Driving economic opportunities in APAC
. . .LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. The company recognised that it needed to better understand the opportunities APAC communities are seeking, with a view to changing their perceptions and reinforcing its purpose in helping them achieve their definition of success.
As LinkedIn’s agency of record in Singapore, RICE conceptualised and developed the LinkedIn Opportunity Index, with the aim to gain insights into the aspirations of people across APAC as well as barriers that stood in their way. The single-minded proposition is for LinkedIn to own the “opportunity” space by demonstrating in-depth understanding of their members’ motivations and challenges.
LinkedIn partnered independent market research firm GfK to define metrics that measure “opportunity” and conduct a quantitative online survey in nine markets across APAC. The research was conducted between September and October 2018, with over 11,000 survey respondents aged 18-60 across various career stages and household income groups.
Armed with the results, RICE was tasked to create an insights-driven integrated campaign. The primary objectives of the campaign were to reach out to LinkedIn’s 165 million members across APAC and millions more non-members to generate awareness of the study and its findings, establish LinkedIn as a thought leader in creating economic opportunities, and reinforce LinkedIn’s vision of helping communities seek opportunities and achieve success.
Given the breadth and depth of the study, we were able to gather a deeper understanding into perceptions of opportunities of different markets, age groups and gender. This presented an opportunity for us to leverage the key findings to create tailored and highly relevant content to target the right audience at the right time.
We used a phased approach in our communications to roll out the campaign. Dissecting the data, we created different narratives by tying the findings to key calendar milestones – Chinese New Year, International Women’s Day for instance – humanising our storytelling with authentic stories and cultural references in different markets.
For the execution, we extended beyond earned media relations. Besides press releases and media interviews, we developed and conceptualised three videos, an interactive HTML5 game, a whitepaper and blog posts to help bring the LinkedIn Opportunity Index narratives and findings to life.
The results? Multiple tailored narratives were developed and amplified across earned and paid channels to reach LinkedIn’s target audience across APAC. Research insights remained relevant for over three months, and creative and digital content extended conversations beyond traditional media.
Over 2,000 stories were generated in media outlets including CNBC Asia, The Straits Times, The Times of India, Xinhua, Hong Kong Economic Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Philippine Star. The campaign garnered 93M+ impressions and 12M+ engagement for videos, and there were over 300+ whitepaper downloads, generating 84 MQLs, 39 SDLs.
The regional campaign has since gained internal recognition and is set to roll out as a global campaign.