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Latest campaigns and real thought leadership examples: Spring 2023
Welcome to our quarterly digest of new and inspiring B2B thought leadership campaigns, produced by our top editors and research and content specialists here at FT Longitude.
We’ve compiled a range of our most thought-provoking, creative and influential campaigns spanning a range of sectors, and covering a variety of topics and themes; all designed to attract and engage hard-to-reach senior business audiences.
You can also check out other recent campaign launches from last quarter here.
If you’d like more information on any of the campaigns featured, please get in touch — we’d be delighted to tell you more about them and help find ways you too can innovate with your next campaign.
Energy Transition Pulse 2023
Baker Hughes
BRAND AWARENESS
Maintaining energy security, sustainability and affordability will be a challenge for companies and governments in 2023. Baker Hughes, a leading energy technology company, wanted to boost brand awareness with senior global executives and members of the C-suite through an effective insight-led content programme created in association with the Financial Times.
Surveying industry executives to explore how the energy sector pursues net-zero, our research specialists designed a detailed survey to discover how business leaders plan to balance energy security, sustainability and affordability this year. Aligning Baker Hughes with the FT brand with a custom partner content hub, this campaign enabled the firm to build market expertise on the energy transition, achieving significant engagement on FT.com and proving that net-zero and energy security insights continue to be in high-demand for senior business audiences globally.
ACTIVATION: The insights were activated in an FT-integrated campaign, with short-form copy and video providing commentary around the main, in-depth report. The research was launched at the client’s annual global conference, presented by chairman Lorenzo Simonelli, and continues to be featured on FT.com, garnering over 2.3m impressions and reaching over 30,000 FT readers (26% C-suite).
The Transparency Edge
Smurfit Kappa
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Partnering with the Financial Times and FT Longitude, Smurfit Kappa commissioned original research to answer some of the most pressing questions when it comes to sustainability. This campaign was designed to build and strengthen relationships with the firm’s top prospects, including new prospective clients as well as existing accounts, through evolving the dialogue on transparency in sustainability.
Smurfit Kappa wanted to use the thought leadership content as a tool for commercial conversations, incentivising sales teams from all parts of their global operations to leverage insight as a way to spark all-important commercial conversations with its most important targets. A secondary objective for the campaign was to provide Smurfit Kappa with access to a selection of high-profile, influential people in the space; achieved with a carefully curated interview-led research programme, which successfully secured representatives from pioneering companies including Pandora, Patagonia, The North Face and the Consumer Goods Forum.
ACTIVATION: The research programme demonstrates how to successfully combine quantitative and qualitative insight and translate the findings into a multi-strand, multi-channel content programme. In addition to a flagship report and series of short-form articles published on FT.com, the interview programme also powered a successful global webinar, harnessing the influence of its curated panel of experts.
Energy Industry Insights
DNV
BRAND REPOSITIONING
The energy industry is at a crossroads. The old ways of doing things are no longer sustainable, and the world is looking for new, innovative solutions. That’s why independent energy experts and technical advisors, DNV, needed to evolve its well-respected Oil & Gas Outlook to a new annual content programme, Energy Transition Insights, in a major brand repositioning effort for the company.
DNV and FT Longitude pivoted their successful formula to focus on the full energy mix, providing a much broader audience with fresh insight on a fresh and in-demand topic. Building on over a decade of expertly monitoring and commentating on the oil and gas industry, DNV continues to use this innovative campaign to reposition how their audience view its capabilities and expertise, and stake its claim on an increasingly crowded topic.
ACTIVATION: Drawing on a survey of more than 1,300 senior energy professionals, the campaign is activated through a proven mix of creative content assets: an online hub, short-form and long-form content, and deep-dive reporting. The use of data throughout the content and campaign overall is extensive, and has been woven into both editorial and design assets, ensuring it leverages maximum value from the research programme – featuring expert opinion and perspectives from organisations such as The World Economic Forum.
To maximise ROI, DNV’s marketing team armed its client-facing teams with the tools and knowledge they needed to use insight from the campaign to successfully engage and build relationships with new buyers and existing accounts.
Hard to abate, ready to start
Masdar
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
For this year’s Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW), renewable energy firm Masdar collaborated with FT Longitude to bring the ‘Hard to abate, ready to start’ report to market, coinciding with this important annual global gathering. The primary objective was to facilitate relationship and connection building at ADSW, using fresh insight on the topic of sustainability, and providing its team at the conference with talking points and conversation starters on the struggle towards decarbonisation and net-zero.
This landmark report finds decarbonisation budgets are a significant source of concern, with less than a third of executives believing their funds are adequate. The report seeks to further the discussion on renewable energy but the scale and nature of these new insights continue to be of relevance and interest in the run-up to COP28 later in 2023. Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, CEO of Masdar said: “Building on important momentum gained during ADSW 2023, this report is a vital tool to drive forward decarbonization in hard-to-abate industries.”
