GBCe
Green Building Council
Turning Sustainability Expertise into a Clearer Sector Narrative
- Brand: GBCe
- Geographical scope: Spain, within the international World Green Building Council network
- Sector: Sustainable building, construction, certification, advocacy and sector transformation
The Challenge
The challenge was to turn that expertise into a more accessible and actionable narrative for different stakeholders across the construction value chain.
Our Approach
The work connected sustainability expertise with clearer audience needs, practical participation and a stronger institutional voice.
The Impact
The project helped make complex sustainability knowledge easier to understand, communicate and activate.
Our Relationship
Our role was to organise existing expertise into a practical narrative system that could support dialogue, influence and sector participation.
The Challenges
Company
GBCe is a non-profit organisation committed to transforming Spain’s building sector towards a more sustainable model.
Its challenge was to express its institutional role more clearly in a sector shaped by technical complexity, regulation, environmental urgency and multiple stakeholder interests.
It had to:
- Clarify its role within the sector
- Make its expertise easier to understand
- Align messages across audiences
- Strengthen stakeholder engagement
- Connect technical knowledge with public relevance
- Support transformation without losing rigour
Business
GBCe needed to mobilise members, partners, professionals, companies and institutions around sustainable building.
Its work included certification, knowledge, training, advocacy and sector dialogue, but these activities needed to be communicated as one coherent contribution.
The business needed to:
- Segment its stakeholders more clearly
- Define different levels of trust and involvement
- Adapt messages to different audiences
- Increase participation in its initiatives
- Strengthen the perceived value of membership
- Turn knowledge into practical action
Brand
The brand had to make a complex subject feel urgent, credible and possible.
It needed to avoid two risks: becoming too technical for wider audiences, or too generic for sector experts.
The brand challenge was to balance:
- Technical rigour and accessibility
- Environmental urgency and practical optimism
- Institutional authority and open participation
- Certification and wider sector transformation
- Local relevance and international standards
Our Approach
Company and Business
We began by reviewing GBCe’s strategic role and the needs of its different stakeholders.
The process explored:
- Institutional purpose
- Sector context and trends
- Stakeholder groups
- Circles of confidence
- Audience needs and motivations
- Value of membership and participation
- Communication priorities
- Brand promise
- Message hierarchy
- Activation milestones
This created the basis for a clearer and more useful communication platform.
Branding
We positioned GBCe as a platform for dialogue, knowledge and action that helps Spain’s building sector move towards sustainability.
The positioning connected technical credibility with the need to involve more people, organisations and institutions in the transition.
The brand needed to be:
- Rigorous
- Open
- Practical
- Collaborative
- Influential
- Clear
- Trustworthy
- Capable of mobilising action
Its voice had to make sustainability feel both serious and achievable, without becoming bureaucratic or moralising.
Support
Building a Brand Narrative for Sector Transformation included:
- Institutional and brand assessment
- Stakeholder segmentation
- Trend and context analysis
- Circles of confidence
- Positioning
- Brand promise
- Personality and voice
- Message hierarchy
- Functional benefits
- Reasons to believe
- Audience-specific messages
- Communication principles
- Activation milestones
- Strategic narrative development
Strategic Narrative
We helped GBCe organise its role, expertise and contribution into a clearer strategic narrative.
The narrative worked as a practical reference for communication rather than as a decorative statement.
It helped explain what GBCe does, who it serves, why sustainable building matters and how different audiences can participate.
Stakeholder Definition
We clarified the stakeholders most relevant to GBCe’s influence and development.
These included:
- Members
- Construction companies
- Developers and investors
- Architects and engineers
- Public institutions
- Product manufacturers
- Certification professionals
- Sustainability specialists
- Citizens affected by the built environment
Each audience needed a clear reason to engage with GBCe, whether through certification, membership, knowledge, training, advocacy or collaboration.
Message System
We developed a message system capable of translating complex sustainability expertise into clearer communication.
This included:
- Core institutional narrative
- Key messages
- Functional benefits
- Reasons to believe
- Audience-specific messages
- Communication principles
- Brand voice
- Activation priorities
The objective was to make GBCe’s value easier to understand without reducing the complexity of sustainable building.
Participation Criteria
The platform also provided criteria for future communication and engagement.
It helped GBCe assess whether messages, initiatives and activities were coherent with its purpose, audiences and desired role in the sector.
This was particularly important in a field where sustainability can become either too technical to mobilise people or too vague to change anything.
Transformation and Growth
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The Impact
Company
The project helped GBCe clarify its institutional role as a platform for sustainable building transformation.
It provided:
- A clearer strategic narrative
- Greater alignment around its purpose
- Stronger stakeholder logic
- A more precise role within the sector
- A communication platform for future initiatives
- A clearer connection between knowledge, certification and influence
GBCe gained a stronger basis for explaining its contribution.
Business
The work helped translate GBCe’s expertise into more usable stakeholder value.
It created:
- Clearer audience segments
- A more practical message hierarchy
- Stronger links between membership, knowledge and participation
- Better criteria for communication priorities
- A clearer role for certification and tools
- A platform for increasing engagement and collaboration
The project helped turn institutional knowledge into a system that different audiences could understand, value and use.
Brand
GBCe gained a more coherent institutional brand narrative.
This included:
- Clearer positioning
- A defined brand promise
- Stronger personality and voice
- Key messages and reasons to believe
- Audience-specific communication
- A more practical way to express complex sustainability issues
- Greater consistency across initiatives and channels
The brand became a bridge between technical expertise and the sector-wide participation required for change.
"Allegro 234, with its ability to analyse and listen, has helped us to clarify our work, the way we understand it, and above all how we tell it."
Dolores Huerta, General Director
