With people being bombarded by news from every angle and from a wide variety of sources, it’s no wonder there has been a decline in trust in news from both businesses and consumers. In fact, according to Reuters’ 2021 Digital News Report, only 44% of people globally say they trust news most of the time.

As such, factual, unbiased information has never been more important as businesses and media owners look to accurately report and make business decisions that impact every facet of consumers' lives.

In this tumultuous landscape, Reuters was looking for growth through both new segments and adjacent markets. The brand needed to be extended and refreshed to driver broader resonance and position Reuters as the go-to destination for accurate and up-to-date information. This was critical for Reuters to drive synergies in its marketing efforts and build a long-term competitive advantage across the diverse audiences it serves.

We positioned Reuters as the ultimate source of trusted news and information. We designed a campaign that would create maximum impact with both film and OOH to showcase Reuters' core offering of real-time, accurate news without agenda - just the story in its purest form.

Our film is made up of 72 news stories, sourced from Reuters' own photojournalism and voiced by 11 Reuters journalists around the world, including Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wa Lone. Arrested while investigating a massacre in Myanmar and sentenced to 7-years in prison, Lone was released after more than 500 days served. His voice, amongst others, reminds us why Reuters truly is ‘The Source’.

We expanded this further, using journalism’s most powerful tool, quotation marks, to frame the subject of Reuters’ photojournalism. Not only are quotation marks a powerful branding device, but also a visual shorthand for ‘The Source’, allowing the story to speak for itself.

Reuters works tirelessly to build relationships with businesses worldwide to create, verify and distribute critical news to markets in real time. Reuters customers, including broadcasters, publishers, corporations and more.

In the face of declining trust in news, a blurring media set and the commoditization of news content, we had to find a new way to articulate the increasing relevance of Reuters’ core offer to this audience.

With 170 years of experience and held to a strict code of ethics called The Trust Principals, Reuters has strong credentials of delivering accurate news as it is and as it happens. We chose to lean into this heritage to reinforce the strength and trust within the brand and present Reuters as the original source of information that informs so many business decisions and strategies.

We launched our film and out of home campaign in September 2021, as Reuters marked its 170th year in business.

We targeted businesses and Reuters existing customers through their owned channels, including social media and its website. The film received paid media support for a period of three months to maximise reach and drive further awareness of the Reuters brand.

The ‘out of home’ work ran in the UK and New York in two-week bursts in September and November 2021, including locations which had heavy footfall from their targeted business audiences, such as Canary Wharf, London’s central business district. Included in the out of home activity was a seven-screen digital site on the jumbotron outside of Reuters New York office in Times Square.

As Reuters first-ever global brand campaign, The Source helped shine a light on the unique and robust business proposition Reuters has to offer, leading to over 100,000 professionals regularly engaging with Reuters.com.

The campaign received enormous PR pick up, delivering over 38m unique views. Sources included key business titles including Yahoo!, Business Insider, Bloomberg and Marketwatch, amongst others. The film gained over 2 million organic video views, an 85% uplift in view-through rates, +54% above benchmarks, and +12% ad recall.

In a controlled test, we have also seen a huge impact in response rates (an impressive 20% increase in conversion and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition) for those exposed to the brand work versus those who have not seen the brand work.

The static executions also saw 1.5 million impressions across Reuters social channels, with social engagement +15% on Twitter and +41% on Facebook against industry benchmarks.