Financial Times Calls On Public to Envision A Better Future

A line from the Financial Times’ new global campaign might sum up how many people feel after the past 18 months: “Let’s not go back to a past which wasn’t working anyway,” FT columnist Sarah O’Connor says in the ad. This rallying cry is one of numerous voices featured in the FT’s “Letters to this New World” campaign, which encourages people to reflect on lessons from the pandemic and shape a better future. The thought-provoking ads feature a series of open letters addressing themes such as climate change, inequality, work and digital finance. FT journalists including O’Connor, Martin Wolf, Gillian Tett, Pilita Clark, John Burn-Murdoch and Paul Murphy wrote letters for the campaign. The publication invited all employees to contribute and is now asking the public to submit their own letters, some of which will appear in later ads. Other lines include, “A return to life as it was would be devastating for our climate” and “Expect the unexpected. Protect the weak. Cooperate globally.” 'Covid has offered a real opportunity for reflection,' said Finola McDonnell, chief communications and marketing officer at the FT. Created by The Brooklyn Brothers, “Letters to This New World” will run globally throughout the autumn, across TV, cinema, out-of-home, digital and audio. “‘Letters’ offers an opportunity for catharsis,” said Finola McDonnell, chief communications and marketing officer at the FT. “But it is also something we can act upon. We hope business leaders, politicians and policy makers will see some of the themes and think, if the FT is thinking along these lines, we should all be thinking along those lines.” The letters are the next stage in the FT’s “New Agenda” campaign, which launched in 2019 and promotes the publication as the leading destination for analysis and leadership on important global trends and issues. “New Agenda” is “rooted in this idea of a better, more responsible form of capitalism,” McDonnell explained. The first iteration of the campaign aimed to stimulate debate among business and policy leaders, with lines such as, “Capitalism. Time for a reset” and “Can air travel be sustainable?” Some of those questions have become even more urgent since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, McDonnell said. Another significant shift has been a “rebalance between the personal and individual needs and the needs of the corporate or political world,” she added. “Covid has offered a real opportunity for reflection, for thinking about the personal as well as the corporate,” she continued. “‘Letters for this New World’ is a natural evolution of ‘New Agenda.’ It’s about thinking of what’s next for capitalism and economic development, but also about how we balance that better with other priorities that the pandemic has brought to the fore.” The letters stimulate debate about global trends and themes. The FT’s motivation for starting such conversations reflects the changing role of news media, McDonnell observed. “We’ve gone from that print world where the newspaper speaks and you listen, to a digital era where a publication speaks and you have a right of reply,” she said. “We’re creating spaces and forums where readers and users of the FT can speak to each other, so journalism becomes a stimulus for conversation and debate. We’re encouraging people to take ideas like these and evolve them—we expect readers to come up with their own solutions and think about how to address these themes.” Along with the brand campaign, the FT is running an acquisitions drive to expand its audience. It said it reached record highs in readership and subscriptions in 2020 amid the pandemic. The FT has a global print and digital circulation of 1.1 million and reaches 26 million readers every month. Brand Appetite Around Green Thinking Is Growing for The Financial Times

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Financial Times Calls On Its Readers to Dream Up a Better Future After Covid

The global campaign features open letters from FT staff and the public

Brittaney Kiefer

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Brittaney Kiefer