With Sustainability an increasingly critical global challenge, there is a growing need among influential audiences for relevant, timely content and insights to help them navigate the rapidly changing sustainability landscape.

As an organisation committed to creating thought-provoking research and insights to help inform policy and thought leadership, we launched a new business within The Economist Group to do just this. Economist Impact brings together the rigour of a think tank with the creativity of a media organisation to reach global, influential audiences.

Following the launch, we turned our attention to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. With less than 10 years to deliver on these goals, there is a renewed urgency to examine global systems and balance human aspirations with the planet’s ability to sustain them.

That’s why Economist Impact has launched The Sustainability Project, combining insights, innovation and influence to actively engage global stakeholders to propel progress and create a sustainable future for all.

The vision for The Sustainability Project is to build a forum designed to ffect change.

With Infosys as Digital Innovation Partner, we have developed a dynamic framework that customises, organises, and prioritises the content that matters most to our audience and their business. This, combined with intelligent integration of topics, formats and events ensure users can seamlessly access and understand the most critical trends and analysis.

We take great care to provide original content that spotlights the latest research and insights using reports, charts, infographics,data points, workbooks (and more) —all designed to educate in a visually engaging and immersive way.

Covering 5 key topic areas (Net Zero & Energy, Resilience & Adaptation, Circular Economies, Ecosystems & Resources, Social Sustainability) The Sustainability Project hosts both editorially-independent sponsored and non-sponsored content.

• Original interviews with key voices from the Sustainability community: Bill Gates, Patricia Espinosa, Christiana Figueres and Cat Tully.
• Articles: Unique to The Sustainability Project, our Dispatch format is attached to global moments and provides commentary on the latest  issues The Dispatch: five key takeaways from the 7th annual Sustainability Week
• Videos: Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary General, Keeping 1.5 Alive, Rebecca Marmot, Unilever’s CSO, why we need to invest in living wages,
• The Economist Films: Editorially-led content surrounding key issues (supported by Infosys) Green Energy – Which Sources are most sustainable?
• Data points: It’s a barren world without bees, Is philanthropy failing the fight against climate change?
• Data Insights: On sizing the energy transition or How investors and companies can find common purpose in ESG
• Whitepapers: The business costs of supply chain disruption, Climate change and its impact on lung health: a focus on Europe
• Indexes: Food Sustainability Index and the rEV Index
• Long reads: Global Water Agenda: What to expect in 2022

The Sustainability Project is the first major initiative of Economist Impact and a clear demonstration of our commitment to driving long-term sustainable practices to deliver global progress.

The quality and  impact of the content and platform is clear, and it continues to deliver exceptional results across the board including session duration of +40% over our Economist Impact benchmark, organic users’ return rates of +30% and being recognised as  a 2022 Webby Awards Honoree for the Websites and Mobile Sites, Best Writing (Editorial) category and listed in the top 10 out 14,300+ projects.

Beyond traditional media metrics, The Sustainability Project is playing an active and real  role in leading change at key global moments and events established by leading international organisations such as the United Nations General Assembly, COP2022 UN Oceans Day and the World Water Week.

With the global pandemic in full swing in the spring of 2021, Webex by Cisco went through a transformation to reposition themselves as the solution to empower hybrid work. Webex by Cisco was the first Cisco acquisition to relaunch their new brand proposition and partnered with McLaren as their collaboration solution, helping them to bring the world of hybrid sports to life.

Historically, Webex had been seen as a tool that only really worked for large, global organisations who could afford to purchase licenses. There was a feeling that the platform only offered video calling and wasn’t a comparable product to other video conferencing tools. Our campaign creative and media strategy needed to change this opinion by ensuring we were front of mind for our target audience. We needed to make an impact through a memorable campaign, showcasing the new Webex by Cisco platform.

Our campaign showed audiences that Webex by Cisco was the right partner to enable businesses to rise to the challenges created by hybrid work, through innovative solutions to allow people to communicate and work better together, no matter where they were in the world.
Our audience was broad, focusing on decision makers and influencers from 250+ companies across the UK, Germany, France, and Italy. With strong competition, we needed to Out Smart vs trying to Out Shout competitors, by identifying opportunities to connect with our audience in a way that differentiated Webex by Cisco from the competition. Our campaign brought to life the key features which power truly global hybrid work. This allows us to increase our brand awareness, familiarity, and drive consideration intent from our target audience.

