RISCURA INVESTMENT - UPSHOT
If we ask the right questions, we can shape better futures.
Every day, financial institutions make decisions that impact the lives of ordinary South Africans. But the truth is that most see numbers, not people. We wanted to bring the human need of care to every facet of investment influence. Introducing Upshot – a collaboration between investment nerds and world-renowned authors to turn financial concepts into not-so-far-fetched stories about our future.
Campaign Awards:
Loerie Awards (Creative)
Print crafts: writing - Gold
Branded content - radio and audio - Bronze
Out of home crafts - Craft certificate
Creative Circle (Creative)
Out of home - direct - 1st place
Out of home - 1st place
Radio and audio - 3rd place
Bookmark Awards (digital)
Breakthrough on a budget - finalist (pending)
Best use of programmatic media - finalist (pending)
New Generation Awards (Digital)
Integrated - Finalist
Vector (UK literary awards)
Top 10 of 2021 - Science Fiction from Africa
THE BOOK CAMPAIGN
The book is a key part of the campaign and will be delivered to the campaign’s most important audiences.
It features seven stories, delivered by six authors, all curated by international best selling author Lauren Beukes. Both Lauren Beukes and Tade Thompson are Arthur C. Clarke Award winners (one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards). Some of the other writers include young new voices out of Johannesburg, to best-sellers based in Cambridge. Each story is also preceded by the investment concepts which inspired them. Several hundred of the books were made available, and were sent to key potential clients, as well as the media and influencers who helped us build the lore around it.
Whilst the book was read enough times to get onto the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list, we reached an additional 7.6 million people. The campaign was discussed by various major news channels.
THE AUDIO CAMPAIGN
To drive awareness of the audiobooks specifically on Spotify, we ran an audio campaign which consisted of six ads. Here are my two favs. To produce them, we used various AI software which influenced the scripting, provided the voice for each ad and composed and mixed the audio. So, doing our best to create in ways which lived up to the campaign’s promise of a new future none of us are used to yet.
We turned three of the books - Pre-loved, Undercurrency and Last Shot into audio books which were released across Podcast platforms like Spotify, etc. as well as being accessible from the campaign site.
To drive awareness of the audiobooks specifically on Spotify, we ran an audio campaign which consisted of six ads. To produce them, we used various AI software which influenced the scripting, provided the voice for each ad and composed and mixed the audio. So, doing our best to create in ways which lived up to the campaign’s promise of a new future none of us are used to yet.
THE WEBSITE
The campaign website formed a fundamental part of the campaign. And gave access to all the stories for anyone who was interested. (We reached over 7 million people, making the anthology a best seller at a global level.) It’s a sizeable site, so it’s best to head straight there if you’d like to see more of it as well as soak up some of the stories or the financial concepts which inspired them.