The Risk Opportunity

Bloomberg’s audience comes to the platform for information that allows them to gain a competitive advantage, so the idea of creating a campaign about turning risk into a business opportunity made huge sense. Considering the detail required and the nuance necessary for such complex subject matter, we decided on a podcast series as the ideal content solution.

The Risk Opportunity took the form of a four-part series that explored how to turn adversity into opportunity:

1. Using Risk to Build Resilience: how challenges can offer an opportunity to build resilience – and even change for the better.
2. How to Power Climate Resilience: lessons learned from places like post-earthquake Haiti, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change, and the technologies that could save us.
3. The Business of Net-Zero: operational challenges, regional disparities and the new role of the risk manager.
4. Tools for a Resilient Future: running a business in the age of the polycrisis, and the tools required to build a more resilient future.
   The episodes took the format of a host-led roundtable discussion, capped at 30 minutes to keep them focused. Financial journalist Danni Hewson was our host, and each episode featured two guests – one from Zurich and one external expert. We kept the group small to encourage deep conversation and debate.
   We invested significant time at pre-production stage, casting experts with rich experience, and writing scripts informed by proprietary Bloomberg data and exclusive Zurich research. We introduced guests before the record so the conversation would flow more easily and provided all kit and instructions for remote records for quality sound.

Bloomberg Green & Leaders with Lacqua Goes Green

The Leaders with Lacqua sponsorship program placed Zurich at the forefront of Bloomberg TV, as Bloomberg Europe’s highest profile news anchor interviewed global leaders with a positive influence in areas of climate and sustainability.
One of the most high-profile guests was John Podesta, White House Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation. To deliver best possible reach, profile and impact for the series, this interview was integrated to the Bloomberg Live Green Summit event in New York. As partners cannot sponsor live content at Bloomberg Live events, we delivered quasi ownership of this flagship content by preceding the interview with a Sponsor Spotlight moment – a video showcasing Zurich’s work in the Brazilian rainforest – and following the interview with a supplied 30” Zurich TVC.

The podcasts,

Zurich-supplied videos, contextualising copy and links to Zurich’s Global Risk Report and White Paper, ‘Accelerating the Climate Transition’ were all contained in one collection page on Bloomberg.com.

For the podcasts, we used custom native traffic drivers, bespoke high impact display units, pre-and mid-roll audio cut-downs against Bloomberg audio content, as well as social amplification. This ensured extensive reach to commercial audiences in key US locations such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, and Washington D.C., as well as in the UK – two core markets for its commercial interests.

The series was also supported by targeted video content aimed at C-suites, BDMs, risk managers, insurance brokerage companies, and key influencers in urban centres.
Video content represents huge levels of recent growth for Bloomberg – following a 90% increase in cross-platform video audience growth current volumes are 55m monthly unique viewers, 123m total monthly video views – and there’s a 44% increase in watch time.

To ensure maximum engagement with Zurich’s supplied videos, we used custom native traffic drivers, bespoke high-impact ad units and mid-roll video cut-downs. These were targeted to the UK and specific US cities to maximise impact through high share of voice. Mid-roll-only cut-downs were used to drive highest possible VCR.
For the sponsorship of Leaders with Lacqua series, we capitalised on the success of the Bloomberg Green multi-platform editorial franchise, with a rotational sponsorship of this section on Bloomberg.com. High-impact bespoke ad units were combined with standard banners and video –pre-roll and ran Zurich-supplied pre- and mid-roll video assets against the sponsored interview content.

From similar 2022 activity, we knew that relevant contextual environment (i.e. Green) to align Zurich’s brand video would prove to be extremely successful with benchmark exceeding performance. When honing in on geo breaks, we also saw previously that the US showed strongest VCR out of the geos, so we upweighted to give Zurich maximum exposure.

An additional always-on element was added to support the sponsorship, using high-impact bespoke display unit – Ad.Apt Image – vs the core C-Suite audience, as we know this unit drives around three times higher CTR than standard banners. Standard banners were added to maximise frequency to add to the already strong engagement activity.

On Bloomberg TV, we used a combination of supplied TVC with Bloomberg editorial -created 30” tune-in promotional slots and 10” sponsor attribution billboards to ensure strong association and ownership signalling between the content and Zurich.

Human Led, Tech Powered: PwC are passionate about using innovation to elevate humanity and create a better future for all of us. This is captured in their mantra – Human Led, Tech Powered. Never has this been more important than with a technology as powerful as AI.

TEDs creative north star was to combine PwC’s reputation for trust with TED’s reputation for discovery to take the audience on a journey into positive visions of the future and think about their many implications.