Our first campaign’s aim as the newly repositioned Webex by Cisco was to showcase the best of our product innovations and how they empower a new standard of hybrid work. It had to be done authentically and memorably, so instead of using Cisco to explain the benefits of Webex directly to customers, we partnered with McLaren to show their products in action. There was no better customer to stress test Webex – demonstrating how their products and features measured up to the levels of speed, precision, and performance the McLaren team demands to race competitively every time.

The campaign spanned TV, digital display, homepage takeovers, social, out of home, and print to highlight Webex’s inherent role in powering the McLaren F1 team to be unstoppable. We wove the Webex Suite’s hardware and software features into the story to show how Webex had transformed how the McLaren team communicates from the track, the office, and anywhere in between. The suite empowered everything; from the premium Webex Desk Pro used by the CEO at the McLaren Technology Centre, to live polling with the drivers, to team principals using background noise removal to deliver clear communication trackside, to engineers using immersive share to discuss gearbox scenarios, and of course, to actual F1 fans across the globe, showcasing real-time language translation and how it enables millions of people to join the conversation.

From every angle, the campaign spot lit that Webex was integral to McLaren’s success at running their business, beyond just racing. Demonstrating global relevance, while being localised to four key markets. Proving that whatever hybrid work use-case can be imagined, collaboration can be intuitive, additive, and provide solutions people didn’t know were possible.

Prior to launch, we had tasked ourselves with driving a 20% increase in brand awareness, 15% increase in familiarity, and 10% increase in consideration intent. As the campaign was due to run for eight -weeks, we wanted to make sure the campaign metrics reflected the time in market but also showed the impact to the business. We used ComScore supported by media metrics to give us a 360 view of performance.

Our media performance across the campaign was strong, our R/F across our Sky Sports partnership enabled us to over-deliver, due to strategic planning by our AV team on the channels and key sporting events they were able to secure ad-break slots. In the summer of sports, viewership was high and so was competition! Our campaign achieved +35% average increase in reach across EMEA and a 70% increase in frequency.

The campaign was hugely successful when we looked at the impact on our core brand metrics. We drove a 23% increase in brand awareness, 27% increase in familiarity and 26% increase in consideration intent.

What was equally as exciting to see was the uplift in brand perception across our target audience. For those that were exposed to our campaign, we saw a 26% increase in perception of the quality of the products and solutions offered by Webex and a 21% increase in the perception that Webex by Cisco empowers hybrid work. These metrics were critically important to the business as the brand re-launch was designed to showcase how Webex was much more than a video conferencing tool for large organisations but is instead instrumental in empowering hybrid work for businesses.

The UN reports that around the globe, fewer than 15% of those graduating from science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs are women. Even when girls do get the education required for an increasingly digital workplace, they don’t always get available jobs.

TIME Kid of the Year 2021 Gitanjali Rao spoke to TIME about her astonishing work using technology to tackle issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying, and about her mission to create a global community of young innovators to solve problems the world over.

She wrote
“I don’t look like your typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older, usually white man as a scientist. My goal has really shifted not only from creating my own devices to solve the world’s problems, but inspiring others to do the same….”

TIME with Lego recognised that The International Day of the Girl delivers a platform that strives to address challenges that girls may face and it gives us an opportunity to amplify their voices.

After launching a global study, LEGO found that only 50% of parents encourage their daughters to play with LEGOs to that of their sons. This ‘insight’ became the jumping off point for the partnership between TIME and LEGO. TIME is recognised for highlighting notable voices and LEGO for inspiring creativity, it is this combination that enabled a partnership to showcase that creativity and can empower young girls to change the world just like Gitanjali.

In honor of International Day of the Girl and as a tribute to young girls all over the world, TIME partnered with LEGO and a LEGO artist to rebuild its most iconic female covers in LEGOs to give hope and inspiration to children of all ages who are building better lives, brick by brick.

Recreated ‘Inspirational Women’ TIME covers built in LEGO’s digitally driven across our most ‘visually’ owned social channels including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The social content drove additional articles and features on TIME.com to ensure audiences could learn more about LEGO’s commitment to the International Day of the Girl and more broadly encouraging girls into STEM educations and professions, instilling a creative atmosphere for all children.

The campaign was a hit. The posts guartnered earned engagement from the individual women like Gitanjali Rao (35K followers) and Amanda Gorman (3.8m followers), but also from business leaders and influential people around the world. Comments included “OMG I absolutely love this. I mean. Lego. And Time.” “Her poem at inauguration was just so moving. I’m glad she was selected for the cover.” “Awesome to see Lego focusing on the good in the world we live in.”

