Visa is a proud champion of women’s football, helping to grow its reach and participation. But as much as the game has grown, there is still alarming negativity and hate directed at female footballers because they’re female footballers. As a sponsor and partner of the 2023/24 UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL), we set out to do two things:

1. Combat hatred: address the growing issue of hate speech and abusive commentary targeting female footballers by promoting positive fan engagement.
2. Increase brand relevancy: in tackling this issue, strengthen Visa’s positive association with women’s football, increasing brand love and relevancy among fans.

Despite the global growth of women’s football, female footballers have increasingly become the targets of vitriolic and misogynistic attacks online, especially during high-profile tournaments. These attacks not only harm the players but also deter fans from engaging with the sport positively. Importantly, they don’t represent the views of most footfall fans, even if they attract outsize attention.

With Visa’s commitment to women’s football and long-standing partnership with UEFA, we had a key role to play in driving positivity across the UWCL, with the ambition of delivering a wave of motivational positive support to players, the community and the tournament itself.

Our strategy to tackle this was to focus on the environments where fans across Europe would be directly watching and discussing UWCL games, embedding ourselves within game coverage in ways that allow positivity to flourish, drowning out the hateful commentary.

As one of the leading sports platforms across Europe, DAZN plays a pivotal role in amplifying the visibility of women’s football. We partnered with DAZN to create a new initiative – Visa Pep Talks – tapping into the globally popular social trend of motivational encouragement.

By creating a safe and supportive space for fans to express their love for the game and its players, Visa and DAZN sought to shift the conversation around women’s football from negativity to celebration of the amazing performances and moments in each game.

The partnership with Visa marked a significant milestone and a media-first initiative for DAZN. For the first time, they worked closely with a major brand to integrate a multi-platform fan engagement strategy directly into the live sports experience.

PayPal has rapidly expanded beyond consumer and small business payments to become a strategic partner for large enterprises. These enterprises aim to unlock growth that doesn’t upend their operations and keeps up with technologies and consumer demands. The challenge has been to shift perception of PayPal from a payments ”button” to a trusted expert in enterprise commerce. Many organizations were unaware of PayPal’s capabilities for complex, high-volume transactions or thought PayPal lacked the innovation to meet specific needs. PayPal wanted to establish itself as a valued partner and deliver consistent messaging across key global markets.

To gain upper funnel awareness with decision-makers across global markets, PayPal with their agency partner, Edelman, created a solution to enhance consideration of its enterprise solutions among key decision-makers by positioning itself as a thought leader and expert in the enterprise commerce space. The campaign was designed with the insight that large enterprises often perceived PayPal primarily as a consumer and small business payment provider. To change this perception, PayPal developed thought leadership content that spoke to the challenges large enterprises face in creating seamless and safe customer experiences and with the understanding that business decision makers are inundated with product messaging every day that doesn’t get to the root of their day-to-day-challenges.

Business Insider was chosen as the exclusive media partner for this campaign due to its strong global reach and ability to effectively engage PayPal’s target audience of commercial and technical decision-makers. The relevance of Business Insider’s fintech and payments-related editorial content was a critical factor, as it ensured that PayPal’s messaging would be delivered within a context that resonated with its audience. Additionally, Business Insider’s proven track record as a branded content partner made it an ideal choice.

The strategic direction from Edelman for the 2023 campaign was rooted in leveraging Business Insider’s editorial strengths to address the perception gap. By focusing on data-driven storytelling and integrating PayPal’s insights with broader industry trends, the campaign aimed to establish PayPal as an innovative and indispensable partner for large enterprises. This strategic approach was essential in positioning PayPal as a thought leader and strategic partner in the evolving landscape of enterprise commerce.

Business leaders worldwide face the dual challenges of climate change and digital transformation, alongside macroeconomic risks like natural catastrophes, social inflation, and cybersecurity.

