Fujitsu: Sustainability Transformation in Action

At the start of the 2020s, Fujitsu foresaw that the decade’s key business trend would be “sustainability transformation”. It created a new global business brand –Fujitsu Uvance to help build a sustainable world and resolve social issues by using digital innovation. To raise awareness of this new brand and positioning, the company asked several media partners their proposals for a 12-month thought leadership campaign. “As a Japanese brand operating in a B2B market, authenticity is paramount "says Fujitsu’s Chief Marketing Officer Taeko Yamamoto. “With so much noise in the market around sustainability, being able to cut through was essential”. Fujitsu had three core objectives: to position Fujitsu as a leader in sustainability transformation, to acquire and engage a wider audience of C-suite customers, and to get this audience to see Fujitsu in a different light.

The company’s subsidiary goals were to attract new talent and gain market insights that could shape its future products and services. And of course, it wanted to enthuse its employees about the new brand and bring the whole organisation along on the journey. Fujitsu awarded the brief to the Financial Times for five reasons: the quality and rigour of its proposal; its proven end-to-end capabilities; its extensive reach of the target audience, (including in Fujitsu’s biggest market Japan, from the link with Nikkei); the FT’s strong connection with this senior business audience, who trust in its integrity, authority and accuracy; and its commitment to supporting a sustainable future. “The fact that the FT’s proposal was so rigorously crafted was a deciding factor,” says Taeko Yamamoto. “It was really strong around the research, the data and the thought leadership, and we liked their scientific approach. And we could see that the FT and Nikkei’s global coverage, and the trust in their brands, would enable us to reach and influence the people we wanted to.”

One of the FT’s main advantages for clients is its forensic campaign planning. The team gets to the crux of a client’s ambitions, using data insight to design campaigns for maximum impact. Campaign strategists develop a narrative thread and key messages that will achieve cut-through, and calculate how to use content to generate and maintain campaign momentum. Another FT strength is the end-to-end service it can offer from strategy, insight and targeting, to content, activation and optimisation. In partnership with Nikkei and working closely with Fujitsu, the FT Commercial team designed an insight-led, research-backed thought leadership content campaign to be delivered globally and amplified with a series of live events. It was a complex campaign, involving hundreds of stakeholders in different time zones and multiple technical challenges. Communication and agility were vital.

“From the outset, we were looking not for a supplier, but a partner,” says David Gentle, Fujitsu’s Global Head of Message and Insight. “With a program this complex, we needed to be able to communicate freely and be agile in how we evolved and optimised the campaign. The FT and Nikkei understood this, deliberately scheduling face-to-face time between the teams. Combined with their expertise, this strong relationship allowed us to solve every challenge and get the very best outcomes from the program.”

The team’s first strategy was to gain an insight into how far companies’ good sustainability intentions translate into reality. The FT’s insights team carried out proprietary research, sending a survey to 1000 business leaders worldwide to ask them about driving sustainability through tech in personal life, work life, and life in society. Their survey found that there is a vast gap between sustainability intentions and reality –and it also found that technology has a unique role to play in closing that gap. Using the survey data, the FT team identified topics that would be of real interest to Fujitsu’s target audiences. Our campaign strategists then developed the narrative thread and key messages most likely to achieve cut-through, and calculated how best to use the content to generate and maintain campaign momentum.

Content

The FT’s content division turned these insights into a campaign called Sustainability Transformation in Action: Navigating the New Frontier of Sustainability with Technology. To cut through the noise, thought leadership content has to be both engrossing and easy to consume. The team used an engaging mix of lively articles, audio podcasts, animated videos and interactive data visualisation to explore topics like the economic and social benefits of sustainability, the difficulties start-ups face, and the competitive advantage of sustainability transformation. “The FT and Nikkei clearly know the global business leader audience well,” says Taeko Yamamoto. “They tailored the content to maximise engagement and impact, using global research and the perspectives of global leaders to deliver genuine insights.”

The content was hosted on the FT.com Partner Content hub and Fujitsu.com–and because it was so important to reach decision-makers in Fujitsu’s home market of Japan, the team also translated the content into Japanese for hosting on Nikkei.com. The next step was to take the campaign into the real world. FT Digital Dialogues deliver high-level digital experiences to an international business community; the FT Live team ran one called Sustainable Cities Innovation: Balancing Financial Priorities and Wellbeing, with Fujitsu’s CTO Vivek Mahajan joining the panel to present the research, discuss the issues and gain a unique opportunity to engage with over 500 senior decision makers across the world.