“The Future is Already Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed”: The inspiration for the content program can be found in this famous Gibson quote. The speed and impact of the AI transformation is such that there are already practitioners, technologies, businesses and projects that are deploying ideas that if adopted at scale would meaningfully change the world.

The Content Co-Creation Imperative: TED were excited to work with PwC’s own thought leaders and practitioners in choosing the subject matter and contributing to the storytelling. Featuring trusted voices from PwC alongside TED speakers in TED spaces across TED and PwC platforms showed the depth and importance of the partnership while enabling the creation of authentic co-validated content. The resulting stories arrive with the gravitas of PwC and the clout of TED, creating a new place to have important conversations about our future.

Leveraging TED’s Back Catalogue: The campaign used TED’s extensive archive of thought-provoking content to pepper videos with lookbacks to prior TED Talks from storied innovators and famous leaders. As well as further aligning the two brands, our feedback suggests that leveraging the famous TED Talk format inspired trust and engagement in the audience.

Interactive Event Integrations: The content solution has become a self renewing virtuous circle of original ideas and fresh content. Key videos are launched at flagship TED events that prompt discussion at panels which capture fresh ideas and questions from thought leaders and a highly informed audience which become the brief for the next wave of content. In this way the conversation continually evolves, staying relevant and making a useful contribution to the conversation.

Our approach to engaging audiences with TED x PwC content leveraged a deep understanding of both brands’ strengths and audience preferences, resulting in a multi-faceted strategy that maximised reach and engagement across various platforms.

Cross Media Distribution
TED’s unparalleled cross-media presence formed the backbone of our amplification strategy. With a global monthly audience of 141 million across 248 countries and territories, TED’s reach is truly global. Their digital footprint boasts 103 million monthly video views on TED.com and YouTube, complemented by a robust social media following of 143 million across various platforms. This extensive network allowed us to tap into diverse audience segments effectively.

Media Relevant Formats
We developed a co-branded short film series launched at the iconic Annual TED Conference that expanded on the classic TED Talk format, championing inspiring stories of individuals and teams using technology to BeTransformative. This innovative approach incorporated audience engagement elements, data stories, and informed peer debates, creating a more interactive and immersive experience that resonated with viewers across multiple platforms.

Social Amplification & Targeted Distribution
The campaign harnessed PwC’s owned social channels and targeted outreach through TED’s networks. By using snippets of TED Talks paired with PwC’s thought leadership across channels, the campaign extended its reach. Key content pieces were optimised for mobile and designed to spark conversations among professionals in PwC’s target audience, ensuring maximum engagement.

In-Person Experience
The annual TED Conference served as a pivotal touchpoint for direct audience engagement. This five-day event, attended by over a thousand individuals, showcases more than 70 speakers delivering talks, interviews, and performances across various fields. By integrating our content strategy with this prestigious event, we created a seamless bridge between digital and physical engagement, reinforcing our campaign messaging and creating opportunities for real-time feedback and networking.

Through this comprehensive, multi-channel approach, we successfully engaged our target audience, leveraging the strengths of both TED and PwC to create a truly transformative content experience that resonated across platforms and formats.

The innovative partnership integrated Visa Pep Talks across DAZN’s UWCL live broadcasts, leading up to, and culminating, in the final between Barcelona and Lyon. Visa Pep Talks was a content-led in-broadcast integration which connected Visa athletes with highly engaged football fans, encouraging a self-sustaining positivity around the game, its players and its fans. It created a narrative of positivity to counter online abuse by leveraging DAZN and Visa’s influence and reach to foster an environment of support and encouragement across the UK, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain.

The core component of the partnership was the creation of an entirely new fan-led environment for women’s football alongside the live broadcast of UWCL games: The Visa FanZone. It was an on-platform integration that complemented coverage throughout DAZN’s live broadcast, designed to unite fans in their support for women’s football. We created 32 tailored FanZone experiences across 13 key UWCL matches.

In the Visa FanZone, fans were encouraged to send positive messages (Pep Talks), participate in polls and quizzes, and vote for the Player of the Match. The FanZone was integral in fostering a community focused on positivity, using interactive tools like branded GIFs and interactive leaderboards to boost engagement and drown out negative commentary. It set a new standard for how brands can collaborate with media platforms to enhance both viewer experience and brand engagement.

DAZN used a combination of AI and human resource to moderate the live chat, however the need for this was significantly lower than research had suggested it would be.