Despite their significant impact, society remains unprepared. The WEF’s 2023 Global Risks Report, in collaboration with Zurich, shows over 50% of respondents believe society is unprepared for severe climate risks.

As we transition to a low-carbon economy, businesses must swiftly identify, mitigate, and adapt to these challenges. Zurich, with its purpose to ‘Create a Brighter Future Together,’ strives to be perceived by BDMs as a leader in managing climate risks to build a resilient future for all.

Our task was clear: how can we continue to enhance the reputation of Zurich Group through purposeful, impactful thought leadership (TL) content, and equip organizations and society with expert’s insights and practical tips to navigate challenges and build a resilient, brighter future.
According to an FT Longitude study, 83% of business leaders are likely to request meetings with companies producing compelling thought leadership, and 92% say high-quality TL influences their decision to award deals.

Furthermore, our in-depth research into Zurich’s priority audience groups revealed that sustainability is a top priority for CEOs globally. However, with competing brands like Axa, Allianz, Aviva, and Chubb also delivering insights on similar topics, Zurich identified a need to measurably differentiate itself from the competition.

From this audience research, Zurich identified its advantage: providing business and policy leaders with insights that address their strategic agenda for sustainability. This focus ensures that Zurich’s TL not only resonates with its audience but also stands out in a competitive market, reinforcing its role as a leader in sustainability and business resilience.

Collaborating with internal stakeholders, industry experts and partners, Zurich developed a TL program that provides relevant insights and practical, innovative solutions to environmental and societal challenges. By putting its TL and wide-ranging capabilities to the fore with high impact, high visibility media placements, Zurich empowers confidence, preparedness and positive action to shape a brighter future together, thus building on its 150 yr legacy and enhancing its reputation as a global insurer who is advancing the safety of our future. Furthermore, the production of the TL content was aligned with strategic event activations and sponsorships to create a truly global impact and stand out from traditional media campaigns in the category.

Visa wants to build relevancy with young Gen Z consumers, so Visa’s ambition has been to meaningfully and authentically become a part of the cultural conversation among Gen Z. Visa has correlated relevance to transactions and payment volume, so making this cultural impact with this group of people is critical for future proofing Visa’s business.

To do this, Visa’s objectives were to:

1. Drive conversation to become the most talked about brand within their competitive set
2. Deliver strong engagement with our audience

Drive relevance by getting Visa into the cultural current of Gen Z

To throttle their ambition of becoming part of the conversation among Gen Z, Visa wanted to create a big brand moment leveraging globally-diverse talent Gen Z cares about coupled with the power of creators they look to. This moment became the first-ever concert experience in the Cour Carrée of the iconic Museé du Louvre in Paris called Visa Live At Le Louvre, bringing an electrifying blend of music, art, and culture together like never before.

This included performances from top-tier, globally-relevant artists Post Malone, Ayra Starr, DJ Kungs, and RaiNao that would also be streamed on Roblox.

Our big challenge was to take an event of only 6,000 attendees and amplify its impact and reach on a global scale to drive mass conversation and engagement.

Our research uncovered several insights that informed our approach:

1. The Taylor Swift Eras Tour Effect: Gen Z consumes event content differently – quick, snackable content based on event moments that are connected to their interests. We saw with the example of Taylor Swift’s global Eras Tour that most engagement moments from the concert were via short clips originating from the relatively small number of concert attendees being microbinged by masses of fans who weren’t able to attend but wanted to engage just as much
2. Fandoms are more powerful than mainstream: Fan communities have large audiences who are highly engaged with interests beyond just music
3. Creators are the new reporters: Creators drive authenticity and are who Gen Z want to hear from

How can asset managers capture attention, boost market leadership positioning and keep investors informed with topical trends during such volatile economic headwinds?

As PGIM, the global asset management arm of Prudential Financial, we wanted to create a unique way for investors to think about and navigate the financial markets, and in doing so change perceptions about what it means to be a leading authority in the asset management space.