ACTIVATION: The report was launched at ADSW, one of the foremost sustainability conferences on the global circuit. The insights were activated extensively over social media during the event, and disseminated to global and trade media with an expertly-crafted, editorially-led press release with content featured in articles from The National, Offshore Energy and H2.
The Key to Digital Transformation
DBS Bank
BRAND AWARENESS
Readers of the Financial Times proved to be the perfect target market for DBS Bank and its latest campaign. With the goal of showcasing expertise on digital transformation to a new, senior business audience, and building its brand internationally, DBS Bank commissioned FT Longitude to create a new thought leadership campaign that would seamlessly serve up compelling insight to this hard-to-reach audience.
Powered by a survey of over 1,200 executives worldwide, the research found that new and emerging technologies are now helping businesses create value and strengthen customer relationships. But what makes for a successful approach to digital change?
Our carefully crafted content programme was designed primarily to share practical insight and solutions for the audience. Featuring long-form reports, short-form articles, video interviews and purposeful design, DBS Bank was able to engage the FT’s influential audience, and form immediate relationships with large swathes of significant new prospects.
ACTIVATION: The campaign was launched at a custom event in Singapore, hosted by senior FT Longitude representatives together with DBS, ahead of its launch on FT.com. This provided the ideal opportunity for DBS to present insight in a direct, face-to-face environment, primed for sparking conversations with its local market; while the digital launch provided an innovative mix of content that would engage an international readership.
Rehabilitating the healthcare machine
Hoare Lea
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Using thought leadership as an effective tool for engaging top prospects and building relationships with its key accounts, engineering consultancy firm Hoare Lea worked with FT Longitude to create a campaign that would explore and provide new insight on the power and potential of people-first design. The goal: to answer, or at least explore, the question; is healthcare design fit for purpose?
Featuring interviews with top practitioners and thinkers in the field – including Richard Darch, CEO of Archus, and Stephanie Williamson, co-chair at Architects for Health – this fascinating insight into the power and potential of people-first planning within healthcare reveals the future and direction of human-centric design.
ACTIVATION: This thought leadership campaign features custom design and illustrations to present a novel and creative take on the traditional thought leadership report. The insights were taken to market directly through Hoare Lea’s client-facing teams, presenting the research to key accounts and prospects to stimulate conversations with high-level influencers first, before launching the content programme digitally and in full to a much wider audience.
The most urgent jobs for sustainable transformation
ING
BRAND AWARENESS
The clock is ticking to get on the pathway to net-zero, and the jobs to be done are challenging. Financial services firm ING felt it was in a unique position to comment on the issue, but worried audiences were unaware of their topic expertise. To set the record straight, ING used this thought leadership campaign to boost brand awareness, and amplify its credentials and competencies on the subject. As part of their sustainable transformation campaign, ING and FT Longitude take a deep dive into which jobs will be most urgent as sustainable transformation takes hold.
Working with ING, we surveyed 450 senior executives to understand the milestones they are working towards and the challenges keeping them awake at night, with the ambition to bring fresh insight to this timely debate. The results show a significant lack of focus on long-term, broader challenges. The insight and content programme successfully empowered ING to apply its expertise and provide its audience with actionable insight and practical recommendations that helped the company to stake a claim on this in-demand topic. .
ACTIVATION: This report is part of a long-term, brand building thought leadership initiative by ING, and features alongside a series of short-form perspectives from ING’s industry experts and FT Longitude’s topic specialists, bringing together a wealth of information all in one place.
The New Human Age
ManpowerGroup
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
ManpowerGroup’s latest report, produced in collaboration with FT Longitude, reveals that although technology may be the great enabler, humans are still the catalyst to the future. Manpower’s 2023 Workforce Trends report epitomises the Group’s desire to provide new, thought-leading insight to the biggest trends in the industry to their key clients and accounts, using content to build relationships with the contacts most important to the Group.
The research and insights report identified four key forces impacting the future of work, which forms the structure of its newly-launched online Workforce Resource Hub. The research programme compiled the views of FT Longitude’s own subject matter experts, together with Manpower’s internal analysts and leaders, as well as a number of external, influential spokespeople. Combined, these viewpoints present a comprehensive and compelling view on this important area of development and growth.
ACTIVATION: The campaign has been used extensively by Manpower’s marketing and client-facing teams as a way to provide greater value to their key accounts and prospects in face-to-face meetings and presentations. The full report is also hosted on the company’s Workforce Resource Hub as an engaging and browsable digital publication, ensuring the insight can be used to attract and engage a much wider global audience.