The campaign received an 88.4% positive sentiment with many people wanting to buy packs to create their own covers. Impressions were 73% over goal. The LEGO team was thrilled with the results but more importantly we were able to create a marriage between two iconic brands that focus on building a better future that needs creative women.

Our oceans make up 70% of the planet. Many of us think we live on Planet Earth, but in fact, we live on Planet Ocean. The world’s oceans play a major role in sustaining life on Earth, but they are constantly threatened.

In the last few decades alone, humans have been squeezing the oceans to its limits. A huge problem affecting the health of our seas and the world’s marine life is Ghost Gear: lost, abandoned, or discarded fishing nets, cages and traps. Made from durable nylon it can take decades to breakdown and can travel vast distances using ocean currents. All the while it continues to do what it has been designed for – which is to catch and kill marine life.

Hyundai is a proud partner of Healthy Seas, an NGO based in the Netherlands which focusses on cleaning up this abandoned ghost gear from the world’s oceans. With Hyundai’s commitment to developing emission-free mobility solutions, and Healthy Seas’ expertise in protecting marine ecosystems, they share a vision for making the world a better place for future generations.

Hyundai, via Havas Media Germany and Innocean Worldwide Europe, approached the BBC with a three-fold brief; to promote their sponsorship of Healthy Seas, to showcase the work of the NGO and to showcase their repurposing of plastic waste in their new Ioniq5 EV.

Key goals:

• Brand: position Hyundai as a progressive industry leader in sustainable practices.
• Product: feature Hyundai’s new EV range, Ioniq5, as a sustainable choice.
• Statement: Hyundai is committed to driving change at an industrial level to create circular economies.
• Impact: drive awareness amongst the general public and automotive industry.

KPI’s:
Promotion across the month of August 2021:
Target audience: central Europe
Campaign hub impressions: 40k
Video Views: 1M

With a hundred-year-old pedigree in storytelling, relevant site sections such as Future Planet, and a vast global audience who have a keen interest in oceans and sustainability content, the BBC was the perfect partner to amplify Hyundai’s message.

Working closely with Havas and Innocean Worldwide Europe, and to align Hyundai’s brand with the BBC’s award-winning feature and video content, we formulated a strategy to promote the partnership between Hyundai, Healthy Seas and their shared vision around ocean conservation.

There was an opportunity to feature a story of redemption – from environmental disaster to actionable solutions and visible progress – with the main narrative focused on how the island community of Ithaca was left to face a decade long battle and an environmental catastrophe after a local fish farming business collapsed and abandoned the site.

Given the subject matter, the BBC’s approach focused mainly on the work of the NGO and the wider environmental issues of industrial fishing waste. BBC StoryWorks, our in-house content studio, produced a short documentary film entitled Journey to Ithaca which documented the Healthy Seas fish-farm clean up. It linked the common environmental goals with Hyundai’s commitment to developing a circular economy. This way, we could create an emotive, passionate campaign within that informative, elegant and entertaining BBC style.

In the film the narrator takes us on a journey of humanity – our impact, our inaction, and our resolve to make amends with the planet. We hear from experts, local characters, and volunteers’ part of the Healthy Seas fish-farm clean up, while also highlighting Hyundai’s input, support, and commitment to social responsibility, emphasizing their ultimate goal to use Econyl Nylon in all of its automotive products, starting with the new Ioniq5 EV. The film closes on a high with a global call to arms in the fight for a more sustainable future.

The film is available to watch on vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/670320235

As sustainability was the core part of the messaging, the BBC produced the film for Albert Certification (i.e. a carbon neutral sustainable production certification). Extensive efforts were made during the production of the film to reduce the initial carbon emissions from 5.28 Tonnes to 2.72 Tonnes, which was offset as part of the production budget, ensuring the BBC played our part in reducing our impact on the planet.

The campaign was a great success. In total the hub received 65,000 page views and the documentary was viewed 1.8 million times, with a dwell time of 3.9 minutes showing how highly engaged our audience was.

A major challenge for Hyundai was to increase recommendations, considerations and ultimately drive sales, whilst communicating an authentic message on sustainability.

To measure the effectiveness of this campaign, we ran market research via Adscore (an online study conducted by BDRC Continental). In the results, Hyundai showed uplifts across all key brand metrics, including a 33% increase in consideration and a 67% increase in recommendations.

The campaign increased awareness of Hyundai with an uplift of 2% in overall brand familiarity; 71% of exposed respondents agreed the BBC was the right place to advertise; and positivity towards Hyundai experienced an uplift of 37% amongst BBC consumers.

