We helped S&P Indices score a hat trick of coverage in Spain's, Germany's and Switzerland's leading financial papers by devising the first "Equity World Cup".
The challenge:
S&P Indices is globally renowned as the compilers of the S&P500, the world's most invested index and a bellwether for the US economy. However, its broader family of indices are less well known, and in Europe its PR activity has previously been focused on the UK and London-based trades. Our brief is to build on this and extend its profile across EMEA.
Our response:
In order to help S&P Indices break into non-UK business media, we used the news hook of the World Cup to devise the first “Equity World Cup”. This saw national teams progressing in a fantasy tournament based on countries' stock markets’ performance in 2010 to date.
The tactic enabled us to highlight the comprehensive coverage of S&P's equity indices across the globe and provide a platform for S&P to comment. We tailored our press releases for each country to reflect the performance of their team, and led on an emerging market story with the announcement of surprise victors, Ghana.
To illustrate the story we also worked with our in-house studio to design a wall-chart showing the tournament's results.
Results:
We achieved excellent coverage in key target markets. The leading financial papers in Spain, Germany and Switzerland (Cinco Dias, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Finanz und Wirtschaft) all covered the story in some depth, while Spanish daily Cinco Dias included our wall-chart in its online coverage.
