Challenge/Brief: This year Statoil, one of the largest companies in the world and number one energy company among the Nordics, made the important decision to rebrand under the new name Equinor. This was a high-stakes announcement about a brand responsible for Norway’s immense wealth and one with a significant amount of existing loyalty. GPJ was engaged with only a short lead time and the mandate to develop a global broadcast strategy to seamlessly announce the news internationally to Statoil employees, media and stakeholders in a consolidated and fail-proof way.
Insight: Equality is a core value of Equinor and one GPJ took to heart when devising our strategy. It was important for all Equinor employees to experience the same level of anticipation and excitement when it came time for senior leadership to make the historic announcement. We created a room template to be rolled out across every Equinor office – ensuring consistent physical branding and AV configuration to make sure the live broadcast would feel equally momentous across all offices, not just at headquarters.
Solution: Equinor’s executive launch mandate was “failure is not an option.” So to make sure nothing could fail, we had back up plans for our back up plans. The entire launch speech by the CEO and other executive team members was pre-recorded, edited, and placed on two different password protected sites that could be accessed if the live broadcast went down. We also arranged for a special satellite truck to be stationed outside of HQ also equipped with a bonded 4G system to mitigate any connection issues.
Result: Statoil’s historic global announcement went off without a hitch. Approximately 100 regional town halls gathered to watch the live stream simultaneously, totalling 10,700 viewers, with an impressive 85% of office employees and 50% of onshore plants workers tuning in. After successfully executing Statoil’s rebrand livestream, GPJ continued supporting a variety of follow up initiatives including the production of drone video capture of employee formed Equinor installations.
