Through its technology, products and services, Panasonic’s long-held aim is to make today better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today. As one of the world’s biggest technology companies, Panasonic takes its responsibilities incredibly seriously. But, as a team, we also feel a duty to bring our impact to life for our customers in meaningful and engaging ways. Ways that translate into better lives and a more hope-filled planet.
Powering a forward-thinking approach to sustainability and the circular economy, Panasonic GREEN IMPACT reaches far beyond the company’s responsibility to minimize its own footprint.
It extends long into the future to make significant impact for (and in collaboration with) generations to come – including tech-savvy, socially minded Gen Z and young Millennials.
One challenge, however, is that younger generations entering the market are largely unaware of Panasonic and skeptical of businesses professing to care about the environment (and rightly so in a market saturated with greenwashing claims).
Considering Panasonic’s long heritage (creating a better future for society was our founder’s central philosophy 100 years ago) and ongoing innovation, it felt essential to connect with this audience of change-makers – the future of our industry, and our society.
Key objectives:
Panasonic worked with marketing agency Proctor + Stevenson to define a watertight strategy and produce compelling, stand-out creative, with digital marketing support from Thrive Digital to create a media strategy that executes the campaign across various platforms and cuts through the noise to reach our valued audience.
Gen Z messaging
To truly engage this audience, we had to champion their perspective from the start, putting them at the heart of our cause. It was therefore essential that we focused on generating awareness and recognition through emotive, brand-level messaging that makes clear our commitment to the next generation, before bringing any Panasonic initiatives, informative content or thought leadership to light.
Based on extensive audience and competitor research, the team at Proctor + Stevenson developed a proposition that distilled the hopes, fears, and desires of a generation (with spending power of over $140 billion) – no easy feat.
This culminated in powerful and inspiring creative that feels authentic, appropriate for the target audience and free from green marketing clichés. The team at P+S combined portraiture and videos of authentic people that represent the target demographics with epic cinematic film that reflects their hopes and interests.
They also brought Panasonic’s heritage, brand story, and track record to life (and up to date) in a matter of seconds through thumb-stopping video advertising. To encourage engagement with key campaign content, the P+S team updated the landing page that housed the Panasonic GREEN IMPACT promise, milestone initiatives and key statistics.
Mobile-first creative
To reach our target audience, we had to meet them on their platforms of choice. Following extensive research, the team at Thrive developed a comprehensive channel mix that includes Meta, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitch. The creative approach was adapted for each channel, but the messaging remained clear and consistent for maximum recall. Video content was used wherever possible to grab attention and engage a younger demographic used to engaging with short, entertaining video ads.
Optimize and maximize
Paid social and programmatic media maximized the opportunity for targeting, testing and optimization to ensure the campaign was reaching the target audience and measuring their intent where possible. Brand lift studies helped Thrive track performance across each platform and maximize ROI. Organic social posts also provided useful insights and contributed significant impressions.
First quarter – at a glance
With over 97 million impressions in just three months, our results already show an uplift in brand awareness from three separate brand lift studies among the target audience.
The first quarter’s ad performance exceeded expectations, with the highest click-through rates coming from Snapchat (5.27%) and programmatic video adverts (4.04%). The Thrive team also saw an impressive 97% video completion rate on Twitch, indicating that the creative is indeed resonating with Gen Z and Millennials, and improving recall.
With over 1.1M clicks in just three months, the campaign creative is clearly inspiring our target audience to learn more about Panasonic GREEN IMPACT initiatives, while building trust and gaining brand awareness through compelling video ads.
In addition to the impressive paid media results, Panasonic organically pushed a total of 9 paid media assets to its Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook channels. These posts had a total reach of 18.8K with average engagement rates for both Instagram (3.4%) and Facebook (0.5%) exceeding industry benchmarks.
