Latest campaigns and real thought leadership examples: Summer 2023

Welcome to our latest roundup showcasing the forefront of real thought leadership.

In these articles, we present a curated selection of impactful campaigns that have successfully met the criteria for genuine thought leadership: content that engages, educates and influences hard-to-reach audiences.

Embracing current trends and timely insights, alongside innovative editorial and inspirational design and creativity, these campaigns represent the best work of FT Longitude and its clients.

For those eager to revisit the campaigns of the previous quarter, simply click 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.

Women @ Work 2023
Deloitte

BRAND POSITIONING

For the last three years, Deloitte has been shaping the debate on the experiences of women in the workplace – and winning awards in the process. This year, the 2023 edition of Women @ Work provides a chance to look back at what’s changed since the pandemic and reflect on the positive changes that have been made. But, as data shows, there’s still a long way to go.

This prizewinning campaign, built on insights from a survey of 5,000 women across 10 countries, is the largest and most high-profile exploration on the topic to date, calling attention to this critical issue facing women in business today.

ACTIVATION: The launch and promotion plan combined both new and traditional content formats in order to work across multiple channels and maximise reach. As well as a global report that highlighted the key findings, an insight-rich landing page and audio features spotlighting the firm’s global inclusion leader Emma Codd, the insights and research findings secured interviews with outlets such as MSNBC, Forbes, Fortune, the BBC and ABC.

European Payment Report 2023
Intrum

BRAND POSITIONING

Europe’s market-leading credit management firm Intrum has long relied on its flagship thought leadership programme to maintain and grow its brand reputation. The firm’s European Payment Report was created to reinforce its image as a trusted strategic partner to its clients, rather than a simple service provider.

This year, building on more than a decade of findings, the annual study highlights how rising inflation and interest rates are squeezing European businesses. The poll of over 10,000 European companies, exploring credit management strategies across the continent and the effect of late payments on companies, ensures it is one of the most relied-upon sources of data and information in the topic and ensures Intrum secures visibility on broadcasting schedules every year.

ACTIVATION: Insights from the research are presented in depth in Intrum’s favoured traditional report format, and supported a rigorous PR campaign that resulted in notable coverage with the BBC and Sky News, where Intrum’s president and CEO, Andres Rubio, was interviewed on the survey findings and implications for European businesses.

Cloud Evolution: Make innovation a habit
HCLTech

BRAND AWARENESS

Cloud technology is still evolving, and more insight is needed on whether firms are using it to its full potential. HCLTech, a market leader in cloud platforms and services, saw an opportunity to lead the way and raise brand awareness by gaining a larger share of voice on this sought-after topic.

Our content strategists identified an opportunity to speak boldly about the current state of cloud adoption and show businesses how to innovate, rather than be held back by uncertainty.

To do this, we polled 500 senior business and IT executives to better understand their growth strategies and how they are using cloud computing for digital transformation. The survey insights revealed three important findings we knew would get attention from a wider group of business executives, whilst still appealing to HCLTech’s traditional audience of technical experts.

ACTIVATION: At the heart of the campaign is a digital report, blending insights from the survey with deep-dive interviews with HCLTech’s own visionaries, including its global CTO, Kalyan Kumar. A series of articles, key data points, SME quotes and video content were all brought together in a sophisticated hub that reflects the firm’s new brand identity.

The Laws of Attraction for High-Value Guests
Destination Canada

BRAND AWARENESS

The high-end travel market is set to exceed $2.5 trillion in value globally by 2030. For Canada’s tourism industry to remain competitive, it needs to better understand how to best attract high-value visitors now and in the future.

To help inform their own business strategy and provide insight on accessing this valuable market segment, Destination Canada and FT Longitude conducted a research programme of interviews and surveys with global travel trade agents, tour operators, and event organisers who work with high-spending clients.

The research revealed new motivations, trends and predictions in the travel industry today, a view of Canada’s reputation as a travel destination, as well as practical recommendations for service operators of making the most of the high-value market.

ACTIVATION: The research informed a multi-format suite of content produced by FT Longitude’s editorial and design teams, including a full report, infographic and animated video. The campaign and its findings were used by Destination Canada’s executive and sales teams on the conference and trade show circuit by senior Destination Canada executives and secured the company high-profile presentation slots at many of the most important forums in the travel industry.

