Withers 2023 'The Discourse'

International law firm Withers specialises in advising successful individuals on their business, personal and philanthropic interests.

Back in 2021 it set out to own this space by conveying its expertise to new and existing clients. To do this, it wanted to bring to life its fresh perspectives on leadership, managing risk and handling problems.

In response, the FT team devised a compelling campaign called ‘Defining Moments’ – a branded content series of interview-style articles, where eminent founders and CEOs revealed the events and influences that turned them into leaders.

The resounding success of this campaign inspired Withers to continue its FT partnership in 2023, this time with a refreshed design and new thematic focus.

The 2023 campaign’s objective was to build on the previous achievement by continuing to develop a brand identity for Withers that would reinforce its position as the law firm for success.

To retain the human, peer-to-peer element that underpinned the strong performance of the earlier campaign, Withers wanted a second interview-based series that aligned to ‘Defining Moments’ while offering its audience something new.

The FT content team created six interview-style articles, profiling visionary Withers clients such as ‘Womenomics’ pioneer Kathy Matsui, green fuel entrepreneur Rinaldo Brutoco, and Bea Bakshi who co-founded an AI-powered cancer detection system.

Each shared their viewpoint on the future of their industry and talked about an event or individual that triggered a change in their perspective and sparked their groundbreaking work. To match the 2021 campaign, the content had a deeply personal tone and the articles featured bespoke header illustrations in a similar style.

For a fresh approach, the FT team used narrative visualisation or ‘scrollytelling’ to bring these conversations to life by mimicking the flow of a conversation, playing to our audience’s appetite for immersive content. Throughout the interviews, miniature illustrations of relevant objects, people or concepts acted as visual cues to assist with the storytelling and to lean into the fact that on-page furniture prolongs audience engagement with FT partner content. A short audio clip of each interview was embedded in the piece to add an immersive element and showcase the most compelling soundbites of the conversation.

Strategy

The FT’s strategy was to reflect the fact that all sectors of society are having to rethink long-held viewpoints and adopt new perspectives. It’s increasingly important for a range of opinions to be heard.

Having seen the FT audience engage strongly with personal stories from influential individuals, the team wanted to harness Withers’ impressive client portfolio again. Each interview would profile an inspiring individual from a range of industries, from food and drink to agriculture and real estate. The concept underpinning the series would be the transformative potential of adopting newperspectives, through content designed to inspire, educate and nurture the target audience.

To emphasise continuity with the previous campaign while creating a distinct identity for the new campaign, the 2023 content would live in its own section within the existing Withers ecosystem on FT.com.

‘The Discourse’ was one of the FT’s top-performing partner content campaigns of 2023 and exceeded the already standout performance of Withers’ 2021 campaign.

The continued success of Withers’ second partnership with the FT clearly demonstrates the cumulative benefits of running repeat campaigns.

Huge brand uplift

At the end of ‘The Discourse’ campaign, the FT research team carried out a brand uplift study. The results were remarkable.

Those exposed to this Withers partner content and associated pages were:

• 100% more likely to say they would consider using Withers
• 125% more likely to say that Withers is their preferred legal firm
• 50% more likely to use Withers’ services in the future

Stronger connection with FT audience

Withers is now benefiting strongly from a growing relationship with the FT audience. After the second campaign, FT readers were 8 times more likely to say that Withers is their preferred legal firm and over 4 times more likely to consider using Withers for legal services.

Specific ‘The Discourse’ highlights

• Not a single content piece performed at or below benchmark – in fact, even the lowest average attention time was 27 seconds above it

• The audio clips proved highly engaging, with an listen-through rate of 64.71%

• FT marketing delivered an additional 700k impressions on top of the 898k million planned

• Onsite marketing delivered an outstanding CTR that was almost 170% over benchmark

• Withers’ intended audience groups were effectively targeted and captured in large numbers, with 59% of the known audience falling into Business Decision-Makers and C-Suites (1st party demographic identified users)

• Not only did the campaign start off with very high engagement numbers, but through continual optimizations the FT increased overall engagement as the campaign progressed – a sure sign of the content’s quality and how well it resonated with the FT audience

For more on Withers’ first FT campaign, read the Defining Moments case study.