The Future Planet sponsorship delivered 1.5m impressions – 65% over-delivery against our original forecast. In total, the digital campaign delivered 6.85 million impressions.

The content performed strongly on social media, with the documentary garnering 600k video completes on Facebook across Europe.

The campaign received excellent PR and was featured in an interview with Hyundai Europe’s CEO on BBC Global News, in Meedia magazine, on Marketing Week.com, on Media Brief.com and in specific auto-industry magazines across Europe.

What was achieved in the waters of Ithaca was truly extraordinary. The clean-up wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Hyundai. The efforts had an immediate and measurable effect on the local community and marine ecosystem.

With sustainable programme-making at our core, the BBC was proud to be the media partner chosen to tell this incredible story. We were pleased to produce content worthy of the project and delighted that it resonated strongly with audiences whilst also exceeding Hyundai’s campaign objectives.

Grassroots movements have been known to change history, but can they correct history too? Enter: For(bes) The Culture—a hub for elite leaders of color who are breaking down barriers and impacting culture globally to connect, collaborate and change. Beginning as a grassroots movement several years ago, Forbes brought the impactful movement in-house in 2020.

Today, For(bes) The Culture provides a platform that fosters professional development, social consciousness, civic engagement, intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship through community service projects, social and cultural outings, personal and professional workshops and seminars, mentoring, tutoring and networking. With over 2.6k members spanning 30 countries, For(bes) The Culture is on a mission to create equitable pathways for Black and Brown professionals.

In 2020, as racial injustice was brought further to the forefront and Black-owned businesses navigated their way through the new normal, For(bes) The Culture sought to solve a critical issue—the decades of forgotten and omitted Black business success. Thus came the idea for The State of Black Entrepreneurship, an ongoing project that launched in March 2021 and aims to accurately define, rectify and create Black history.

The State of Black Entrepreneurship project is multifaceted, incorporating historical research that unveils decades of overlooked Black business successes, plus new quantitative data and multimedia storytelling that illustrates how Black entrepreneurship stands today—and where it’s headed. The project exemplifies how Forbes and For(bes) The Culture uses their brand voice to compel change—and ensure equity—as the world builds back in this pivotal year. Key elements of the project include Beyond Black History, Culture X: The Forgotten and a Barometer Check on Black Entrepreneurship.

To build buzz around the release, The State of Black Entrepreneurship was released after Black History month to rally entrepreneurs, executives, celebrities and fellow changemakers to join the movement to honor Black history year-round. The initial release garnered nearly 100k impressions.

And since its reveal, it’s already unearthed primary historical sources (documents) on important Black business titans forgotten by history. More results are still coming in, but early indicators show growth of the For(bes) The Culture community—including a 13.3% increase in Instagram following.

The program has also successfully become a newsroom-wide initiative at Forbes—including reporters and editors from every editorial beat—and has attracted collaborations with high-profile entrepreneurs like Vivica Fox and Brandon Marshall. Through inclusive and multimedia storytelling, The State of Black Entrepreneurship is well on its way to rectifying Black history and bringing Black success to the forefront.

Santander is a Spanish multinational financial services company. For years, it has been supporting sports and specifically football through the sponsorship of major competitions.

Under its global strategy #footballcan which started 2 years ago, the bank promotes the positive impact football CAN have on society as an agent of change capable of transforming the lives of millions of people. Santander uses its football sponsorship as a key business driver through which to transfer brand DNA and connect with audiences reluctant to have an emotional bond with the sector.

Football helps them to break that barrier, but at the same time it requires us to compete in a territory where the best brands are present.

Santander needed to go a step further and continue developing initiatives that help the bank’s purpose of improving people’s lives through football. To do so, they had to come up with ideas that were leveraged on their strategic values: sustainability, inclusion, and diversity.

Football is not perfect. For example, a European football team’s stadium consumes an average of 8 million KW/hour per year, which is equivalent to the annual electric expenditure of 2,500 households. Gender pay gap: Ada Hegerberg, was the first woman to win a golden ball, a historical feat in 2018, nevertheless, she earned three hundred times less than her male counterpart Leo Messi.

There is still a long way to go, but we wanted to let society know that Santander is not only sensible to these issues, but that it is also taking concrete steps to change things.

Objectives:

Raise awareness of the importance of inclusion, diversity, and sustainability through football.

Generate conversation about the challenges of the future of football.

Convey the bank’s values through a long-term project.

Generate general awareness and strengthen Banco’s Santander positioning globally.

The creative idea is imagining what the football of the future might look like, we instilled that in all our campaign initiatives that align with the bank’s purpose and contribute to diversity, inclusion, and sustainability through the “Beautiful Game”.

