THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project
From the 7th Annual Shorty Awards

ExxonMobil Inspires the Next Generation to “Be An Engineer"

Entered in Social Good Campaign

Objectives

ExxonMobil launched Be An Engineer (BAE) in fall 2014 to help kids better understand the engineering field and the opportunities it offers. The program – which includes a range of original and shared content (including the launch of beanengineer.com) – highlights the meaningful contributions engineers make in the world, engages engineering influencers and provides resources to encourage students to choose engineering careers. In the first six weeks, the program reached approximately 19.4 million people across Twitter, LinkedIn, Vine, BuzzFeed, YouTube and beyond.

The need for engineers across many disciplines has never been greater. According to research from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce, college graduates with engineering degrees can expect relatively low unemployment rates and higher wages when compared to their non-engineering peers. In addition, the initiative was developed with the following facts in mind:

Strategy and Execution

The BAE initiative is a truly integrated communications campaign incorporating social / digital media, public relations, advertising, a media partnership (with CNN Digital), internal communications and public affairs. During the program, ExxonMobil exceeded its goals of driving people to the BAE website; generating awareness and favorability of the program; increasing the number of social media followers; and creating interest among target audiences.

Objectives

Goal 1: Generate action by driving 1.4 million page views to the new beanengineer.com website.

Goal 2: Generate awareness and favorability of BAE by leveraging online video assets created for the media partnership with CNN digital. Generate 2 million combined views of the eight videos created as part of the CNN "Build Tomorrow" video series.

Goal 3: Engage ExxonMobil social media followers and non-followers in the BAE effort and increase followers on Twitter, LinkedIn, Vine and YouTube channels and views of the sponsored "What kind of engineer should you be?" BuzzFeed Quiz.

Goal 4: Create buzz about and interest in BAE among the target audiences and generate organic engagement.

Key Features

Be An Engineer targeted multiple audiences and generated a series of integrated, original digital content across a range of channels to communicate the rewards of engineering. The team used a variety of tactics to engage target audiences and establish a movement around this crucial issue.

Metrics / Results

Result 1: BeAnEngineer.com received 1,266,911 unique visitors and 2,431,400 total page views in six weeks.

Result 2: CNN "Build Tomorrow" received 3,261,279 total video views across all 8 videos.

Result 3: 19,431,262 total engagements across Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, Vine, BuzzFeed and YouTube.

Result 4: Research revealed that the overall campaign resonated amongst all target groups, performing strongest with girls/women. The research also showed that the initiative inspired teens (+52%) to consider engineering as a profession – particularly young girls (+94%). Unsolicited responses to the campaign included:

Media

Video for ExxonMobil Inspires the Next Generation to “Be An Engineer"

Entrant Company / Organization Name

BBDO, Universal McCann, Ketchum, Widmeyer, Huge and Cohn & Wolfe on behalf of ExxonMobil

Link