To rise above the clutter of insights, we were willing to defy the usual conservative constraints of the sector and colour outside the lines by having an opinion and strong points of view across the macro issues prevalent in today’s economies. This was a risky move in a risk averse sector.

We also wanted to ensure our insights-led campaign captured the attention and so needed innovative solutions that went well beyond the sector’s conventional white papers and long blog posts.

For this campaign to work PGIM needed a trusted, established partner in the global financial space who could help them to take a provocative leadership position in a manner that resonated with the target audiences. Any media partner would need to have the authority and ability to inform investors about market moving data and trends deep within its DNA, and be a recognized force on the global stage.

Reuters has been trusted to provide financial information to the world for more than 170 years, and it has more than 12 million financial decision makers among its audience, as confirmed by the Ipsos Global Affluent Survey 2022. Its recognized expertise among the investment community, coupled with the multimedia content capabilities of its in-house studio team Reuters Plus, made the company a great partner for PGIM.

Reuters Plus devised a series of expertly designed, animated, chaptered, infographic stories that would leverage PGIM’s own data and trends with Reuters’ own insights to create a bespoke experience that would grab the attention of the busy investor audience, and allow them to move seamlessly and quickly through an information rich, topical narrative.

Called “OutFront” the content series appeal to our audience’s desire to stay ahead of market news, and to meet the objective of aligning with PGIM’s overarching brand campaign “In Pursuit of Outperformance.”

Strong visuals reinforced the global reach as well as the gravitas of the themes PGIM wanted to address. Stories opened on a full-width page, with large, rotating spheres containing 3-D animations in line with story themes (ESG and Greenwashing; Record Debt; Inflation’s Uncertain Path) and an imposing statistic speaking to each theme.

Chaptered navigations let audiences choose their preferred journey – whether to explore market trends, investment strategies, geopolitical and regulatory issues, or economic outlooks. And along the way, dynamic, digestible – and sometimes surprising – graphics, visuals and data points reinforced PGIM experts’ insights and PGIMs brand themes.

The content was designed to provide chief investment officers with fast, actionable insights on their top areas of concern, including:

• Greenwashing – facts, fiction and fiduciary duties
• Where unknown market fragilities may lie
• How to invest amid global inflation

PGIM and Reuters Plus believed this provocative route would work because it had a solid purpose: To offer its audiences authentic, sought-after new content beyond what they usually peruse in the asset management space.

The Hard Reality: To build trust, attention really matters

Visa is a global payments technology company connecting consumers, businesses, banks, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. With 2.5 billion cards in use, Visa connects people through payments all around the world.

Visa has a simple and unwavering vision that can be traced back to their beginnings; to be the best way to pay and be paid, for everyone, everywhere. Whether it’s a street vendor in Brazil selling food to make a living or a fisherman in Rwanda paying his daughter’s school fees, Visa wants to provide the most secure and seamless payment experience possible.

Visa’s payment network is largely invisible to consumers, so underlying trust in the brand is a critical pillar of business success. The role of marketing is to reinforce this trust in moments that matter, so that card users are more inclined to choose their Visa card wherever they shop.

One of the best ways to reinforce trust close to payments moments is using online advertising. Based on previous 1^st party research, we established that attention (or time in-view) drives an uplift in brand health and business results for Visa. To make effective use of the channel, our online media needed to deliver more attention for the same budget or increase time in-view without inflating the underlying cost.

THE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE: People are simply frustrated with annoying digital ads.

Gaining attention is critical. If people are not paying attention to our ads, we can’t make an impact on Visa’s brand health. To gain this all-important attention, the wider online advertising industry has often “gamed the system” by focusing on non-skippable or intrusive ad formats. On a report attention may look higher, but we know it’s not serving users well.

This approach has little consideration for the consumer experience of the advertising, which leads to poor ad experience. We didn’t want to be part of a system which creates increasingly annoying ways to create supposed ‘engagement’. The win for us is to capture enough attention for Visa from our advertising, without having to intrude on what people want to do online.