The DAZN x Visa partnership focused on the knock-out stages of the UWCL from March to May 2024. For each game, tailored FanZone experiences that drive positive interaction across key moments in games were created:

• Pre-game: FanZone reporters in the live broadcast feed invited fans to join the FanZone through polls and opportunities to support your team.
• First half: Overlays in the live feed prompted fans to engage and support their team, driving to polls and specific Pep Talks for that game in the FanZone.
• Half-time: FanZone reporters gave Pep Talk half-time result updates and highlighted the Player of the Half in the live feed. A live Pep Talk tracker update in the FanZone showed which team had the most positive support in the game so far.
• Second half: Overlays in the live feed sent viewers to FanZone quizzes and encouraged them to vote for Player of the Match.
• Post-game: Reporters put FanZone questions to players in the post-match interview in the live feed, and announced the winner of Player of the Match. In the FanZone, fans were encouraged to continue to celebrate their team with more positive Pep Talks.

DAZN’s globally leading women’s football YouTube channel was used to market the experience off-platform and funnel people towards the DAZN platform, coupled with other distribution and marketing efforts including free-to-air broadcasters. Outside of this, the Visa FanZone was promoted before and during games in social media by DAZN talent, in DAZN social media channels, across DAZN’s publisher network and Visa’s own social media. Then further amplified to the DAZN extended global publisher network, which includes the likes of Mundo Deportivo, Goal.com, Girl Soccer Network, Sport.es and Whistle Sport. Over time this grew in influence, with fans and players sharing content from the Visa FanZone across each key UWCL game.

Fan engagement and participation with these mechanics increased across each stage of the UWCL knock-out phases, as Visa and DAZN established the Fan Zone and Pep Talks as part of live game coverage. This culminated in the biggest viewership, Fan Zone engagement and number of Pep Talks created in the final game between Barcelona and Lyon on 25th May.

To address this issue, Economist Impact, supported by Infosy, has developed the world’s first open-platform to help organisations understand, manage and reduce their scope 3 emissions.

Economist Impact, with support from Infosys Technologies, developed the “Value Chain Navigator”, an innovative tool designed to turn insights into action and set the agenda for the global transformation needed to accelerate impact at scale. The aim of the programme is to help business decision-makers understand what value chain emissions activities they should be thinking about and identify their next steps on effectively managing value chain.

Research Insights:
Extensive research on 1,250 companies’ efforts to mitigate scope 3 emissions. Insights were used to assess how value-chain emissions are being managed within the corporate landscape and dig deeper into interactive data and actionable insights about corporate engagement.

Findings were brought to life via videos, white paper, executive summary, articles and  an interactive data exploration tool.

Self Assessment Tool:
Digital self-assessment tool allows executives to find out how their company compares with peers on actions taken to manage and mitigate scope 3 emissions. It recommends a customised action plan based on the specific challenges they are facing in managing their company’s scope 3 emissions and the initiatives that are currently undertaking to reduce them.

Trend Tracker:
Digital tracker reviews how conversations, regulations and innovations related to scope 3 emissions are evolving over time, industries and regions. Users can filter based on emissions-reduction lever, topic, region or industry for most relevant insights to their business.

Videos:
Video series taps into the minds of global changemakers and sustainability leaders.

Custom Event:
Conversation brought to life at roundtable & speaker session at UK Sustainability week to connect with the Sustainability community.

Designated Digital Hub:
Interactive hub designed to allow users to gain insights how they prefer with the above features, and designed to reduce carbon footprint of the site with a fixed dark mode design.

https://impact.economist.com/value-chain-navigator

As part of the Value Chain Navigator proposition, Economist Impact developed a vehicle for housing and collating all content, The Scope for Change campaign. A wider campaign was developed in order to disseminate content on a wider global scale. Both the Value Chain Navigator product and Scope for Change campaign aim to help business decision-makers understand their next steps on managing value chain emissions and understand what value chain emissions activities they should be thinking about at its core. The campaign and content focuses on education, engagement and inspiration for business leaders, by contextualising the important issues and proposing unique and tailored solutions-based thinking. The VCN and subsequent content enabled the simple navigation of the complex and ever-changing sustainability landscape – in a way that has not been attempted before.

Promotion: PR at launch, targeted media across The Economist’s digital, print and social channels to drive awareness of the programme among C-suite in key sectors. Promoted at Economist Impact’s flagship Sustainability Week events and demonstrated at Infosys client events.

Media Amplification:

• – Display
• – Social

Events:

• Roundtable & Speaker Session UK Sustainability week Diamond Sponsorship (March)

Roundtable & Speaker Session US sustainability week Diamond Sponsorship (June)

Our longstanding partnership with Workday included successful campaigns in 2021 and 2002.

