INSEAD

INSEAD is one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, with locations across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America. Each year over 1,300 students take their degree and PhD programmes and over 1,000 executives participate in their executive education programmes.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, business schools were among the many organisations affected. In 2021, as both society and businesses set out to “build back better” and as many people focused more on their personal and professional development, INSEAD wanted to reinforce brand awareness and position itself as the business school of choice for these new times.

It saw the FT’s globally-respected business education coverage as the ideal platform for targeting students whoare keen to make their mark in this new world.

The FT Commercial team worked with INSEAD on a fully integrated, year-long partnership capitalising on the best of the FT’s business education coverage and readership. Harnessing a range of FT products and solutions, INSEAD was able to tell a unique and always on-brand story to FT readers interested in business education.

Research

Our research shows why the FT is so effective for business education campaigns:

• 8 out of 10 of FT readers want to undertake business education

• 75% say the FT Business Education Rankings are important to them

• 55% have acted as a result of seeing advertising in FT Business Education section/site

• 61% plan to start a business education programme within the next 3 years

Activation

The elements of the campaign included:

Business Education Rankings
The FT’s independent rankings of the world’s best management programmes are widely consulted by potential students, employers, researchers and business school leaders worldwide.

FT Partner Content
A dedicated FT.com hosted three articles: Rethinking Leadership: The Virtues of Imperfection, Personal Branding: Be Yourself and Embrace Change and Preparing for a post-Covid career. With INSEAD professors, students and alumni sharing their own stories, they engagingly showcased INSEAD as the business school that understands the key concerns and goals of today’s potential students.

FT Special Report
INSEAD sponsored the Special Report Women at the Start, aimed at young women in the first years of their career. FT Special Reports provide concise yet informative overviews of specific business topics, industries and countries, and are highly regarded by our busy readers.

Print
INSEAD booked insertions in two FT Business Education Rankings Magazines: Masters in Management and EMBA. As part of the Women at the Start Special Reports package, they also had a quarter page print ad.

his campaign was seen as a huge success by INSEAD. It delivered a brand uplift of 29% and a 97% increase in FT readers’ consideration of INSEAD as their preferred business school.

Campaign highlights

• Over 153K unique ussrs

• Over 3.5mn impressions

• Over 2.3K clicks

• Over 14K page views for Partner Content

• Over 109K page views for Women at the Start report

FT reader response

• FT readers rate INSEAD awareness at 87%, familiarity at 73% and favourability at 88%

• After being exposed to an ad, 37% visited the school’s website, 35% looked for more information on the school, 24% spoke about the school to colleagues/friends /family, 17% considered choosing a programme advertised by school, and 8% contacted the school directly

• 67% are “extremely” or “very” likely to undertake business education in next 3 years, showing that the campaign reached very much the right people

INSEAD was so pleased with the success of this campaign that it renewed its partnership with the FT in 2022.