This frustration, compounded by privacy laws, meant that we must re-examine industry practices to put the user first and come up with a way to improve how Visa’s digital ads are seen. Evidence of their frustration can be seen in the high adoption of ad blockers (42.7% worldwide), low acceptance rate of data sharing on iOS 14.5 (21% opt-in), as well as a low acceptance rate on placement of cookies when visiting websites (61% EU average).

To maximise attention in an authentic way, while also delivering a positive ad experience, we set out to come up with a revolutionary way to drive this all-important metric for Visa.

A HARD REALITY: A GENERATION BYPASSING PLASTIC

Visa is a global payments technology company. With 2.5 billion credentials in use, Visa connects people through payments all around the world. Visa aims to be the best way to pay and be paid, for everyone, everywhere.

Gen Z are bypassing ‘traditional’ ways of paying. They are growing up in a world where their defaults are fintech products such as digital wallets, apps, smartwatches or subscriptions. It’s a world in which the Visa brand is simply less visible, and therefore less important to how they pay.

In Europe, this is making a tangible impact on their brand preference for Visa. Amongst Gen Z, Visa’s brand leadership gap against digital wallets is narrowing.

But our visibility issues don’t stop there. The broadcast media channels that Visa has relied on in the past to build brand equity with wide base of card users, are reaching fewer Gen Z’s, as they opt out of mainstream media platforms and into their own blend of on-demand media services.

To win the hearts and wallets of a new generation, we had to find a way for Visa to be a meaningful part of the media spaces that matter most for Gen Z.

THE BRAVE PLAY: A NEW TAKE ON PROTECTION

 One of Visa’s key benefits is the security of its network, and the in-built payment protection that Visa users have. As important as it is, it’s a benefit that consumers sometimes find difficult to really see and value versus the competition. And for Gen Z it’s, well, not that exciting.

We knew that simply advertising this benefit into Gen Z channels wouldn’t be enough to make an impact. They form their perceptions of brands through direct experience and by observing the experiences of their peers.

One of the biggest spaces for social interaction for Gen Z is now Roblox, a platform where social networking meets gaming. It has magnetic appeal for this generation:

• They are 188% more likely to use it than other groups.
• Roblox’s fastest growing demographic is 18-24’s.
• It now has 57.8m DAUs globally.
• The average user plays Roblox for 2.6 hours a day.
• And they’re spending money – as of Q2 2021 average spend per gamer was at $15.41.

We knew where we needed to show up, but we had to find an authentic way to do that and add value to their in-game experience. We wanted to use a space like Roblox to make Gen Z truly see (and maybe even care about) the protection that Visa offers.

There are also many alternative ways to buy Robux Roblox in-game currency and walle, from digital wallets, to subscriptions and gift vouchers. We wanted more Roblox’ers to choose Visa when they buy and spend Robux.

The answer wasn’t to put a Visa-led message about protection into Roblox. The answer was to find a direct way to engage more deeply with Roblox’ers by giving them the extra protection they really need in their world.

The European ETF AUM is predicted to almost double in 4 years passing $3T by 2026 which is a 16+% annual growth rate (PWC, 2022), this offers great opportunity, but also a challenge to iShares to maintain its market share of 43% in an increasingly competitive and aggressive market.

We conducted qualitative research into the process of provider selection and found that very little differentiated ETF providers beyond the rational drivers of product selection with the size of iShares being an important differentiator. With only 22% of European portfolios made up of ETFs we found many investors choose iShares because it’s the biggest provider.

Despite being pragmatic, our audience, investors, had an emotional core around the relationship with their clients and providers. The impact of this is trust and reassurance is key, and investors felt a great sense of responsibility to their clients to ‘always get it right’ choosing the ETF leader and the most experienced brand gave them the reassurance to make big decisions. This was particular evident in the ESG category where authenticity played an important part in the trust equation, investors told us that ‘if you say you are going to do something do it authentically or not at all’.

