While Goldman Sachs has been engaged as a leader in sustainable finance innovation for nearly two decades, 2019 marked a notable surge in momentum for the space and the firm’s leadership role within it. With a powerful business case for sustainable growth crystallized, and the consequences of inaction far more apparent, Goldman Sachs believed a rare moment was presenting itself; one in which the pull of opportunity, and the push of risk, were driving market participants in the same direction, toward sustainable growth. As a demonstration of the firm’s dedication to leading progress and action in sustainable finance, Goldman Sachs announced in December 2019, a $750 billion target towards financing, advisory and investing activity by 2030 to be managed by a newly formed Sustainable Finance Group, focused on two key strategic pillars of climate transition and inclusive growth.
In order to highlight Goldman Sachs’ thought leadership in sustainable finance while also driving awareness of the tangible actions and commitments the firm was making tied to the $750B target announcement, we launched a series of strategic content partnerships and social campaigns designed to highlight the firm’s unique perspective on the subject matter while showcasing the kinds of work that comprised GS’ commitment.
With so much cultural and media conversation about sustainability, as well as the firm’s day-in day-out work on the topic, we looked for key moments to align with our marketing strategy. These included external events (i.e. Davos) and internal initiatives (i.e. the launch of the annual sustainability report—the first since our milestone announcement ).
The campaign launched with a pulse of content in December highlighting the firm’s efforts surrounding the $750B announcement. We then aligned thought leadership content with key events and moments such as Davos to reinforce program messaging amongst our target audience at key junctures, and continued with organic and paid promotion of our annual Sustainability Report’s release which occurred on Earth Day, highlighting how GS was making an impact in the sustainable finance space through its commercial efforts. Throughout the year, we continued to amplify the report content across media channels through “case study” animations to demonstrate the ways in which the firm is working to drive inclusive growth and climate transition with clients
Our channel mix consisted of:
1) Paid/organic social and unique ad formats to reach our audience within key target markets
2) Longer term content partnerships with publications such as BBC and Axios to capture the attention of our target audience while they would be reading and viewing contextually relevant content
3) Newsletters with partners to spread awareness of Goldman Sachs’ sustainable finance efforts and relevant priorities during timely moments, such as the World Economic Forum Summit in Davos and Earth Day.
In selecting partnerships, we sought out global publications with thematically relevant editorial content, endemic sustainability publications, and social platforms that would allow us to expand our reach across our target markets.
For Davos, our partnerships with publishers such as Reuters–as a sponsor of their in-depth coverage of Davos, Politico–as a sponsor of their “Davos Playbook” newsletter and “Davos Confidential” podcast heavily read and listened to by policymakers, their “Politico EU Confidential” newsletter and podcast, BBC–as a sponsor of their interactive editorial series “The Smart Guide to Climate Change,” and Axios–as a sponsor of the Davos edition of their Deep Dive newsletter also targeting a heavily engaged audience of policymakers –enabled us to thematically align content relating to Goldman Sachs’ Sustainable Finance Group’s strategic pillars/priorities with key policy-based conversations surrounding WEF event agendas.
