The World Gold Council is the leading organisation in the gold industry, committed to shaping the conversation around gold with insights, research and guidance. Their ask to us was to raise the volume of gold’s in the world, increase awareness of its impact, to demonstrate its purveyance through history and its usefulness for the future. Gold’s impact goes beyond economics and as a store of value, and our objective was to create conversation and drive global audiences to the World Gold Council’s primary website so they can provide impartial research and insights to a wider, intrigued audience.

The Golden Thread is a five-part documentary series tracing gold’s impact on humanity’s past, present and future — from the surface of Mars to the engine bay of a McLaren supercar; from ancient religious sites to state-of-the-art labs.

We created The Golden Thread to show a global audience the untold, expansive story of gold. Presented by Dr. Hannah Fry, each episode features commentary from world-renowned experts across varied disciplines. We dug deep into historical, present-day and promising science, tech, art, culture and medicine to uncover how gold changes the world. Experts across four continents helped to craft 56 stories across five topics, with viewers able to explore the bespoke website freely from any entry-point that piques their interest.

The impact of gold on humanity’s past, present and future is a story that extends far beyond economics and embellishment. To bring this story to a global audience, we created five categories of stories across space, technology, culture, medicine and circularity – each with further deeper-dive stories. This unleashed the ability for targeted (and retargeted) messaging to specific markets and audiences, much more than with a single film.

Each episode’s topic was chosen to allow for targeting of specific stories towards key demographics of institutional and HNW retail investors. Each episode included two experts that offer unique insights, increasing the relevance to any individual viewer across the series.

The content of the episodes broadens the consideration of gold as an investable asset, introducing the ideas of innovation-funding and clean-energy technology investments that leverage the unique material properties of gold.

Implementation, Placement, Scale, Brand relevance, Touch points, Materials, style elements, methods and process, Timeline

Presented by Dr. Hannah Fry, each episode features commentary from world-renowned experts across varied disciplines. The Golden Thread was serialised over five weeks on YouTube and was viewed over 52.3 million times.

The bespoke WebGL website also hosts episodes on thegoldenthread.gold.org, releasing all on launch day. The visuals of the website reuse the 3D modelling used in the Unreal Engine-powered virtual production of the host shoots. Alongside these episodes, additional stories are available on the website that allow visitors to follow The Golden Thread deeper into the archives of art and culture, and the visions for future technology, medicine and energy. These deeper stories include an interactive 360° exploration of the Martian surface, audio interviews, photo galleries and original illustrations. Media across social and DV360 directed to the website, where viewers explored these additional 44 stories.

Alongside science and innovation, we share stories of gold’s cultural impact. As India is a global leader in gold demand, we spoke to Associate Professor Dr Radha Kumar in Mumbai, an expert in early Indian religion and performance. We also spoke to US artist Tawny Chatmon, who uses gold in her art to “reposition black bodies into a style of work that we have been excluded from in western culture”.

The campaign’s website was visited 13.2 million times, with 92% of all traffic to World Gold Council’s primary website gold.org originating here. The Golden Thread has been live on YouTube and bespoke website since 16 November 2021, with deeper stories released late January 2022. The campaign remains available on both platforms.

• The episodes have been viewed over 52.3 million times on YouTube alone.

• The campaign’s website was visited 13.2 million times, with 92% of all traffic to World Gold Council’s primary website gold.org originating here.

• The World Gold Council grew it’s YouTube subscribers by 10.8x, adding 1 new subscriber every 2 minutes.