Though the world’s elite are accustomed to talking and negotiating with each other, our research showed one group whose wellbeing and advice they value more highly. Their children!

Famously shown in Zuckerberg’s letter to his daughter, the opinions and fate of the world’s children weighs heavily on the minds of the powerful. The innocence of youth brings with it a creative power born from a sense that anything and everything is possible.

It was unlikely that Davos would invite children to the forum and more unlikely that a child could afford the $585,000 WEF annual membership fee.

#YoungWEF was devised to harness the creativity of youth and give children a platform to share their view on the future of the world’s healthcare, where it’s going and what is needed to get there, and to take these outputs and put them front and centre for the Davos elite and Philips consumers.

Our campaign had three key phases: WEF 2017, ‘Introducing Jason’ & WEF 2018. Each phase had a film at its core with accompanying social assets, thought leadership and user generated content.

WEF 2017 featured a host of children pitching their visions of the healthcare of the future, describing innovations that could change the lives of billions.

Post WEF, we created a new job for one of the children. Jason became ‘Philips Innovation Leader’, where he reported directly into the Philips CEO Frans Van Houten and pitched him his innovation – the ‘Health Stick’.

In 2018 we brought it back to the present and instead of asking the children to predict the future, we asked them solve the very real healthcare problems the world is facing now.

The campaign was transcreated and shared by Philips teams around the world, activated locally in across 14+ countries.

Our approach systematically solved Philips’ two-fold issue. Not only did we capture the attention of WEF Delegates and hugely increase Philips’ success at the event and beyond, we also ensured that the public viewed the company’s involvement in the World Economic Forum as a useful and important activity.

At the forum itself Philips saw a 300% increase in bilateral meetings increasing from a previous record of 20 to 96. Philips’ visibility at the forum also vastly increased with Frans Van Houten invited to an additional 6 CEO speaking roles, another marked 300% increase. Perhaps most importantly, however, were the 22 business opportunities Philips secured at the event, which represented growth of 10% from the previous year, ensuring that they were able to progress further in their goal of improving the lives of 3bn people a year by 2025. On social across the entirety campaign, the content generated a huge 38 million impressions, 2.6 million engagements and 12.2 million views of the films.

Internally the activity at WEF 2017 and Jason’s day as Innovation Leader pushed a further 40 employees to engage in the Hour of Code scheme, volunteering their time to teach the future leaders of the world some of the essential skills they will need to succeed and become the innovators of tomorrow.

For a highly targeted campaign aimed at a selection of key delegates, this was a huge success for Philips and has gone a long way to establishing their activity on the ground at WEF for 2019.

The World Economic Forum is an extraordinarily busy event, both to attend and to witness in the media. The #YoungWEF campaign utilised an approach which leveraged PR to lift awareness of Philips' presence at the event whilst also positioning the brand in the mind of delegates and every day consumers as experts in healthcare and health technology. This approach garnered huge results for the brand in a way that nothing else would have done with WEF itself sharing the campaign as a best in class example of a partner working with The Forum.

Philips brought the innocence of youth and creative minds of kids straight to Davos. Using content mapping, six social media platforms and geo-targetted paid media, we created a content stream which would appear directly in the newsfeed of WEF delegates, influencers and the media, reaching our target audiences throughout the World Economic Forum and beyond .

Not only did we provide them with some amusing content, we also positioned Philips as a positive, future facing brand through curated thought leadership from a passionate C-Suite.

This strategy was used as a springboard to solidify and confirm Philips’ commitment to the world’s future leaders both during and beyond the Forum. Our longer term strategy saw the creation of a unique new job at Philips and a program that ran alongside the internationally recognised Hour of Code.

As an official partner of the World Economic Forum, Philips joined a handful of the world’s elite in Davos with the aim of driving access to healthcare up the agenda of the most pressing issues facing the world.

With more than 3,000 participants from 100 countries — including 1,200 CEOs, 50 heads of state and government, and dozens of public intellectuals, media titans and career social activists – not to mention 280 media leaders and 230 reporting press, cutting through the noise is always a challenge.

Philips’ issue was two-fold:

1. How does it maximise its exposure at the Forum…

2. …and how does it ensure the everyday consumer that it is representing the world’s best interests with its mission of improving the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2025?