Our employees across the world felt a degree of uncertainty about the agency overall. They were questioning our relevance in an increasingly digital and millennial world. We needed to recapture our core culture of innovation and re-inspire the network.

To solve the problem, we created multiple platforms to share our rich heritage & pioneering spirit.

Activations included:

-A powerful mission and manifesto video, translated into 10 languages and distributed to employees.

-Revitalization of the original 1864 J. Walter Thompson logo

- The Commodore Challenge, an internal idea incubator that invited employees to submit their most innovative ideas. We received 800+ submissions globally.

-Illustrated email and social media campaign featuring 25 stories our most pioneering ideas from our company’s history.

-An interactive timeline capturing our history of innovation.

-A scholarship program in support of aspiring female creatives.

-Panel discussions at Cannes, Spikes Asia & Advertising Week to discuss the lack of women in creative leadership.

-Our 24-hour 150th anniversary party that started in New Zealand and ended in California. A website captured the celebration from across social media under the hashtag #JWT150 and brought everyone together for one, spectacular day.

This campaign demonstrates a global, multi-platform initiative that struck at the heart of employee concerns and re-inspired a historic agency.

Activations included:

-A powerful mission and manifesto video, translated into 10 languages and distributed to employees.

-Revitalization of the original 1864 J. Walter Thompson logo

- The Commodore Challenge, an internal idea incubator that invited employees to submit their most innovative ideas. We received 800+ submissions globally.

-Illustrated email and social media campaign featuring 25 stories our most pioneering ideas from our company’s history.

-An interactive timeline capturing our history of innovation.

-A scholarship program in support of aspiring female creatives.

-Panel discussions at Cannes, Spikes Asia & Advertising Week to discuss the lack of women in creative leadership.

-Our 24-hour 150th anniversary party that started in New Zealand and ended in California. A website captured the celebration from across social media under the hashtag #JWT150 and brought everyone together for one, spectacular day.

SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY: Among our employees, we saw 6,978 social media mentions about our anniversary and pioneering spirit. We also saw 15,443,377 impressions during the year. 96% of this was overwhelmingly positive and 66% of it was passionate about J. Walter Thompson.

EMPLOYEE SURVEY RESULTS: An end of the year survey across all 10,000 employees with an 82% participation rate found our employees were:

HAPPY- 9 of 10 were happy with the work they were doing and happier than four years ago.

INVIGORATED - Feeling a strong sense of company spirit and teamwork, across all regions.

ENCOURAGED - Felt encouraged to be pioneers. Most said they were now always looking for new and better ways to do things.

PRESS: During the year, countless articles were published internationally about our agency’s re-focused sense of purpose, ranging from The New York Times to the Globe and Mail to Campaign India.