So we based our content strategy on hard data, credible insights, and the most effective platforms from those campaigns.

The platforms

FT Scoreboard, a video channel covering the business of sport.

We know that C-suites over-index on our sport-related content by 846%. So we planned a new series of sports videos – including one on women’s football, because it exploded after the Lionesses won the 2022 Euros, and content on women’s football has seen high dwell times of 1m 47 secs*.

FT Globetrotter, our city life hub.

We know that C-Suites over-index on tennis content by 1102%*. And our 2022 campaign The Joy of Tennis campaign had launched to huge applause from our audience. So we decided to keep bringing tennis to our C-suites with a new series, The Wonder of Wimbledon.

Working It, our innovative workplace podcast.

We know that Workday’s target audience over-index on content relating to work-life balance by 953%*, and the award-winning ‘Working It’ regularly features in Apple’s top podcast charts. So we continued Workday’s sponsorship of this channel to maximise brand awareness.

FT Tech Champions, our series showcasing companies using new technology to rise to business challenges.

We know that 56% agree that newspapers are the best platforms to make them aware of technology providers**. As Workday had partnered with us on this series with great success since 2021, it was a strategic essential for this new campaign. **

The pillars

Using these insights and platforms, we created an editorial campaign sponsored by Workday. Centred around two pillars, it focused on the topics that our C-suite readers over-index on and engage with most.

Pillar 1: Lifestyle content – exploring C-suites’ passions and hobbies

• The Wonder of Wimbledon, a series celebrating the world’s greatest Grand Slam – from where to watch the tennis in style, to what’s behind the tournament’s enduring appeal.
• FT Scoreboard, a video series exploring different sports from different angles – from the Messi-Renaldo rivalry, to padel’s investment opportunities.

Pillar 2: Leadership content – exploring trends on the future of work and technology

• Tech Champions, a series on the technologies changing industries like finance, healthcare and education. We issued a call-out for entries, then profiled the most exciting companies.
• Working It, the weekly podcast making sense of the changing world of work. For this series, the editor and guest experts discussed topics from productivity to office politics.

The FT’s marketing team harnessed social media to attract a broader base of users and drive them back to engage with the content on FT.com, amplifying the content with LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

This provided us with a mixture of robust job demographic targeting and behavioural and interest. We combined these to capture C-suites and business decision-makers very effectively, using key leisure interests matching the content themes and attracting people more likely to take action and engage with Workday.

The fact that the campaign ran for over a year gave us more opportunity to use the data we were collecting to understand the profile of highly-engaged users, so we could further optimise our promotion on FT.com and social media. These optimisations included A/B testing of creatives, headlines and audience groups.

And we used retargeting segments to reach users who had engaged with previous content in the series and who we already knew engaged well with our content, building on brand familiarity and guiding them down the marketing funnel.

Our feet, being the most utilized and intricate part of our bodies, often face neglect. Despite accounting for over a quarter of all the bones in our body, feet can be a taboo topic that many are grossed out by – the feet averse.

To tackle this issue and prioritize foot health, Birkenstock strategically partnered with The New York Times, recognizing the publisher’s credibility, trustworthiness, and global reach, with an audience that spans 1 in 4 people on the planet. By aligning with a renowned platform known for its thought leadership, Birkenstock aimed to place their message in an environment that would compel individuals to confront and prioritize foot health, prompting them to contemplate the importance of the foot itself.

The New York Times offered a trusted and influential media environment, which helped Birkenstock to not only reach a wider global audience but also establish the credibility of journalistic integrity necessary for their ad campaign.

Through a disruptive promotional campaign, we ensured that feet became unignorable by placing them in every corner of The New York Times. From attention-grabbing print ad cover wraps to dominant digital ad takeovers, strategically placed images of feet throughout the publication conveyed Birkenstock’s message. The impact was such that people would see feet before they even got to the news. This concentrated effort had a significant effect, with a prominent journalist even tweeting about the ubiquitous Birkenstock ad, saying, “that ubiquitous Birkenstock ad on NYT is giving me podophobia. Every story you open, here’s a LOAD OF FEET.”

To add an authentic touch, Birkenstock crowdsourced images of real people’s feet and prominently featured them in print. This approach not only further engaged the audience but also highlighted the diverse perspectives and experiences related to foot health.

Overall, the collaboration with The New York Times allowed Birkenstock to create a disruptive and impactful campaign that brought foot health into the spotlight. The aim was to encourage individuals to prioritize the well-being of their feet and confront any reservations or neglect they may have had.

