Summary
The Caba ‘Cash Conversation’ campaign by Bottle employed integrated communication strategies across the PESO channels to over-achieve on the objective – growing awareness amongst a niche audience of young accountants, who, unlike their older colleagues, were most affected by poor personal financial health. Before this campaign, the occupational charity struggled to drive engagement with this hard-to-reach audience, who felt caba weren’t relevant to them. This campaign has changed that. Achieving 459% uplift in site traffic and 82% increase in financial assistance care case calls shows it’s catalysed a new relationship between the charity and the audience.

Objective/Brief
The Client Challenge:
Caba, the occupational charity for the ICAEW community, recognised they have a perception issue amongst students and young accountants in the UK. Identified through an ongoing trend of a significant lack of call cases, compared to the much higher level of interaction they had with the older generations of working accountants and sector retirees.

The Brief:
Bottle’s brief was to deliver a month-long, integrated communication campaign that would show a tangible shift in that disenfranchised community.

The Communications Challenge:
Caba are active in digital channels, but weight towards more traditional channels such as trade media and employee internal comms. Bottle orientated this campaign to a digital-first, that felt natural to them, (albeit unnatural and untested to the Caba). And, persuaded the charity to also introduce broadcast, knowing that podcasts are the most relevant channel to under 30’s.

The Measurement Approach:
Using the PESO framework, the integrated communication campaign aimed to:

• Memorable reach in audience-relevant online channels to dial up caba’s visibility.
• Engagement across the online channel mix to evidence the audience overcoming previous perception barriers.
• Uplift in website traffic, podcast downloads and direct call cases as a measure of the audience behaving differently.

Strategy:
The measurement approach focused on three primary KPIs:

• Memorable Reach: Measuring how effectively the target audience is being reached through the online channel mix.
• Brand Engagement: Tracking engagement metrics across the mix of online channels to combat previous resistance.
• Behaviour Change: Monitoring website traffic, podcast downloads and direct call cases to assess if the integrated
  campaign has successfully influenced the target audience.

Applied to the PESO channels, the specific targets set against these KPIs included:

• Paid: 100,000 social impressions
• Earned: 10 pieces of coverage in sector golden target media
• Shared: 5% social average engagement rate (Caba’s own performance benchmark)
• Owned: +25% website traffic, 100 podcast downloads

To track delivery against these performance metrics, measurement tools were refined to:

• Social: Emplifi plus social ad manager platforms (meta, TikTok) for impressions and average engagement rate
• PR: BrandWatch for media coverage volume monitoring, CoverageBook for reach (‘estimated coverage views’)
• Website: Google Analytics (for traffic via all sources), Google Search Console (for queries delivering organic clicks and campaign-relevant, top performing, pages), and Ahrefs (for search visibility of organic keywords)
• Podcast: Acast Insights (for downloads)

It was agreed campaign insights, optimisation recommendations and impact reporting would be delivered at the following
frequency:

• Pre: Upfront qualitative and quantitative research to be delivered 2-months in advance of the campaign live date.
• During: Weekly excel dashboard reporting, tracking the performance metrics against the KPIs.
• Post: In-depth wrap-up report, covering impact delivered and considerations for future campaigns targeting the same audience group and integrated channel mix.

Execution/Implementation:
Campaign Planning:
Qualitative research: A survey amongst 3,000 ICAEW members of varying ages and stages of career to provide clear comparison in pain points, challenges, and motivations.

Social listening: Tracing hashtags in the social media platforms most used by the target audience including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.

Content gap analysis: Understanding where caba were missing the mark with this young audience in giving help and advice on topics (financial, physical, mental health) as well as defining which online channels were not being used by them.

This was carried out 3-months in advance of the agreed go-live date, over a 3-week period, to allow enough time for
campaign production.

Developing the Strategy:
Bottle developed a PESO channel and content framework:
Paid:

• Ads for brand social to promote the podcast to broader numbers of accountants in the UK.
• Boosts for engagement on social channels to engage the ICAEW community.

Earned:

• A podcast launch announcement release for accountancy and podcast trade media.
• A news-gen release revealing caba’s quant research for accountancy trades.
• An advice listicle assets for HR trades.

Shared:

• Organic editorial content for brand social channels.
• A YouTube influencer podcast host to share clips from podcast.
• TikTok micro-influencers to share clips from podcast.

Owned:

• Launch of a new podcast ‘Cash Conversation’ hosted on the caba website and major podcast platforms.
• Video recordings of the podcast hosted on the caba website.
• Creation of a dedicated onsite hub.

Content Production:
Bottle created all necessary assets (written, image, audio, video) to ensure consistent messaging and brand visual identity.

Challenges Overcome:
Caba were initially nervous at launching a new online platform – a podcast – concerned at the level of resource this might require. As Bottle had previous experience in launching this medium for other clients’, it was agreed that Bottle would manage all the necessary production requirements.

Effectiveness of Assignment:
Bottle’s recommendations for the caba ‘Cash Conversation’ integrated communications campaign were designed to effectively cut through a previously unengaged audience group. By employing a research and data-driven approach, the strategy executed was tailored to address the specific needs and behaviours of the target audience, ensuring that the engagement was not only widespread, but also demonstrated it deeply resonated with them.

Channel Performance

• Paid: The campaign achieved a 191.8K total impressions, nearly doubling the target of 100,000. Proving a successful paid social media strategy in delivering broad visibility and reach with the target audience.
• Earned: The campaign secured 19 pieces of earned media trade coverage, surpassing the target of 10. This coverage in sector-specific, golden-target media titles further boosted the visibility of caba among young accountants.
• Shared: With a social engagement rate of 7.32%, beating the target of 5%. This high engagement rate reflects the campaign’s success in creating content that was highly relevant and engaging, fostering active interaction with the target audience on their most active online channel.
• Owned: The campaign resulted in a 459% increase in website traffic, far exceeding the target of 25%. Additionally, the campaign garnered 552 podcast downloads, well above the target of 100. These metrics underscore the effectiveness of the owned media strategies in driving significant audience behaviour change and deepening engagement with caba’s resources.

The value impact of the combined campaign delivery; the caba care team received an 82% increase in financial assistance care cases, of which 47% were under 35 years. This figure has since grown to 53%, showing the longevity of content produced across the PESO channel mix.

Barcelona Principles:
Adhering to the Barcelona Principles, the campaign’s results were comprehensively measured in terms of outputs, outcomes, and impact.
Outputs included the volume of social media impressions and earned media coverage, outcomes were reflected in the engagement metrics and uptick in website traffic, and the impact was evident in the actual calling up showing a significant shift in audience perception and behaviour.
Key Learnings:
To invest in periodic research, both qualitative and quantitative, keeping on top of the ever-changing challenges and motivations of target audience group.
To continue fuelling helpful content across an integrated communication mix, maintaining momentum and visibility amongst the target audience.
To recognise, and be brave, with the opportunities research insights reveal. Including launching brand-new platforms when the relevance is so clear, using the podcast as a key example.