AFR x Accenture - Nine for Brands

The 2020 Coronavirus pandemic created challenges for Australia’s governments and businesses that few people have seen in their lifetime.

In 2021 the nation was highly focused on returning to growth, and rebooting the economy was a national imperative. The question was, how?

Accenture wanted to spark a positive debate among government and business leaders about Australia’s path to growth, and in doing so position themselves as the trusted experts to solve complex problems with innovative, tech-enabled solutions.

Accenture partnered with Australia’s leading business publication, The Australian Financial Review, to create a dedicated editorial series, “Invest in Australia”.

Using its credibility and scale to reach 3.5 million influential Australians, “Invest in Australia” brought unique insights and perspectives to business decision makers for positioning the private and public sectors to take the nation's economy forward and drive growth.

Source: Roy Morgan Research; people 14+ for the 12 months ending June 2022.

The partnership was built on five Special Reports published by The Australian Financial Review across the year: Growth Nation, Smart Nation, Healthy Nation, Secure Nation and Connected Nation. The series, which began in 2020, provided timely, responsive and engaging snapshots of how the nation’s key economic sectors were responding to the destructive effects of the virus. In doing so, it established the Financial Review and Accenture as trusted experts to help business leaders tackle the big challenges they face daily.

Readers were exposed to Accenture branding with high-impact display placements across the AFR ecosystem in print, digital, and subscriber newsletters.

An interview series was created, featuring Accenture’s senior executives. Thought leadership articles were then integrated into each report in both print and digital format. Interviews were filmed and embedded into digital articles, which were promoted across afr.com and in subscriber newsletters.

‘Working with the AFR, we’ve been able to carve out a valuable partnership to deliver compelling content to business leaders across Australia – and in turn strengthen brand consideration and preference.

We work with the largest organisations across all industries in Australia to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, but the breadth and depth of our expertise is difficult to meaningfully communicate to a broad audience. Presenting the Growth Nation series with the AFR over the last three years has given us a platform for our leaders to share research, thought leadership and insights around how purpose, experience, technology and operations affect the growth of business and the nation as a whole, in the most respected business publication.’

Brad Smith, ANZ Brand & Advertising Lead – Accenture

The campaign was a huge success. It delivered on the business challenge we set out to address.

The campaign positioned Accenture as thought leaders in this conversation and delivered significant uplifts in awareness, familiarity and NPS with AFR Business Decision Makers:

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