MS&AD

MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings is a Japanese insurance company, listed on the Nikkei 225. At a time when society and businesses face acute risks from natural disasters to cybercrime, insurance has transformed. The focus is now not only on protecting against individual risk but also on creating shared value across society. MS&AD partnered with the Financial Times to explore the response of individuals and businesses to creating a more resilient, sustainable society. Its objective was to position itself as a socially responsible company committed to helping people live and conduct business in a safe and secure manner. To achieve this, the FT set out to equip the client with premium insights, then to create compelling content that would communicate its corporate philosophy in an authentic way and showcase its capabilities to a high-quality audience.

Internal FT research shows that thought leadership is a powerful brand-building tool for a senior business audience. In addition, four out of five executives believe high-quality thought leadership has influenced their decision to do business with the brand that produced it.

Research

The FT’s in-house specialist researchers surveyed over 500 senior executives across Asia about their sustainability strategies, their views on biodiversity and their response to the risks of an unhealthy planet. The team also carried out qualitative interviews that gave colour and context to the findings. The survey was designed to discover the extent of sustainable practices, analyse the perception of emerging risks, and identify areas of business model innovation in MS&AD’s core markets. The result was a 20-page whitepaper, ‘From risk management to shared value: mapping sustainability’ provided valuable insights from which to create engaging thought leadership content.

Content

The FT worked with MS&AD to create this content for an FT.com hub ‘The Nature of Business’, hosting articles, videos, and a downloadable report with survey results, analysis and comment. Typical content included:

• Why business is waking up to the climate crisis
• Come rain or shine: insurers help climate-risk disclosures
• Mainstreaming biodiversity: Mitigating risks by conserving nature

Activation

The marketing team drove traffic from FT.com with eye-catching display ads and engaging native ad units. To gain additional reach, they also ran a strong social campaign with ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Dianomi. The FT uses primary audience data, audience analytics and engagement tools to target the audience groups with relevant advertising, analyse how it resonates, and tailor strategies accordingly. Both the FT.com and social campaigns achieved impressive results.

The campaign reached and resonated extremely well with the FT’s influential global audience – and 26% of those it reached were C-suite.

• Achieved 180% toward targeted page views

• 353 downloads of the report

• Over 13,000 plays of the video on the page and on YouTube