Synchrony had long standing commitments to support small businesses and foster diversity and inclusion within organizations. However, the company wasn’t getting sufficient credit for its work. The goal was to create a unique, actionable leadership platform focused on small businesses and diversity to fuel the growth of small businesses in a post-pandemic world.
We came up with the Roadmap to Diversity, a content series designed to help small-business owners devise and execute growth strategies across various diversity dimensions, e.g., diversity of thought (education), people (talent), culture (team building) and holistic business management (supply chain). Through a series of articles and videos, we empowered SMB owners and leaders with actionable insight and guidance. As a starting point to the experience, we created an interactive tool that allowed small-business owners to determine where they are on their diversity journey, and then served up content tailored to their responses.
Bloomberg Media created the Roadmap to Diversity content series for Synchrony, a leading consumer financial services company, to help small businesses increase diversity across their workforce, operations and supply chain. With the Atlanta area as the focus, the campaign produced an immersive landing page and an interactive tool, 10 articles, three videos, a podcast, a research study, an infographic, a photo essay and a virtual event, all featuring ATL-based small-business owners and local experts to advise them.
With limited resources, small businesses are challenged to foster diversity. The goal of this campaign was to provide actionable diversity content, insights and guidance specifically designed for small businesses of different sizes, from firms with just a few employees to those with a workforce of 100–500.
The campaign focused on the many aspects of diversity, how diversity is good for business and how it can be achieved by small businesses. Interviews and case studies across the campaign’s multiple channels made this information widely accessible to users on their preferred media platforms.
All assets in the various formats appeared together on the Roadmap to Diversity landing page and were promoted across the Bloomberg Media ecosystem primarily through home page touts and social media—similarly to Bloomberg native content—to maximize user engagement. In addition, the videos and the interactive tool for small businesses pursuing diversity received high-impact display units to highlight and promote these core campaign elements.
Post-campaign research shows that the Roadmap to Diversity program increased the perception (+22%) of Synchrony as a company committed to issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. But proof of the broader impact of the program on the Atlanta small business community was when a local media outlet – Atlanta Business RadioX – heard about what Bloomberg was doing in town and dedicated an entire podcast to interviewing Bloomberg Media Studios senior editor Edward Adams and Synchrony’s Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Corporate Responsibility Officer Michael Matthews about the campaign. This included the exclusive reveal of findings from a proprietary research study conducted by Bloomberg Data Science & Insights of Atlanta-based small business owners on their approaches to diversity.
The campaign delivered nearly 2.4M video views and 30,000 page views, and the interactive quiz and landing pages delivered over 10,000 views. Spotlight ad units delivered 50% higher CTR than benchmark as a driver to the interactive tool.
The Roadmap to Diversity program has been recognized with a Silver Telly for Branded Content - Campaign: D&I.
