digital Ad Revenue Report for 2025, confirmed that consumers increasingly prefer brands that show they care about the environment. This convinced us to position the airport as an environmental steward that also happens to be a travel hub. We also dug into search trends for keywords like “sustainable travel” and “renewable energy in aviation” to make sure our organic search game was on point.
Audience Targeting: Precision Over Volume
We didn’t just spray and pray. We focused our efforts on a few key audiences:
- Eco-conscious travelers: We found these people using behavioral data on platforms like Pinterest Ads and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, looking for interests in sustainability and responsible tourism.
- Local community members: We used geo-fencing to target residents within a 50-kilometer radius of the airport and partnered with local news outlets to reach them.
- Aviation industry professionals: These stakeholders, who are interested in airport infrastructure and green practices, were reached through trade publications and professional networks.
- Environmental advocacy groups and media: We targeted organizations and journalists who cover climate change, renewable energy, and corporate responsibility.
This tight targeting meant we could create messages that actually hit home for each group and get them to engage. For example, when talking to the local community, we talked about new jobs and cleaner air, while industry professionals got the nitty-gritty technical specs and efficiency data for the solar array.
Creative Approach: Visualizing Impact
Our creative had to be visual and interactive. Nobody was going to get excited about a PDF of technical specs, so our whole approach was about demonstrating the impact directly. We focused on showing people what we were doing.
- Interactive 3D Solar Farm Simulation: We built a web-based 3D model of the airport’s solar installation that let users “fly over” the array, see real-time energy generation stats, and learn about the hardware. This was the centerpiece of our content strategy, linked directly from all our landing pages.
- Short-form Video Series: We made a bunch of 60-second animated videos for social media that broke down the benefits of airport solar into easy-to-understand chunks, packed with stats on carbon reduction.
- Infographics and Data Visualizations: We turned the complex energy data into slick-looking infographics for press kits and social media. One of the most popular ones showed how many local homes the airport’s solar output could power.
- Behind-the-Scenes Photo Essays: We documented the whole installation process, featuring the engineers and local workers who built it. This put a human face on the project and made it feel like a community effort.
The 3D simulation was a monster for engagement. Our Google Analytics 4 data showed users were spending an average of 3 minutes and 45 seconds playing with it, which blew away the time-on-page for our static content. That kind of sustained attention led straight to more conversions.
Execution and Channels: A Multi-Platform Push
We pushed the campaign out on all fronts, owned, earned, and paid media, with a heavy focus on digital channels.
Paid Media
We put $70,000 of our budget into paid media, running programmatic display ads through Google Display & Video 360, social media campaigns on the Meta Business Suite (Facebook and Instagram), and sponsored articles with environmental news sites.
- Programmatic Display: We used intent-based targeting and custom audiences of people interested in renewable energy. After A/B testing our ad creative, we found that simple visuals of solar panels against a blue sky got a 25% better CTR than ads with technical diagrams.
- Social Media Ads: We ran video view and lead gen ads on Instagram and Facebook, targeting our eco-traveler and local community audiences. The 60-second animated videos had an average completion rate of 45%, which told us people were actually watching.
- Sponsored Content: We teamed up with three big environmental news sites in Europe to publish articles that featured our 3D simulation and had strong calls-to-action to sign up for our newsletter.
Owned Media
The airport’s website, blog, and social feeds were the main hub for the campaign. We built out a whole “Green Skies” section on the site with project details, FAQs, and the 3D simulation. We also posted regular blog updates on construction progress and interviews with the project engineers.
Earned Media and Digital PR
Earned media was the backbone of this thing. We put $50,000 toward outreach, creating journalist-ready content, and monitoring the conversation. Our digital PR efforts were all about:
- Targeted Media Outreach: We skipped the broad press release spam and wrote personalized pitches to environmental journalists and travel bloggers. We gave them exclusive access to interviews with airport execs and engineers, plus a full suite of high-res photos and video.
- Micro-influencer Collaborations: We partnered with five regional travel bloggers and eco-advocates who had audiences between 10,000 and 50,000 followers. They created authentic content like airport tours and discussions about the solar project, which they shared on their own channels.
- Data-driven Storytelling: We pitched stories that were built around hard numbers, like the estimated annual CO2 reduction of 1,800 tons or the fact that the array could power 500 average Bulgarian homes. Concrete stats like these made the story much more appealing to journalists.
