The Financial Times’ ‘Letters to This New World’ Highlights Lessons from the Pandemic to Help Shape the Future

The Financial Times today launches its latest brand campaign, titled ‘Letters to this New World’, developed with The Brooklyn Brothers. As we emerge from the height of the pandemic, the campaign encourages public reflection on life before and after and gives voice to the lessons learned. It is the latest evolution of the FT’s New Agenda brand platform, which promotes the FT as the leading destination for analysis and leadership on the most important global trends and themes.

The content-led campaign features a series of hard-hitting open letters addressing themes like climate change, the world of work, digital finance and global inequality. FT journalists including Martin Wolf, