Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) aims to create a better future by combining the power of innovation with the strength of collective knowledge. We help businesses grow, empower communities, and drive positive change through the practical application of cutting-edge technology.
Some of the concepts and technologies we develop can be complex to communicate – particularly in short form posts and messages. In 2024, the social media team rose to this challenge by focusing on personal storytelling in its coverage of the TCS London Marathon.
Emotional storytelling is a powerful tool in B2B marketing because it:
People may forget stats or features, but they remember how your story made them feel – creating a lasting impression.
OUR OBJECTIVES
The TCS London Marathon social media campaign aimed to build brand awareness and create emotional connections with our target audiences, but more specifically our objectives were to achieve:
More broadly, we wanted to:
OUR STRATEGY
To achieve this, we focused on two main video-based activations:
1) PERSONAL RUNNING STORIES
We created a series of videos featuring clients and TCS employees taking part in the marathon. We identified the ‘hero’ clients and TCS employees we wanted to feature and built relationships with them before inviting them to share their personal stories. We encouraged runners to articulate their motivations for participation – whether a personal challenge, a family story, or community support – and the marketing team used engaging visuals to complement the emotional narratives.
For example, Sam Krempel, Business Agility Lead for Lloyds Banking Group shared how alongside his dedicated professional role, Sam, a veteran, carries the legacy of his grandparents' military service, channelling their resilience and courage into running the TCS London Marathon while raising money for Crisis, the UK's largest homeless charity. The video on his marthon journey was viewed thousands of times, with over 100 engagements.
Meanwhile, Marcus Shaw, Director of Technology at ASDA discussed his personal running journey and why he chose the Samaritans as his charity for the marathon. His story clearly struck a chord, with his video viewed more than 8,000 times, with more than 400 engagements.
2) ‘DIGITAL TWIN’ VIDEOS
How do you and your message stand out amongst 250 brands and to 93,000 people? That was our challenge at the 2024 Running Show. We wanted a show-stopping experience to communicate the complex concepts behind our ‘Imagine the Difference’ campaign, which highlights our work in the world of ‘digital twins’ (virtual representations of physical entities, to enhance performance by examining the outcomes of simulated scenarios) – but also to encourage visitors to create videos to share with their followers.
We employed a truly spectacular, Insta-worthy mosaic of screens and cutting-edge holographic content, encouraging the audience to share our stand with the world. Baked into the mosaic were stories highlighting our marathon-specific achievements. Two 3D holographic boxes projected images of runners, supporters, and digital human replicas so lifelike that many visitors were caught out as they tried to reach out and touch them.
The holographic boxes and mosaic of screens worked together to tell unique London Marathon stories, which highlighted the diverse marathon community, the role of supporters, and a simple story exemplifying our digital twin technology.
This digital canvas created masses of social noise, not only with attendees, who clambered to record videos or take selfies next to the holograms, but also with broadcasters – like the BBC – who opted to record live broadcasts direct from our stand, giving TCS a big lift in global reach.
Venturing further onto the stand, the audience entered our technological world of wonder. Fascinated guests got hands-on with an interactive 3D model of a runner, tapping hotspots on the body to discover how we’re exploring digital twin technology to improve runner performance, and to ‘imagine’ the future of digital twin technology.
The personal marathon story videos generated a large number of engagements and views:
The activation at the Running Show exceeded all expectations, with:
This led to some spectacular results in terms of our broader objectives:
As a result (along with other marketing efforts), brand recognition for TCS has grown by 25% over the past two years – with estimated value of over $21.3 billion, making us only the second global IT services business to exceed $20bn in brand value.
Our customer-centric storytelling strategy not only met our initial objectives, but also set a benchmark for future campaigns, positioning TCS as a leader in humanising B2B marketing through impactful storytelling.