Our challenge: In all maturing markets market leaders come under pressure as more competitors enter the market, think Uber in ridesharing or Meta in social networks. For iShares the challenge is to ensure that choosing iShares is not a ‘passive’ choice, but an active brand choice for both emotional and rational reasons. Before this campaign there had been little or no focus on building emotional connections only the rational reasons to choose iShares marking a radical shift in our strategy.

To build emotional connections with investors we need to first provide them with the feeling of trust and reassurance that we will not only get it right today, but we will consistently raise the bar to ensure we never disappoint investors, and we always keep them ahead of their game. This combined with our global brand mission ‘we are champions of investor progress’ led us to the authentic brand truth which has driven the strategic direction of the campaign platform: We are the leader that raises the industry bar, we consistently set new and better standards to enable our clients to find better ways to invest. And that’s why investors can always expect more with iShares. Here was born the campaign line ‘Expect more with iShares’

Turning the key insight into a campaign positioning: Now that we understood the core of professional investors emotional need we looked at the role iShares plays in the European ETF industry, what makes iShares different from competitors and what do they envy, what is ingrained in the culture of a company and why do customers already choose a brand.

Turning a campaign positioning into a comms strategy: Our comms strategy was focused on answering three simple investor questions leveraging the most appropriate channels for the job to be done: 

1. What values does iShares stand for?  Advertising | Social | Comms
2. What differentiates iShares & how does that benefit me? Social | Comms | Website
3. How can iShares help me? Website | Sales

The focus of the comms strategy was to use awareness driving channels to build emotional connections with investors based on shared values. The focus of the consideration and purchase intent comms channels was to provide the rational support to underpin the emotional connections – providing investors with examples of what differentiates iShares from other ETF providers and show how this benefits them.

Comms approach: The focus of the awareness driving comms was to position iShares as modern, progressive, dynamic, active, forward thinking, quality-driven, confident and ideas driven. While the focus of the consideration levels comms was to provide investors with more rational reasons to choose iShares through our ‘Why iShares’ narrative and proof points:

• More choice designed for clients’ needs
• Higher quality products built for all market conditions
• Bespoke services tailored to clients’ goals
• Bold ideas for tomorrow’s market

The European private equity and venture capital industry manages €846 billion of assets employing 10.5 million people across Europe, 4.5% of the region’s workforce.

Most people come into contact with a product or service from a company backed by private equity or venture capital every single day, yet they don’t know it.

Many of the brands we love, services we rely upon, and companies we work for benefit from private equity expertise and capital to enable them to flourish and meet our needs.

Yet the industry’s contribution to jobs, innovation, funding better retirements, and driving positive societal change can be often overlooked or misunderstood.

In October 2021, Invest Europe, the world’s largest association of private equity and venture capital providers, embarked on an ambitious media partnership with BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions to compellingly communicate the cornerstone role the private equity and venture capital industry plays for both the European economy and its society.

Its objective: to accurately inform and shift perceptions of the work we do and the people and companies we back.

‘A Different Angle’ is an online 9-film series exploring the role of private equity and venture capital in European society. This unique film series, presented by Invest Europe and produced by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions, brings to screen the human stories at the heart of the businesses that are driving change and fuelling growth through private capital.

Translating the private equity and venture capital sector into a film series had never been done before. It was an unfamiliar exercise for an industry used to focusing solely on financial and investors communications.

A Different Angle aims to raise awareness about the expertise injected into businesses alongside capital, and how profit and purpose, such as high social and environmental goals, can work in harmony to produce better returns for investors and society.

Alongside four first-mover Invest Europe members – the European Investment Fund, IQ Capital, Mid Europa Partners and Coller Capital – a 9-film, 12-month series was launched in two waves, supported by a dedicated online campaign and regular reporting to track the impact of our partnership and its exploration of the role of our industry in Europe.