To highlight De Beers Group’s commitment to Botswana and the world-class talent being nurtured in the country, FBS produced a brand film series spotlighting some of the world’s greatest international athletes, including the country’s first Olympic gold medalist Letsile Tebogo; its first female professional golfer, Ouname Mhotsha; and rising sibling tennis stars Naledi and Ntungamili Raguin.

We created three episodes of Talent Unearthed, three in-depth Q&As with each of the athletes, stunning original photography, a custom digital hub modeled after modern streaming platforms, exclusive highlights videos to enhance the series by showcasing how natural diamonds can fuel dreams, uplift communities, and create lasting impact in Botswana.

The intended length of the episodes was three to four minutes per episode, per client demands, but we still wanted to tell rich, deep stories about the athletes, so we brought in family members, coaches, and friends to provide their perspectives. This gave us additional voices to discuss the positive impact that natural diamonds have had on Botswana over the generations (our athletes range from 14 to 29 years of age).

We filmed on location in Botswana across Gaborone and its suburbs, as well as in Maun on the Northern border where Letsile’s training camp takes place with many of the Botswana Olympic sprint teams. We wanted to show the diversity of the country, from the major capital city with bustling urban environments, to the small village of Maun. Decades of investment have transformed the country’s fortunes and while the busy urban environments thrive, we also wanted to showcase the impact of the free healthcare, schooling, and sports infrastructure across the entire country so that the world can take in modern Botswana: a proud, emerging African country that competes to win on the world’s stage.

All content was powered by a multiplatform custom social and native distribution package, including a series of video trailers.

De Beers Group turned to FBS to not only create the Talent Unearthed series, but to amplify the partnership by targeting our highly indexed audience of global business decision-makers. As well as native and social promotion across Fortune channels, promotional placements were featured on De Beers Group’s owned and operated channels, including LinkedIn and Instagram.

Organic promotion from Fortune Brand Studio drove to the series landing page, and 15- and 30-second social trailers for the films were utilized to promote the content, driving our highly engaged audience to watch the full-length videos and related content.

In addition to this promotion, Fortune Brand Studio and De Beers Group, along with Wavelength Productions, worked to deploy a timely press release announcing the partnership. These coordinated efforts shone a spotlight on this noteworthy collaboration, creating excitement around the launch and final content.

To date, Talent Unearthed video and written content has outperformed all Fortune benchmarks for branded content, exceeding both average time spent and onsite engagement rate by between 2x to 4x.

The trailer teaser launched on De Beers Group’s organic social handles was the company’s top performer ever, with an engagement rate of 18.9%.

The success of the trailer proved the deep impact these stories were going to have with both B2B & B2C audiences before the content had even launched.

Since launch, individual posts across the team’s handles exceeded all expectations, with the post announcing launch reaching more than 2.8 million views.

On May 20, 2025, the Telly Awards announced Talent Unearthed won 3x Gold (‘Brand Partnership’, ‘Sports’, ‘Editing’), 6x Silver, and 1x Bronze, kicking off early awards recognition for the campaign.

Talent Unearthed