Online Investor Experience

Faced with a tough economy and a clear shift by stakeholder audiences to the Web, this legendary company made the decision to move its annual report online. While potential savings were considerable, an even greater opportunity beckoned: the chance to fashion a more relevant and effective stakeholder communications platform. In 2008 we approached the task with a blank slate and a simple challenge: How best to leverage interactive tools and a wealth of content at our disposal. From the outset, our goal was to not simply to re-create the print experience online. Rather, our intention (and the client’s) was to accomplish something entirely new: to design an experience that made the company easier than ever to understand — and made deeper content, if the user desired, easier than ever to find.

Solution

With great brands to work with and some of the best product advertising in the world, we were able to build a robust experience right from the get-go, in 2008. We then leveraged audience research to improve that experience in 2009, offering a rich mélange of video, imagery and bite-size nuggets of information — content delivered exactly the way Campbell’s audience preferred. The most important innovation: a home page dashboard that made the entire story scannable and allowed users to reach deeper content on any subject with a single click. In this and other ways, the report exemplified best practices we’ve defined for online annuals. Other features included the use of video to raise the profile of company leaders — in this case, CEO Doug Conant discusses economic challenges and emerging opportunities. They also included a quick look at the three pillars of Campbell’s corporate strategy: Winning in the Marketplace, Winning in the Workplace, and Winning in the Community.

Results

The online report has not only saved Campbell hundreds of thousands of dollars; it has enabled the company to fully leverage the medium investors today use most. At the same time, it has increased the conversation with all the company’s other stakeholders, including those most interested in the company’s performance as a member of a greater global society. Noting that the site fully integrates corporate responsibility into the mix, Campbell’s vice president for social responsibility called it a “great benchmark.”

“Thank you for reflecting the alignment of financial performance and sustained societal success,” he wrote. “I’m proud to share this report broadly with ANY definition of stakeholder.”