The Ripple effect generator allows all companies in Norway to generate their own commercial, about how they contributes to society. Number and figures are transformed to hundreds of different visuals and texts, with millions of combinations.

As we wanted to create data driven storytelling experience, we paired the tax examples with purpose built 3D models to give a heart warming, visual representation of the public goods and contributions that the companies provide into society. Transforming cold Excel sheets statistics into a sequence shot story, making the company employees and owners proud over their contributions.

Data journey

In Norway, all accounting of stock-based companies is public information, including how much they contribute in taxes. There also exists statistics models on how various types of companies contribute to society based on how much they buy from suppliers, contractors etc.

Implementation

A database was created with detailed financial information (tax paid, revenue, employees etc) on all stock-based Norwegian companies. The model was applied to calculate how much the companies contribute, both directly and indirectly.

Data integration

We also researched and acquired data on what taxes in Norway is spent on. We ended up with a list of examples, including cost of books in primary school, a childbirth in hospital and vaccines. The examples ranged in cost from 20 EUR to about 1 million EUR so that all companies, no matter the size would get a good number of examples.

Application

The financial data on all the 170k Norwegian companies, plus all the tax examples – was imported into the database of our solution. A fast, optimized “autocomplete” search for companies were implemented as well as the algorithm of picking tax examples. Both available to the frontend via the API’s we created.

The response was massive. After 3 months, nearly 25,000 companies had created and shared their own movie. It was almost impossible to browse through Facebook in Norway without at least one new movie appearing at your wall. Estimated 16 millions OTS from sharing alone.

But best of all, people's attitude changed. Local business owners suddenly got the credit they deserved.

The Ripple Effect Generator is a campaign, entirely based on data collection. It merges data from company turnover and number of employees, with data from tax authorities, corporate registers, national directorates, statistics and financial analyzes. And then calculates and translates these individual information into images of social contributions.

DNB has a lot of experience in helping new businesses. A lot of this help it is based on comprehensive data collection and risk analysis. Now they wanted to use this data in a new way. Displace it from their computers and do something tangible with it. In short, give small businesses something they can be proud of and show how much they pay back to the public

So when a user would look up and select a company on the web page, our solution would pick examples of public goods equivalent of their contribution.

In addition, the database also contained data on how much the employees contribute (income taxes etc.), derived from the company where they work.

Norway is known for its major oil industry. When kids start in school, they learn that the country's income and welfare come as a result of this. It is a common belief that what keeps the nation going, is the big national oil company.

But this is not how The Norwegian Bank (DNB) sees it.

Every year DNB support over 5000 startups and new businesses. With this campaign they wanted to give them a hand, and raise awareness of their importance to the Norwegian society. In short, give small businesses something they can be proud of and show how much they pay back to the public.