The Evolution of Payments
Barclaycard Payments

BRAND AWARENESS

Barclaycard’s latest campaign, produced in collaboration with the Financial Times and FT Longitude, was designed to put this leading global payment business at the forefront of minds and conversations with senior executives around the world.

A content programme built on extensive research is based on a survey of 500 senior business leaders in the UK that was designed to explore a payments transformation in the banking sector and how payments shape customer and partner relationships. To complement the study, we conducted interviews with industry leaders and experts to better understand leaders’ strategies, aims and ambitions in the payments space.

ACTIVATION: Primarily activated as partner content on FT.com, and designed and optimised to get the attention of the FT’s exclusive audience, the content series features several short-form articles with thought-provoking headlines, creative and eye-catching visuals, as well as an infographic and striking data visualisation to highlight the key findings in a highly visual and engaging way. The FT-hosted content repeatedly performed significantly above benchmarks, and generated over 44k page views which translated into a positive uplift in traffic to Barclaycard’s own site as a result.

Re:work: The three pillars of workforce resistance
KellyOCG

BRAND AWARENESS

KellyOCG, a leading global advisor of talent supply chain strategies and workforce solutions, has been using thought leadership to raise its profile and gain media attention for several years. This year, the firm wanted to recalibrate and for the first time ever create a single insights campaign with a cohesive brand voice and message that would serve multiple divisions across the Kelly Global business.

With the objective to build awareness with specialist insight that gets media attention and produces content that converts to commercial pipeline growth, the 2023 Kelly Global Re:work Report was launched. Designed to attract interest from HR talent acquisition buyers and procurement teams, as well as T1 media, HR trade and industry specific titles, the report sought to understand how top organisations build resilience and harness talent in their workforce after a period of unprecedented disruption.

ACTIVATION: The content campaign, which features a fully interactive data-rich digital report, highlights video with headlines and key findings, an infographic and pull-quotes from Tammy Browning, the firm’s president and campaign main advocate, was hosted natively on on Kelly’s website, ensuring the the team could track full engagement data and conversions throughout the life of the campaign.

And thanks to an extensive media tour with Kelly executives using headline research findings to secure media spots, the campaign was broadcast over 2,300 times and picked up by mainstream media including the BBC, Bloomberg, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal, as well as several HR publications, making it the most successful brand-building content in the company’s history.

Creating value as Asia decarbonises
Fullerton Fund Management

BRAND AWARENESS

Singapore based investment firm Fullerton Fund Management came to us with a brief to increase its brand awareness, specifically on the topic of ESG investing in Asia. Finding a unique take on this well-trodden topic required a different approach that would glean unique first-hand insights and leverage access to the Financial Times to help take that insight to market using the FT’s unrivalled business audience.

Focusing on decarbonisation and the scale of investment needed to achieve net-zero targets, FT Longitude and Fullerton created a report with in-depth interviews with high-profile SMEs that shed new light on the challenges associated with decarbonisation and the green energy transition, as well as providing actionable recommendations for Asian institutional investors, private bankers and HNW individuals.

ACTIVATION: Supplementing the traditional PDF report is a series of articles and audio features hosted on FT.com, designed specifically to attract the FT’s audience in Asia and viewed by nearly 200 of the most influential members in the targeted audience set. The campaign also generated significant reach on social media, garnering over 3.5mn impressions on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Finding a cost-effective path to net zero
Centrica Business Solutions

BRAND POSITIONING

Integrated energy services company, Centrica, has much to offer clients on energy transformation and decarbonisation. But they’re often blocked by misconceptions. This report, the latest in a long-running series of thought leadership, aims to show the market that Centrica can be a trusted business partner when it comes to the clean energy revolution, by providing expert insight based on robust research.

The insights found that the macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures of 2022 that plunged the market into turmoil, are still having an effect on decarbonisation efforts today. Centrica provides actionable recommendations to these issues, providing data and qualitative insights as evidence, providing senior business leaders with answers to the questions keeping them up at night.

ACTIVATION: The key findings report brings together the quantitative research, data visualisation and expert interviews in an interactive format of browsable online PDF, taking pride of place on Centrica.com.