DuPont spends much of their research budget addressing three questions –

• How will we feed a growing population?

• How will we decrease our dependency on fossil fuels?

• How will we protect people and the environment?

This Fortune 100 company has a 210 year history of scientific discovery (Nylon®, Teflon®, Kevlar®, Nomex). In our ever-expanding world, DuPont believes collaboration is the way to tackle humanity’s challenges over the next decade around food, energy and protection—but business decision makers and DuPont employees alike understood little of DuPont’s breadth and capabilities outside of their own silos.

OgilvyEntertainment built The Horizons Project to economically create content that would reestablish the brand as a scientific thought leader amongst business decision makers. Currently in its second season, Horizons investigates the companies and business leaders who are shaping the future of mankind. Season one aired globally on BBC World News and was syndicated on Bloomberg TV in the US and UK, with both networks reaching 450 million people.

Two-minute documentary-style commercials explored global challenges even further, highlighting DuPont’s role in devising solutions to these concerns. Each one illustrates the inventive thinking, materials, and science that enabled these solutions. By premiering as the sole commercial during the Horizons series, these testimonials created an immersive and comprehensive experience, allowing content from the series to live alongside DuPont-specific partnerships. They also aired on DuPont’s YouTube channel, which has garnered over 4M views to date.

Global thought leadership summits translated the campaign's global perspectives into a regional affair for intimate and local audiences in Delhi, Istanbul, Sao Paulo and Jakarta. Moderated by highly respected and recognizable BBC World News anchors such as Nik Gowing, Gavin Esler and Adam Shaw, the debates cultivated candid conversations around the DuPont megatrends of food, protection, and energy.

Finally, a Horizons website created a dynamic hub to bind the program’s content together, featuring video, blog and behind-the-scenes footage. The global conversation lived on through social media extensions such as Twitter and Facebook (over 20,900 likes).

Horizons genuinely sparked conversation. 250 media mentions in season one alone generated 120M earned impressions. Unprompted requests for copies of the show materialized on the website (220,000 visits to date), and encouraging posts like “thank you for the show, keep it up!” appeared on the Facebook wall. DuPont was able to comprehensively disseminate a new brand positioning – “Welcome to The Global Collaboratory” – around the world.