The campaign needed to showcase a prioritised, visible investment ready pipeline and counter current perception gaps around innovation and business-friendliness. Activity would be aligned with SDI’s international trade and investment marketing activity and build upon the theme of ‘Think Different. Think Scotland’.

Key objectives:

• SDI needed a trusted media partner to reach target audience of Private Equity firms/ Institutional Investors; VC firms, and Investor Business Decision Makers.
• To position Scotland as an innovative, competitive place for capital investment.
• To showcase Scotland’s global opportunities – including offshore wind to hydrogen, health-tech to fintech or satellites to big data.
• To highlight that Scotland is a modern and ​dynamic hotbed of innovation and commerce.
• To cut through the clutter with strong creative and clear messaging.
• To drive ‘further action’ to find out more.

Reuters Plus embraced a twist on SDI’s previous branding and created the theme of “Think Capital Investment. Think Scotland.”

It made clear the stated goal is perception change: moving Scotland from being a “strong regional player” to “one of Europe’s most compelling destinations for long-term capital.”

The team worked closely with SDI to develop a unique Persona Architecture for Scotland’s potential investors. By structuring the features around four distinct investor archetypes – The Global Capital Investor, The Scout, The Portfolio Builder, and The Strategist – it helped to focus the content on specific, practical needs.

Reuters Plus journalists helped source investors matching the personas who have recently deployed capital in Scotland – venture capitalists, pension fund managers, asset managers, institutional investors. In a series of in-depth interviews, we asked them to dig beyond “why Scotland is great” to reveal personal stories about “here’s what I evaluated, here’s what I found, here’s whether it met expectations.”

We know capital allocators trust peer-to-peer validations more than promotional content. Using relatable success stories from actual investors created powerful case studies that were supplemented with the latest market data and trends.

Each persona has its own bespoke illustration and mapped to a real international investment story. This allowed readers to self-select a narrative that speaks directly to their investment mandate, risk appetite, and time horizon.

Each feature ran approx. 1,250 words, profiling the investor’s background, evaluation framework, what they found in Scotland, and whether expectations were met. Fact boxes were included with relevant data points.

The creative assets of each persona were further leveraged into social assets, featuring quotes and audio clips from the investor interviews.  This enabled targeted investors to hear BlackRock’s CFO, for example, in his own voice provide authentic validation after years of successful activity on the ground.

Featured companies:

• BlackRock (The Global Capital Investor) –
  $12.5 trillion AUM, Edinburgh home to its fourth largest global hub. Provides strong trust signal for institutional allocators who need validation that serious global capital is already committed.
• Future Planet Capital (The Scout) –
  Targets VC audiences with “hidden gems” including university research, lower operating costs, and deep tech.
• Phoenix Group / Standard Life (The Portfolio Builder) –
  Speaks to pension capital with infrastructure and renewables aligned to long-duration investment horizons.
• Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (The Strategist) –
  The £800 million battery storage commitment, framed around strategic certainty and longevity, targets large-scale infrastructure funds looking for low political risk and deep talent pools.

This was a highly targeted campaign, reaching a niche, high value audience.

• 40,506 total page views.
• 8min 36s average time on article.
• 83.2% average engagement rate.
• 12min 21s average time on hub.
• 250+ multiple article clicks.

Social:

• 12.8M page impressions.
• 212K total clicks.

All four newsletter placements outperformed benchmark, with CTRs ranging from 0.11% to 0.13% against a 0.06% benchmark.

Unique users to SDI’s new portal up 225% during the campaign.

Synergy Research tracked impact of the “Think Capital Investment. Think Scotland.” campaign among Reuters Investment Decision Makers (IDMs) in US, Canada, Australia and Germany.

• 40% of Reuters IDMs recall the SDI campaign, against benchmark of 29% for FDI.
• 76% of recallers agree ‘Scotland is a good place to invest and do business.’
• 72% of recallers agree ‘Scotland is a competitive business destination for capital investment.’
• 73% of recallers agree ‘Scotland is well-positioned to play a leading role in Europe’s energy transition.’
• +76% uplift in ‘Scotland is a good place to invest and do business.’
• +58% uplift in ‘SDI is a credible partner for international investors looking to invest in Scotland.’
• +57% uplift in ‘Scotland is well positioned to play a leading role in Europe’s energy transition.’
• 77% – More than three-quarters of recallers have taken action after seeing the SDI campaign.