Bloomberg Media, the consumer-facing media organization of Bloomberg L.P., sought to help leaders understand why their content was worth paying more for. Their product was more global and balanced and famously more data-based than anything in the market, but it didn’t have a clear position. Our objective was to articulate the through-line that connected everything they did.
The business news category was engaged in a shouting match around the same benefit: “getting ahead.” Often serving different flavors of the same dish: unrivaled insights, edges, advantages. And what we realized is, the new generation of business leaders don’t want business as usual. The modern business world isn’t craving more insights. It’s starved for more context.
And, as the backbone of our campaign explained…“Context Changes Everything.” So, our objective became to articulate context that connected everything Bloomberg does, then demonstrate to our target audience why context matters.
From a design standpoint, our goal was to create a more seamless experience for the audience as they navigated from our marketing to our product, and our visual communications aimed to reflect that. We’ve woven simple connective tissue into our brand identity, and used simple tools to reveal the context our writers offer to our readers.
We leaned on the assets the brand was already using, given the overall objective of a refresh, and utilized individual pieces to highlight context in a dynamic way.
Bloomberg Media’s challenge was it had too many good things to talk about. Unmatched breadth and scale, a legitimately global newsroom, a reputation for trustworthy data… It had a business and finance specialization PLUS dedicated Green, Equality and Crypto verticals – expertise competitors did not have. But if you asked 20 people in their organization to say what they did best (and we did) you’d get 20 answers.
The exciting thing about “context” isn’t just the clarity it provides; it’s the transformative effect it can have on all aspects of life and business. Context makes people reconsider; it turns old beliefs upside down and it makes people step back and look at the whole picture and correlations they never considered before.
The importance of context is clear when you read an article on Bloomberg.com. But we needed to prove that in much shorter formats, to people who may not be familiar with our brand of context at all.
Recreating the “aha” moment of discovery you have when reading. Revealing the world of context that surrounds a simple concept – like the modern workplace. Which, when you look at the data, is way more than just a modern workplace.
For the film, we trace a path through Bloomberg journalism. Using the data to change how these modern leaders understand the bigger issues – and the potential solutions – behind their office space.
And for the redesign, given the parameters of having to keep all of the pieces of their brand identity in place, context came through in the typography, layout structure and motion. Achieving a balance of information and the context, in three ways. With the words, to reflect the power of Bloomberg’s context. With the images, to act as a way to zoom in or out of a scenario that may not be evident at first glance. And with the motion, used as the most ideal way of revealing the context, while also being the cornerstone of how this redesign becomes dynamic.
This campaign achieved and exceeded all its objectives.
Qualitatively:
For the first time, Bloomberg Media has a single consumer brand proposition that unites all of its content, platforms and lines of business under one strategy platform, design system and messaging framework. It clearly delivers both a high-level and motivating brand message about the importance of investing in the best available business journalism, while specifically showcasing examples that prove that promise.
It’s not just external audiences who are responding positively to the work. In a news organization it is critical that marketing reflects the true values and approach of its newsroom. Marketing must distill and present the brand of journalism that is defined and owned by the journalists themselves. We’re particularly proud of how we’re doing that with Context Changes Everything, and it has transformed the relationship between marketing and the newsroom.
Quantitatively:
This upper-funnel campaign was intended to achieve a positive ROI over the long term. It achieved that within the timeframe of the media flight, and as brand investment is intended to do, it will continue to drive further ROI over the long tail of its effect on the rest of our marketing funnel.
More importantly, this campaign significantly improved our overall ROI on our total media investment during the campaign window, making our mid- and lower-funnel marketing much more effective. Our upper-funnel investment allowed media to scale 3x while maintaining efficiency vs. an acquisition-only media mix.