To deliver on its commitment to make football more open and environmentally conscious, Santander and GSIC (powered by Microsoft) created an international innovation contest to reward tech ideas and solutions that make the football world better.

From what was initially a startup challenge, we designed a project with a great transmedia journey that pursued the involvement of the whole society at an international level to achieve together the purpose of making football better.

The idea of the football of the future was conveyed through various editorial content, video pills, strong presence on Twitter with various formats, TV programs, streams with influencers and the production of two documentaries.

+200 startups around the world participated in the challenge.

3 startups are developing their prototypes thanks to Santander and GSIC to improve football.

The campaign had a total of 219M impressions among all its formats.

In the 5 countries where it was active, it reached 63.5M people.

The audio-visual formats reached 864M viewers (duplicated) and 30.8M views.

The formats had 19.8M user interactions.

Documentaries likeability of 70% in Spain (89% Italy. 62% UK).

76% brand attribution.

5-point contribution to brand awareness among those who watched the documentaries.

InLombardia and Grana Padano approached the BBC with an opportunity to promote their Autumn and Winter season to a wide audience of frequent travellers and encourage them to spend their holidays in Lombardy. In particular InLombardia wanted to build awareness of itself as a destination for the lakes, outdoor activities, food and wine experiences, the Italian lifestyle and exciting cities to explore including Milan and Bergamo.

This branded content series was a unique project as it was the first time BBC Storyworks, our in-house content studio, worked together with two separate clients in one campaign. InLombardia and Grana Padano wanted the content to promote the Lombardy region of Northern Italy to the travel curious whilst showcasing Grana Padano’s versatility as an ingredient in both modern and classic Italian cooking.

Our mission was to merge the interests of two very distinct brands with the interest of our audience.

The Masters of Lombardy campaign was rooted in our understanding of our audience. They want authentic travel experiences and for us to show them a new side to places they think they know. They love food and culture content that creates an emotional connection. From a production standpoint we wanted to produce content in the most sustainable way possible.

Objectives summary:

• Put the Lombardia region and its 12 provinces in the spotlight as a tourist destination showcasing what Lombardia has to offer.
• Place Grana Padano as a quality premium ingredient above competitors (other Italian hard cheeses).
• Showcase tradition but also innovation for both brands.
• Make content that truly align with BBC Travel audience (food index top in our audience insights).
• Deliver a full campaign with a lot of content in a cost effective and sustainable way.

InLombardia and Grana Padano approached the BBC with an opportunity to promote their Autumn and Winter season to a wide audience of frequent travellers and encourage them to spend their holidays in Lombardy. In particular InLombardia wanted to build awareness of itself as a destination for the lakes, outdoor activities, food and wine experiences, the Italian lifestyle and exciting cities to explore including Milan and Bergamo.

This branded content series was a unique project as it was the first time BBC Storyworks, our in-house content studio, worked together with two separate clients in one campaign. InLombardia and Grana Padano wanted the content to promote the Lombardy region of Northern Italy to the travel curious whilst showcasing Grana Padano’s versatility as an ingredient in both modern and classic Italian cooking.

Our mission was to merge the interests of two very distinct brands with the interest of our audience.

The Masters of Lombardy campaign was rooted in our understanding of our audience. They want authentic travel experiences and for us to show them a new side to places they think they know. They love food and culture content that creates an emotional connection. From a production standpoint we wanted to produce content in the most sustainable way possible.

Objectives summary:

• Put the Lombardia region and its 12 provinces in the spotlight as a tourist destination showcasing what Lombardia has to offer.
• Place Grana Padano as a quality premium ingredient above competitors (other Italian hard cheeses).
• Showcase tradition but also innovation for both brands.
• Make content that truly align with BBC Travel audience (food index top in our audience insights).
• Deliver a full campaign with a lot of content in a cost effective and sustainable way.

In the 6 weeks of marketing the ‘Masters of Lombardy’ series we achieved 55,239 page views with an average dwell time of 110.2 seconds (well above the branded content benchmark). This was an incredible result with our quality BBC Audience way above benchmarking.

Engagement with the branded content page was particularly strong. Not only was the dish card page our most viewed page, 15% of page views included unique clicks to recipes and to other parts of the site.

The majority of recipes garnered over 500 PVs, with most around 1k. Many recipes also generated more on-site PVs than they got from Facebook, which supported the idea that users discovered the recipe pages on site and engaged well with the content.

