Shortlisted 2020
Brand & Media Owner Partnership
Brand
DXC Technology
Entered by:
The Economist Group
Credits:
DWA Media
The Winning Edge
The Challenge
DXC Technology is the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, helping customers to harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. DXC Technology launched as a new brand in 2017, born out of the merger between CSC and HPE Enterprises. In year one, DXC’s brand campaign was largely focused on building name recognition and awareness. In year two (’18/’19 fiscal), DXC was challenged to be seen by clients and prospective clients as a strategic business partner able to lead large-scale digital transformation projects and not just as a back-office IT service provider. DXC Technology wanted to be considered a viable alternative to the Big Four and sought a publishing partner that could not only reach their global audience but also help them break through to busy global business decision makers.
They saw The Economist Group as an ideal partner to reach their clients in key markets around the world across platforms (online, social and print) and understood the power of the red box to galvanize business executives through powerful insight-based storytelling that went beyond the realm of business into a subject associated with enjoyment and leisure: sport.
The Creative Solution
Overview
The Economist Group understood DXC’s challenge to be seen at the forefront of transformation and also knew that DXC Technology was a proud sponsor of the Team Penske racing team. An Original Economist Films series–The Winning Edge– relating to innovations in sports from around the world that lead to extraordinary results for players and teams became the obvious solution. A brand film about Team Penske and its partnership with DXC as sponsor and consultant was the perfect compliment to drive home DXC’s own marketing message. Related researched-backed written content about digital leadership and a new Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) podcast series –The Digital Economy–ensured our program’s message was received across channels .
Economist Films
Our Winning edge films at the heart of our integrated program tell tales of the exponential performance gains in sports achieved from improvements in the use of technology, data and science. The parallel between sports innovation and business transformation is easily made and, in fact, the films also touch on the multi-billion dollar business of sports. The films’ content and quality very much reflect The Economist brand as they are fact-based and smart, global, and beautifully shot and narrated.
We encourage you to experience our films through the links below:
The Data Dunk – How big data helped the Houston Rockets become big players in the NBA
Engineering The Air – How the relentless search for marginal gains has helped Great Britain’s cyclists deliver world-beating performance
All in the Mind – Discover how sports psychology helps elite athletes survive and thrive in high pressure competition
Driving the Digital Revolution (brand film) – How a championship-winning race team cut engineering cycles by 30%
Other program deliverables
The films came to life on a custom hub, accompanied by a briefing paper, 2019: The year of digital decisions, a podcast series, The Digital Economy, 30+ co-branded articles and engaging media units and print coverwrap.
List of all content pieces:
1 EIU Briefing paper 3 Editorial films
1 DXC brand film 1 Print coverwrap
6 EIU articles
5 EIU podcast episodes 1 EIU infographic
29 EBC + DXC-branded articles 2 EBC infographics
1 EBC slideshow
3 Print ads
7 Digital Edition ads 3 Espresso ads
1 DXC-branded video
Note: Our Winning Edge program ran late 2018 and through 2019. The majority of the content launched in 2019. We are happy to follow up with our weighting structure that brings the program to 75% in 2019.
The Media/Content Amplification Solution
DXC leaned on The Economist for our research capability, editorial prowess and audience reach. They understood that The Economist audience appreciates Economist-branded content and thus was willing to heavy up on Economist-branded thought leadership films. The media strategy was very much anchored in these films and benefited from the fact that 3 out of the 4 were Economist-branded . This allowed us to promote the films freely through all our channels –print, digital, and social. And our global reach ensured awareness in DXC’s key target markets (see list of countries in question 5). All of the online and social media therefore was targeted by title, contextually, and by country.
Through homepage takeovers, rich video content in our in-scroll units, and visually-arresting print and Digital Edition ads, we ensured our audience wanted to visit the hub and engage with the program’s content.
A unique weekly sponsorship of The Economist’s daily Espresso app ran the week of Davos and told transformation success stories across industries, from global insurers to consumer goods giants. In addition, The Espresso App ad utilized snackable animated videos to create excitement around The Winning Edge program in a mobile environment, driving awareness of DXC and its priority digital transformation themes.
We also mailed a special cover-wrapped edition of The Economist to DXC key clients around the world and to DXC’s staff so that they too could feel the excitement of our co-branded campaign.
The Result
The Winning Edge program was incredibly successful in achieving or surpassing its KPls and overall focus on brand perception. The Winning Edge hub received 107,921 total page views (335 % of KPI), 87,962 total visits (334% of KPI), and 69,468 unique visitors (385% of KPI).
The three editorial films reached 2.5M views from social across The Economist’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter , and LinkedIn handles. The content itself was also successful with all three editorial films having vastly outperformed the average viewing time benchmark of 2m:53s, coming in at 12m:40s for All in the mind, 1Om19s for Engineering the air and 6m:50s for The Data Dunk. The briefing paper also surpassed its benchmark with an average time spent of 3m:38s (benchmark: 2m:05s).
The Digital Economy podcast series amassed over 100,000 listens for the first 9 episodes. The most popular episode, Why digitisation is disrupting your business models, achieved the highest number of listens with 7,391, reaching #19 in Business News on Apple Podcast charts for the U.S. and #27 in Business in the U.K