Our strategy was to create a multi-platform campaign that reached the UAE’s target audience of investors, entrepreneurs and decision-makers through content we knew they were interested in — genuine, real-life stories of people who have succeeded in their business in large part due to the welcoming, innovative and nurturing environment of the UAE. Through this story, we positioned the UAE as the global hub where future-shaping talent thrives, aligning with our mission to showcase the Emirates as a catalyst for global progress.

Understanding that the BBC’s vast business audience of 248M seeks inspirational and educational content, we developed a human-centric campaign to create deeper emotional connections with investors. By featuring real people and their transformative UAE success stories at the heart of the content, we aimed to inspire, inform, and motivate our target global audience. We weren’t creating a straight-forward travel story — our story needed to inspire and convince the audience to see UAE as a potential land of business opportunity, which requires commitment and action, hence our focus on real-life success stories that showed people exactly how this could be achieved.

Leveraging BBC StoryWorks’ award-winning expertise, we crafted a multi-platform campaign combining tailored branded content with the trusted reach of the BBC’s ecosystem. This approach ensured that the campaign not only engaged emotionally but also achieved maximum impact across TV, digital, and social platforms.

Our three-pronged strategy focused on:

• Changing brand perception by humanising the UAE’s innovation story through authentic narratives.
• Growing brand awareness via BBC’s expansive global audience of half a billion people every month.
• Demonstrating thought leadership by showcasing the UAE’s commitment to nurturing talent and technological advancement.

Through inspirational, real-world stories and impactful media placements, we successfully repositioned the UAE as a dynamic, future-focused destination for global business and innovation.

To position the UAE as a global hub for innovation and investment, we produced ‘Voices of Vision’, a multi-platform series that lived on BBC platforms including linear, BBC.com and social, celebrating the pioneers driving change across land, sea, and space.

Through a series of intimate and inspiring brand films, we highlighted engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs harnessing technology to tackle today’s challenges and build a better tomorrow. Each story demonstrated how the UAE’s progressive infrastructure, financial support, and nurturing environment have empowered these individuals and companies to thrive.

The content was structured around four key pillars: Future Food, Future Design, Future Solutions, and Future Tech. This framework allowed us to show the breadth of innovation across sectors critical to the future of people and the planet, while maintaining a cohesive narrative about the UAE’s role as an enabler of success. Speaking to the founder of Careem, a world-famous designer, leading chef of a hospitality empire, and the inventor of an irrigation system that grows tomatoes in the middle of the desert, we showed how the UAE is the enabler of future global solutions and is well worth the investment.

We produced four 2–3-minute films, each accompanied by a 60-second cutdown for TV and social media, ensuring broad reach across digital and broadcast channels. To deepen engagement, four articles and a hub page were published on BBC.com/StoryWorks, creating a connected journey for audiences to explore each story in more depth. A targeted social media campaign further amplified visibility, driving audiences to the hub.

Our approach focused on human storytelling – capturing the passion, determination, and innovation of those who embody the UAE’s spirit of progress. These personal journeys not only showcased impressive technological achievements but also emphasised the supportive ecosystem that made them possible.

Through powerful real-life examples, ‘Voices of Vision’ delivered an inspiring, credible narrative to a global audience of investors, entrepreneurs, and senior business decision-makers, reinforcing the UAE’s reputation as a prime destination for future-focused investment and growth.

The television media plan was meticulously designed to enhance the visibility of the 60-second commercials during peak viewing hours on BBC News. These spots were strategically placed adjacent to business programming that was contextually relevant, such as HardTalk, to further target the desired audience.

For the digital content amplification, 14 distinct static advertisement creatives were deployed across BBC.com and the BBC News app. The adverts were strategically aligned with verticals popular with the target business audience, such as the innovation, future planet, and culture sections of BBC.com.

The digital advertising units were designed to showcase the individuals featured in our campaign, accompanied by an engaging tagline to pique viewers’ curiosity about their achievements, such as “There’s no limits to your achievements in the Emirates, ask Ralph Debbas”. This approach aimed to attract audiences through authenticity whilst encouraging them to explore the full campaign on the branded content webpages.

To achieve optimal engagement rates, the 60-second videos were promoted as pre-roll assets across BBC.com and the BBC News app, resulting in an average CTR of 3.05%, 0.42% higher than the BBC.com benchmark.

A combination of still and video assets were promoted across the BBC StoryWorks social channels as part of the paid social campaign, with a significant push on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram to reach the target business audience. With the campaign featuring 12 successful entrepreneurs and business leaders, each boasting an impressive following, our organic campaign harnessed the power of cross-promotion on social media. This strategic collaboration resulted in 66,823 organic video views across various social platforms.

The campaign was also promoted on YouTube to drive views of the long-form films, which led to one of the films achieving over 1.3 million views on this platform.

‘Voices of Vision’ delivered outstanding results, exceeding both media and brand objectives.

Across social channels, the campaign generated 32.2 million impressions and 10.1 million video views, with 113K video views on article pages — 25% above benchmark.

The campaign’s digital content also outperformed expectations, achieving 300K article page views (28% above benchmark) and 286K unique visitors (57% above benchmark), with readers spending an average of 125.9 seconds on the page.

On BBC platforms, 14 ads and five x 1-minute videos drove 17 million impressions, with an average CTR of 0.22% and nearly 38,000 clicks. The ‘Future Food’ and ‘Future Design’ pillars led performance across social and YouTube, demonstrating strong resonance with the target business audience.

Beyond media metrics, the campaign had huge tangible impact on brand perception and business outcomes. Using the BBC’s in-house emotions measurement tool, Science of Engagement, we found the campaign significantly strengthened awareness of The Emirates as a premiere destination for foreign direct investment.

Positive brand associations surged: perceptions of the UAE as ‘authentic’ increased +37%, ‘supportive’ rose +30%, and ‘trustworthy’ grew +29%. Additionally, intent to invest and explore opportunities in The Emirates rose substantially.

Engaging storytelling featuring diverse voices created emotional impact, eliciting surprise and happiness, and sustaining attention among global business audiences. The campaign’s success has also paved the way for a second season, building further momentum for The Emirates’ global investment narrative.

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