Total Page Views on BBC.com – 55,239 (122% above benchmark)
Total Views on Social Channels – 1,754,029 (175% above benchmark)
Average Dwell Time – 110.2 secs (123% above benchmark)
Overall CTR – 0.17%
Highest CTR – 2.17%

From the original pitch creative we over delivered on assets and on quality. We created bespoke illustrations that where not in scope and original photography with the chefs and the locations.

We carried out a measurement study as part of this campaign to measure the effectiveness of our partnership. This was a test and control study with AdScore which proved that we increased recommendation (90%) and consideration (125%) for the brands and also increased positivity towards Grana Padano and InLombardia. Those questioned agreed that both brands are “brands I associate with high quality” (146% increase control vs exposed), a market leader (182% increase control vs exposed) and “a brand I love” (178% increase control vs exposed).

In summary the AdScore measurement study proved that the BBC was the right place for the brands to advertise and that we increased awareness, positivity, consideration, recommendation, and brand image.

Today’s eco-aware millennials want to know more about the companies they buy from. They want to trust that their products are not causing harm in their production or distribution but rather are actively creating positive impacts aligned with their own values.

For over 50 years, De Beers has been working with the people of Botswana, including through “Building Forever” – their commitment to ensuring every diamond they discover leaves a lasting positive impact for the people and place where it’s found. Centered around nature, communities, ethics, and equality, their Building Forever commitment targets 12 goals including becoming carbon neutral, achieving a net positive impact on biodiversity, and supporting 10,000 women entrepreneurs by 2030.

Since 2015, the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project has been working to help secure permanent, sustainable protection for the Okavango Basin. In 2021, De Beers joined the National Geographic Society, providing support and funding to expand and accelerate the work already underway.

Under the mantel of “Okavango Eternal,” this multi-disciplinary and multinational partnership will support critical conservation research by funding expeditions to gather new data, installing hydrological monitoring technology and supporting local research capacity through grants and training.

Through communications around the partnership, De Beers hopes to both raise awareness of the wonder and importance of the Okavango Delta, whilst also shifting perceptions and building trust around the positive impacts that diamonds can have.

Through the partnership, Okavango Eternal has three core aims:

• Protecting the natural world, providing long-term wildlife corridor protection for the movement and proliferation of endangered species
• Supporting local communities, including helping ensure water and food security for more than 1M people and livelihood opportunities for 10,000 people
• Raising awareness of the Okavango Delta and its benefits through compelling storytelling

The partnership with De Beers is rooted in storytelling around the importance of the Okavango Basin for people and wildlife in the Delta and beyond. Social Good projects are not simply campaigns to be run, nor are they initiatives to be completed. They are living, people-driven passions and plans to make a difference that require strategic ongoing communication to garner awareness, support, and comprehension to scale their impact.

De Beers is no stranger to creating impactful communications, having established the tradition of diamond engagement rings as well as coining: “A Diamond is Forever” back in 1947.

At National Geographic, we also inspire and impact global audiences to explore the world with curiosity and respect communities and cultures. We are a cast of Explorers and storytellers through film, photography, and writing, which, combined with our multi-platform audience reach, made National Geographic a natural media and content partner for amplifying the “Okavango Eternal,” partnership with the goals of explaining its importance across multiple areas and inspiring and educating      audiences.

A multi-year content ecosystem and media strategy was created, leveraging the power of National Geographic’s storytelling.

The content included the announcement of the partnership, and the coming together of the two brands – what the project entails, what is found in the Okavango Basin itself, why it matters, the countries it flows through, and why the work is so important.

A dedicated digital hub houses a growing series of content chapters that explore the key challenges and the partnership’s      commitments to protecting one of Africa’s greatest natural treasures. Through compelling custom videos, photo galleries, written articles and interactive experiences, visitors can explore the Okavango Delta, the animals, water, people, team, and new discoveries related to the project.

We launched the first 3 core themes – What is the Okavango, People & Culture, and Biodiversity from August 2021, with more content chapters to come in 2022.

The content to date has been produced during the pandemic without the usual access to directors and photographers, due to enforced lockdowns across the globe. The London and Washington DC production teams explored our vast digital archives and reached out to an extensive network of National Geographic’s photographers and explorers to pull the content together in time. They achieved a stunning, rich, and emotive depiction of the Okavango Basin, depicting the biodiverse landscape at the heart of the conservation programme, and all housed on the dedicated nationalgeographic.com/Okavango-Eternal hub.