Leveraging the trust and credibility influential audiences have with the Economist Impact brand, we amplified the content series across our digital and social media channels, as well as a print advertorial series in The Economist. This multi-channel approach allowed us to reach Economist readers fitting the CTO/ITO/IT-senior business decision maker audience to build maximum engagement.

The amplification plan included:

• Precisely targeted paid campaign on economist.com and across social media
• Print+digital customised Advertorials to increase reach in APAC, Europe, and the US
• Customised multimedia designs: carousel, GIFs, videos (full and social cuts), audiograms, banners
• Strategically designed placement of different ad units and social media assets across the full suite of channels available to maximise traffic, engagement and content consumption

Trade in Transition was a multi-faceted programme that used insights taken directly from the target audience to inform a range of informative content. Living within a dedicated digital hub, it included an in-depth digital report to regional insights, articles to economic modelling. Launched at Davos the programme was amplified using a highly targeted campaign.

The campaign was implemented in multiple phases in the Remezcla channels. Starting off at Hispanic Heritage Month, in which we performed a soft approach to the program highlighting the importance of supporting small latino businesses. Next, we moved to highlighting each brand by telling their stories and showcasing their products. We wrapped up the campaign during Holiday Season with some highlights from the program, including special mentions to Target, our sponsor. Aside from the Remezcla channels, our implementation included reshares in our partner’s accounts to amplify the program’s reach and impact in the digital landscape.
Media channels and integration Custom content was amplified in a diverse ecosystem that included a variety of formats on paid social placements on Instagram and Facebook, along with traditional media providing support with a 100% SOV Sitewide Takeover to align with content launch. Target brand messaging was seeded prior to content launch and provided supplemental media support throughout the entirety of the fight (video and display).
Timeline: Launched during Hispanic Heritage Month and flighted through the Christmas Holiday
Scale: Over 100,000,000 IMPs across paid social and media
The program partnered with 4 brands and created 4 cultural actions. With a bilingual children’s book publisher a series of community mini-libraries were installed. With a haircare brand a pop exhibition that pays homage to Latina beauty salon culture was erected. With a cosmetics brand the working women of NYC were photographed and honored. With an apparel brand, a short film honoring ancestors was produced.

All actions were turned into editorial content that was amplified in an ecosystem that included a variety of formats on paid social IG and FB placements, along with traditional media providing support with a 100% SOV Sitewide Takeover to align with content launch. Target brand messaging was seeded prior to content launch and provided supplemental media support during the program flight.

Timeline: Launched during Hispanic Heritage Month and flighted through the Christmas Holiday
Scale: Over 100,000,000 IMPs across paid social and media.

Food and travel content is synonymous with photography and conventionalised stock imagery which makes it challenging to portray a consistent but multifaceted tone. We therefore opted for original photography and illustrations for our execution.

Illustration expanded our ability to navigate the intersections of Italian food, history and culture; infusing the dishes, and the Italian regions they belong to, with a wholesome and traditional personality that otherwise would not have been achieved. Using a traditional medium in a digital format allowed us to pay homage to the values and culture of the brand, whilst recreating the look and feel of the food’s colour, texture and shape.

Using illustration gave us an opportunity to interrupt the expected in a fast-paced digital content consumption world. This came to life through the digital series itself as well as a natural translation of creative to social media assets, and allowed us to achieve contrast against often oversaturated generic travel photography seen on these types of platforms.

With the clients being one, a tourism board and two, a specialty food product, the main aim was to create a content series that would tap into the readers’ desire to discover new experiences and flavours.

We wanted the readers to not only understand the chefs’ work but feel and imagine themselves in these beautiful locations and to taste the food. Therefore while describing the chefs’ personal experiences we were able to intertwine their stories with the wonders of their surroundings – the focus of the InLombardia tourism board – and the regional products – or product, the Grana Padano cheese – hence bringing together the demands of the client in a series of food and travel articles that was interesting to our audience.

All content sat on BBC.com with a social campaign served on Facebook and Twitter alongside the clients’ own channels. We ran a highly targeted campaign of display creatives across BBC.com to drive our audience to the content pages. All this based on the client objectives, markets, and audience to minimise waste. We layered on our 1st party audiences using our DMP Permutive, in order to ensure our most targeted and qualified audiences were served bespoke traffic drivers across bbc.com.

We also ran a comprehensive social media campaign for the series across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Alongside using the illustrations on social media we created multiple assets, optimised to the different social platforms, to showcase the beautiful content.