In addition, the FT and Fujitsu convened seven private roundtables in APAC, North America and Europe –including two held at the Davos 2023 World Economic Forum. Using the original research report to set the agenda, they invited around 10 potential Fujitsu Uvance clients to each roundtable and built in valuable networking time with these high-calibre business leaders. “The FT is very good at getting high-level people along to roundtables,” says David Gentle. ”Gaining contact with these very senior people was a big benefit. And because the invitations came from the FT, it allowed us to position our brand to customers in a neutral way, recommended by a strong media brand in the market.” “We wanted to use the campaign to generate real relationships and grow C-suite business,” says Taeko Yamamoto. “Through this dedicated events program we have brokered new, in-person relationships between C-suite customers and our business leaders.”

Thought leadership has an equally important role to play internally, and Fujitsu wanted to make sure the whole organisation was informed and inspired about Fujitsu Uvance. So a senior editor from the FT’s content division presented the core storylines and data to around 100 sales and marketing leaders from Fujitsu EMEA. Fujitsu found this a valuable way to ensure the key messages landed with the teams so that they could use them to bring the Uvancerebrand to life. The same editor took part in a virtual panel at the US Manufacturing Forum (attended by Fujitsu customers and executives), using the manufacturing cut of the data to contribute to the discussion on the changing face of US manufacturing and the role sustainability plays in it.

Activation

To drive traffic to the Fujitsu content hub and amplify the campaign, the FT marketing team created a multi-channel programme that included:

•Display, native (to FT.com) and social creative for traffic drivers. The team developed these using key ‘hook’ messages from the research, to spark interest and set the reader on a direct path to each content element on the hub.

•Digital activation. Display and native formats were targeted at registered FT C-Suite subscribers in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific (including Japan) on all platforms (desktop, mobile and app) clicking through to the FT Fujitsu hub. The research was also translated into Japanese and promoted on Nikkei.com. Targeted social amplification ensured additional reach.

•Print activation. To create print insertions to go in FT Weekend, the team redesigned articles from the research to appear as Fujitsu Partner Content. The ads provided details of the FT.comFujitsu hub, encouraging readers to discover more.

With most thought leadership programmes, the aim is either to drive awareness or to create relationships. This one delivered both. The campaign produced tremendous results for Fujitsu, smashing targets and achieving both short-and long-term goals. Not only did it drive brand awareness and consideration it helped Fujitsu engage global C-suites and forge valuable new business relationships. "The partnership with the Financial Times and Nikkei has delivered strong, measurable uplift in Fujitsu’s awareness, reputation, and consideration with customers," says David Gentle. "It has brought Fujitsu Uvance to the attention of a global C-suite audience –exactly the people we want to communicate with and convince." “The global awareness of Fujitsu among our target audience has grown significantly over the campaign,” confirms Taeko Yamamoto. “This has enabled us to reach new customers and get existing customers to see us in a new light. The brand value –a key KPI for us –has grown by 19%.”

Huge brand impact

After seeing the Fujitsu Uvance campaign, FT readers were:

•57% more familiar with the Fujitsu brand and 700% more familiar with the Fujitsu Uvance brand

•175% more likely to agree that Fujitsu is ‘sustainability focused’ –a key objective of the campaign while ‘inspirational thought leader’, ‘customer oriented’ and ’innovative’ also saw a big uplift

•81% more likely to consider using Fujitsu as a sustainability transformation provider

There was 100% uplift in nominating Fujitsu as ‘making significant efforts to resolve social issues, such as sustainability, inclusivity, well-being’. And Fujitsu’s own brand tracker study showed:

•a 13-point uplift in aided awareness

•a 12-point uplift in SX awareness

Memorable, motivating content

The content clearly hit the mark with its target audiences, who were eager for help with this critical business issue.

•49% of respondents recalled the campaign

•43% said they would act after seeing it

•1170 downloads were made of the FT research (English version, non-gated)

•222 downloads were made of the FT research (Japanese version, gated)

Valuable C-suite contacts

•66 high-profile C-suites were introduced to Fujitsu at the roundtables

•77% of these were CEO or CXO

•These were brand new relationships for Fujitsu

Media performance and social media impact

•2,890 total media mentions

•531m potential media reach

•$4.9m advertising value equivalent

•41% uplift in sustainable transformation media mentions

•781 Twitter mentions

•1.1k monthly organic searches for Fujitsu Uvance

Strategic planning insights

“Through the pioneering nature of this campaign and its multiple strands, we’ve learned a lot about what works for us,” says David Gentle. “What’s more, the analysis has produced some incredibly useful insights that will help us shape our future direction.”