1. Strong Campaign Engagement and Recall

• 33M impressions were achieved, nearly twice planned, with 70,000 hub content views and dwell time averaging at 4”46 (+72% site average)
• Campaign-wide, 8.6M video views with exceptionally high video completion rates above National Geographic benchmarks (e.g., 89% YouTube Instream Video).
• 92% of comments on organic posts were positive or neutral whilst 97% of ‘reactions’ on paid social were also positive/ neutral.
• Post campaign research revealed high campaign recall as well as the ability to drive action amongst the core audience
  • 77% of this audience recalled at least one element of Okavango Eternal campaign (2x average norms).
  • 94% agreed the campaign stood out (25 percentage points higher than industry norm)
  • More than 4 in 5 respondents across key markets were driven to a De Beers related action

2. Uplift in Brand Perception

Most importantly, the research study demonstrated significant achievements for the impact project and storytelling partnership. Over 90% agreed they care more about the Okavango Basin AND want to learn more about the Okavango Wilderness Project.

• 95% of respondents felt more positive towards De Beers after seeing the content. Respondents felt the presence of National Geographic made the content more memorable, authentic, and trustworthy.
• De Beers is  now seen as more environmentally friendly, and positively associated with joy and optimism
• Significant positive shifts were seen in the core impact themes of the project: Environmental Protection, Supporting Communities & Diversity, with respondents’ views & associations towards De Beers improving as they engaged with more themes. Those who recalled three themes were 11 percentage points more likely to associate De Beers with conservation.

The importance of brand and media partnerships telling stories that educate and inspire us all cannot be underplayed. A research respondent shared, “That working together more can be done, two respected organisations can do more together than alone.”

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services in strategy and consulting, interactive, technology and operations.

In 2021, Accenture set out to gain market share and fuel growth by updating perceptions around its capabilities. Its target clients were C-suites and senior business decision-makers who were looking to transform their businesses through innovation.

In the run-up to the launch of its new brand message “Let there be change”, Accenture wanted to convince these business leaders that it had the end-to-end solutions to help them. The aim was to achieve competitive stand-out by becoming known for brilliant research and perspectives as well as illustrating market leadership.

The Financial Times reaches 52% of C-suites in Accenture’s key markets, the highest amongst our competitors (IPSOS GBI). Accenture saw that partnering with the FT could help it reach exactly the right audience; drive buzz with high-profile thought leadership content; and ensure that its new brand expression would be seen throughout Europe.

The FT devised a research-based multi-touchpoint campaign across Europe that promoted Accenture’s expertise to the FT audience and showcased its brand message in a credible environment, aligning it with high-profile FT editorial series, webinars and newsletters. Accenture had 100% share of voice across the series.

To get deeper insights before creating the campaign, the FT research team carried out a Management Consultancy Global Impact Study (GIST) among over 550 of the world’s leading C-suites. This allowed us to understand the audience’s needs and see where Accenture currently stood among its competitive set. Accenture was identified as an organisation with stronger awareness than most, but still behind the Big 4 in overall brand perception.

We knew from the brief and our GIST findings that we needed to position Accenture around specific topics of interest. The focus of the multi-channel campaign was to create industry buzz through Accenture sponsorship of a new FT editorial launch: the ‘Economists Exchange’ article series, exploring what a post-Covid recovery will look like. It featured top FT commentators including Martin Wolf and Gillian Tett in conversation with 12 world-leading economists, from Kristalina Georgieva to Raghuram Rajan and Jeffrey Sachs.

Creating an entirely new media execution, we wanted to raise the profile of Accenture’s key innovators and influencers in big splash campaigns throughout the year. We brought key focus areas to life in three co-hosted webinars, featuring high-calibre speakers such as Rolls Royce CEO Warren East, positioning FT’s influencers alongside Accenture’s, to raise brand profile and generate leads.

We launched an Accenture-sponsored mini-series on the ‘Tech Tonic’ podcast, exploring the big ideas driving innovation. Accenture also aligned with key topics of interest by sponsoring an FT Special Report ‘The Cloud’ and two premium newsletters: Tech FT and Coronavirus Business Update.

The campaign delivered exceptional results for Accenture, positioning it strongly as a leader in change. The Economists Exchange series reached over 102,000 known unique readers. 1,200 senior business decision-makers attended the associated webinars, generating leads for Accenture. With 10 touchpoints, this single campaign reached 502,191 unique FT readers and 92,000 unique C-Suite readers.

