Best Use of Mobile - Vodafone Spotlight Stories
Introducing our webpage entry for the ‘Best Use of Mobile’ category for the Corporate Content Awards Europe 2023
Vodafone Spotlight Stories
Welcome to Spotlight Stories—a mobile-first Campaign
Today's tech-savvy audiences want dynamic digital experiences—think story-driven, multimedia content that is visual and fast.
And, most importantly, made for mobile.
Here at Vodafone Group, we wanted to harness the power of storytelling to produce exciting new content to share our purpose with our global audience directly on their mobile phone.
Last year we launched Spotlight Stories—our first content campaign designed for mobile-first.
By leveraging technology from Google’s popular Web Stories format, Spotlight Stories combines video, audio, text, images and animation. It seeks to transmit compelling content experiences about how technology and humans can work together to deliver positive change.
What are Vodafone Spotlight Stories?
As a purpose-led telecommunications company, Vodafone strives to connect for a better future by improving lives through technology and enabling an inclusive sustainable digital society.
We’re involved in many exciting projects and initiatives across Europe and Africa. These range from tackling digital poverty to utilising new technologies to support agriculture, healthcare and improve road safety.
By bringing these experiences and learning to life through unique content journeys, Spotlight Stories aims to create a new and exciting entry to the Vodafone brand and our purpose.
The interactive content where users can swipe through stories at their own pace has helped us boost engagement and connection with our global audiences.
And by presenting content in a fast, digestible and accessible way, we’ve explored a wider range of stories in greater depth—stories which might’ve not received the same level of prominence if published in a more traditional format such as a news article or downloadable PDF.
Going Mobile-first
To deliver a digital experience that speaks first and foremost to our external audience, we prioritised creating mobile-first experiences. By doing this, we could ensure we catered to the 90% of traffic that comes from mobile devices, providing better and more engaging experiences for all our audiences globally.
Key challenges
- To effectively collate stories from across multiple markets, bringing them together under a common thread and consistent format under the Vodafone Group umbrella.
- To drive reputation and understanding in our audiences. For example, how to educate European audiences on developments in IoT in farming in Africa.
- To create engaging content that will retain mobile audiences within seconds. By stepping away from the PDF to more progressive and somewhat unknown web story functionality, we wanted to present mobile-first content that would stop our audience in their doom-scrolling tracks.
- To bring parity and creative balance to all our markets, as some are ahead of others when it comes to asset creation to support articles, e.g. not having photos or videos.
Spotlight in action
We have published five Spotlight Stories since launching the platform. These are:
The Power of 5G
Learn how 5G technology is enhancing road safety and public transport systems, improving air quality and helping make us more energy efficient.
Innovation in Healthcare
Discover how 5G and the Internet of Things is transforming the healthcare industry and helping advance medical practices and improve lives around the world.
Learning to Disrupt
Explore how technology can improve access to online learning and transform how students engage with resources.
Internet of Things and the Future of Agriculture
Discover digital agriculture and the impact of digitalisation on farming across Europe and Africa.
Automotive - Greener, Smarter, Safer
Learn how technology is helping connect cars, make roads safer and ensure transport systems are more sustainable.
Telling stories that matter—in a way that makes sense
In a world where standing out on our audience's social feeds is becoming ever more challenging, Spotlight Stories has acted as a tactical tool in helping us deliver our purpose message with greater impact and reach.
Here are some key benefits of the Spotlight Story format:
A superior user experience
By being mobile-first, users have more control over how and when they engage with the stories.
Versatile
The format enables us to present various content types, from animations to infographics, in a form that aligns with today’s mobile-first audience.
Simple interface (UI)
Using Google's web story format, Spotlight Stories are user-centric, intuitively designed, and quick and easy to create, adapt, and update.
Consistency
Brand typefaces and colours are loaded into our library, ensuring all story creators are always on brand and there’s consistency in design and formatting.
Sustainable & future-proofed technology
With no restricted coding, we can quickly produce Spotlight Stories with a lean and agile team without needing extra support from engineering and design specialists.
Driving engagement
Spotlight Stories feature on the Vodafone Group website home page and are promoted across our social channels. Reach and engagement levels with the content has been significant, with sentiment being positive overall.
187,000
Unique readers
8.95m
Social media impressions
385,000
Social media engagements
93,000
Link clicks from social media
* Data from 1 Aug 2021 - 30 Jul 2022
Impact at a closer glance
Our most successful Spotlight is Automotive - Greener, Smarter, Safer, which has achieved the highest level of clicks of all our stories to date, also making it our most read article in August 2022.
Impressions
2,609,481
Engagements
144,128
Engagement rate
5.52%
Link clicks
59,472
Shares by employees
80
Total unique readers
38,296
So, what next?
We’re excited to build on the positive engagement we’ve achieved with our Spotlight Stories. We’re committed to constantly improving the experience for all audiences by continuing to learn, review and adapt. For example, we’re running split tests to evaluate how shorter, less detailed content performs against the lengthier pieces.
Looking forward, we’re exploring new ways to utilise the web stories format to benefit other business areas. Such as marketing and sales, where spotlight stories can be used as case studies and shared with clients to support relationship building and brand building.