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.