Accenture Voices saw over 4.4 million ad impressions and over 4,100 clicks. Newsletter sponsorships delivered over 3.5 million impressions and 1,262 clicks. The Special Report ‘The Cloud’ reached 350,000 unique users. At the end of the campaign, the FT ran another Management Consultancy Global Impact Study to assess the impact of these results against the initial pre-campaign study. Across EMEA, Accenture had managed to increase its brand awareness by 60%. In Europe, it ranked highest as a firm that is a leader in digital development and innovation, and usage of the firm had increased by 27%. What’s more, 52% more senior decision-makers said they will be using Accenture in the next 12-24 months, an uplift from 25% in our pre-campaign GIST study.

The post-campaign brand uplift study showed Accenture as the joint highest-scoring unaided first choice brand for management consultancy firms, while consideration saw an uplift of 31% between the control group and those that had seen the ads.

VisitScotland briefed National Geographic to develop a campaign that would broaden perceptions of what they could experience in Scotland that would ultimately lead to a change in beliefs and behaviour when considering their holiday choices.

After a lengthy period of uncertainty for travel, restrictions were finally eased, and pent-up leisure demand was ready to be unleashed! With tourism an important contributor to the national economy, VisitScotland looked to strategically inspire, educate, and capture a share of the US and core European travellers, including UK, ready to holiday again.

With travel trends array, and an extremely competitive advertising environment, VisitScotland had to anticipate where and when visitors would travel to manage the destination experience for the benefit of locals and tourists alike. VisitScotland had carefully considered WHO they would target and HOW they could position themselves and WHAT their message should be. Positioning Scotland as a destination for responsible and mindful travellers would encourage a pace and style of travel that is sustainable for Scotland.

Together with messaging and content focused on the lesser-visited regions and experiences available, the right campaign and media partner would enable the destination to build new perceptions amongst the target audience, encouraging new and different travel experiences throughout Scotland.

‘Slow up in Scotland’ was designed to open new windows on the Scottish travel experience, using the lens and storytelling voice of National Geographic photographer Michael George. Tapping into the trend of slow travel, by sharing new perspectives of Scotland the content was created to encourage consumers to do something different from the usual “48 hours in” itinerary. A combination of videos, articles and picture galleries crafted to inspire and educate travellers to discover a pace and style of travel for authentic experiences that will benefit both host and guest.

Our campaign focused on three interwoven themes: slow travel, community tourism and lesser-known places.
For slow travel Michael George headed to the Scottish Borders where he featured in a hero film for nationalgeographic.com and YouTube. The human stories researched and shared by Michael were designed to convey a sense of place and encourage high dwell time – both with the content and in the travel experience itself. Soft music, gently inspiring language and use of photographic frames evoked a sense of new discovery to encourage audiences to explore further.
Use of maps and captioning on video content supported education and would promote action though search channels but with the same subtlety that would ultimately encourage a pace and style of travel that is sustainable for Scotland.
For community tourism Michael captured stills, editorial and contributed a photo essay exploring rewilding efforts and community culture in the region of Badenoch; and for lesser-known places we curated an immersive gallery of images from across Scotland, showcasing little known views and perspectives.
The content all appeared on a dedicated hub hosted on nationalgeographic.com https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destination/paid-content-visit-scotland

In total the campaign generated 3.3million video views across social media and nationalgeographic.com. 96,523 unique users engaged with 125,403 pages, with high site dwell time of 2 minutes 35 seconds. All local sites performed above average as users deeply engaged with the content, especially in the UK, Germany, Netherlands & Spain. Strong performing social media demonstrated that National Geographic global social platforms are important touchpoints– reaching audiences that live ‘in app’ as opposed to ‘in brand’. The activity drove 6500+ visitors to the VisitScotland website.
In line with the stated campaign objectives to broaden traveller perceptions of what they could experience in Scotland, the post campaign research found over 85% of respondents reacted positively to the campaign messaging.

Positive responses to ‘In your Own Words what do you think the main message of the campaign is?’ included “I’ve always wanted to visit Scotland and now I want to go there more because the message brings more curiosity to it” and “ To visit the coasts of Scotland. Showing the beauty that is missed by people visiting the main cities rather than outskirts and hidden gems” and “Also see places at your own pace, cycling can take you to destinations that educate and open your eyes to different places”

“National Geographic Creativeworks created some truly stunning, inspirational digital content that demonstrates the unique and authentic experiences that can be enjoyed in Scotland. It’s been a fantastic collaboration to reach audiences in key markets to encourage visitors to slow down, take time and really discover all Scotland has to offer. By highlighting stories from the Scottish Borders and Badenoch, as well as wider regions, we helped ensure we spread the benefits of tourism as widely as possible. This is particularly important as the Scottish industry looks to recover from impacts of the pandemic” VisitScotland.