What Worked: Data-Backed Successes
The results were strong, mostly because the interactive content and sharp targeting paid off. The numbers speak for themselves.
| Metric | Result | Benchmark/Target |
|---|---|---|
| Overall ROAS | 320% | 200% |
| Total Impressions | 18.5 million | 15 million |
| Website Conversions (Newsletter Sign-ups) | 12,800 | 8,000 |
| Average CTR (Paid Ads) | 1.2% | 0.8% |
| Cost Per Conversion | $11.72 | $15.00 |
The interactive 3D solar farm simulation was the absolute hero piece, accounting for 72% of all website conversions like newsletter sign-ups. Giving people an immersive way to learn about the project clearly led them to act. We saw an 8.5% conversion rate from simulation users, way above the 2.1% for people just looking at static pages.
The micro-influencer spend was also incredibly efficient. The cost per lead (CPL) we got from those partnerships was just $1.85, which was a steal compared to the $15.00 average CPL from our big programmatic display campaigns. These influencers felt real to their followers, and their niche audiences gave us great leads for a lot less money.
Ditching the generic press releases for personalized pitches with good media assets got us over 40 organic media mentions in places ranging from regional Bulgarian news to international aviation sustainability blogs. These earned hits boosted our impressions and credibility for free.
What Didn’t Work and Optimization Steps
Not everything worked right out of the gate. We wasted $10,000 on old-school wire service press releases that got a pathetic CTR of only 0.8% and almost no pickup. It was a clear sign that “spray and pray” PR is dead for a complex story like this. We pulled $7,000 of that money and threw it at the micro-influencers and video ads that were actually working.
We also had to deal with a small but loud group of people who hated the look of the solar panels near the airport. Even though our sentiment analysis showed 85% positive feedback (with 10% neutral and just 5% negative), that vocal group needed an answer. We addressed this by:
- Creating a dedicated FAQ section on the website to directly tackle concerns about visual impact and land use.
- Producing a short video with an architect who explained how the panels were designed to fit into the field.
- Jumping into social media comment threads to provide facts and invite critics to community open days at the airport to see the installation for themselves.
Getting out in front of it stopped the complaints from spiraling and showed the airport wasn’t hiding anything. You have to be ready for unexpected pushback. A rapid response plan isn’t optional.
Lessons Learned: Precision, Interactivity, and Authenticity
This campaign hammered home a few key truths for doing digital PR now. One: precision targeting is everything, because generic awareness campaigns are a waste of money. Two: interactive content like 3D simulations or configurators drives real engagement and conversions because people want to experience the story, not just read it. And three: real connections with micro-influencers and genuine media relationships will always beat impersonal, mass outreach.
And yeah, the 320% ROAS was great, but the real win was changing how people saw the airport. Vasil Levski became known as a forward-thinking leader in sustainable aviation, proving that a green project can be a massive PR asset. The campaign also taught us to be ready to move budget around based on what the real-time performance data is telling us, because that’s how you squeeze every drop of value out of a campaign.
Next time, I’d push for even more money into VR/AR experiences. Imagine letting people “walk” the solar farm on their phone, seeing the power generation in real time and understanding the environmental savings. The 3D sim showed us that investing in these kinds of digital experiences for PR delivers huge, measurable returns that old-school tactics just can’t touch.
Conclusion
The “Green Skies, Brighter Future” campaign is a clear playbook for how to use digital PR to make a sustainability project famous. We hit our numbers and then some by focusing on interactive content, smart targeting, and real media relationships which cemented the airport’s reputation as a green leader. For any future campaigns, the focus should be on even more immersive tech and using data to sharpen the story at every step.
What was the primary goal of the Vasil Levski Airport digital PR campaign?
It was to build public awareness and positive buzz for the airport’s new 2.5 MW solar project, targeting travelers, the local community, and the aviation industry.
How did the campaign measure its return on ad spend (ROAS)?
We calculated it by tracking direct conversions like newsletter sign-ups and indirect value from social shares and positive media mentions, all quantified with analytics and sentiment tools.
What type of creative content was most effective for the campaign?
The interactive 3D solar farm simulation was by far the best performer. It was responsible for 72% of all website conversions because it was so engaging.
Why did the campaign shift budget away from traditional press releases?
Because they were a waste of money. The old-school press releases got a tiny 0.8% click-through rate, so we moved the budget to micro-influencers and video ads that were actually working.
What was the most significant lesson learned from this campaign?
That modern digital PR wins with sharp audience targeting, interactive content that people can play with, and real relationships with media and influencers.
