The nutritional product market is a sea of sameness. DSM—a global partner and supplier of ingredients for human nutrition and health companies—needed a way to differentiate themselves from a host of competitors with many of the same offerings. When you can’t differentiate based on product, you can do it through your vision and values. We created a campaign that sought to build relationships with customers based on something far more powerful than the products DSM sells: their viewpoint on how those products impact the world at large. The “Products with Purpose” campaign paid off that vision and value story. We created a campaign that inherently differentiated DSM by going beyond the products they sell, delivering a human benefit story. In doing so, we simultaneously grouped the competition together while creating a promise based on a larger, more important vision. Rather than the “what,” we focused on the “why.”

The “Products with Purpose” campaign shows how DSM sees the individual impact of every human nutrition and health product on the world and its population. On one side there is a common health and nutrition product that the competition sees. On the opposite side, we reveal the true purpose of that product and the impact it has on the end user. By drawing attention to purpose, it demonstrates DSM’s unique understanding of the humanity of the end consumer and the real-life benefits that nutritional products may have on the health and well-being of people worldwide.

The campaign had to do 2 things: interest and engage B2B targets across media and rally DSM’s employees around the world to buy into a shared vision. The latter would help the former. We built visuals and stories for each of DSM’s vertical specialties, ranging from food and beverage to early life nutrition, allowing us to meet targets in their own language.

The campaign was executed around the world, translated into multiple languages, and augmented to fit across digital and print media (social, trade journals, banners, website) and as office collateral and decor. The launch took place over a series of months, beginning with a global “Town Hall” for employees. By starting with a rallying cry internally, we ensured the company—in every part of the world—understood and committed to a new company-wide vision for the future, streamlining and selling it to customers.

At last count, the campaign delivered across media in multiple metrics. There were over 6,000,000 earned media impressions, 3500+ clicks-to-website, and a 36% boost in CPM efficiency. Internally, the client reports rave reviews from employees around the world and has already begun investing in new executions of the campaign for different business units.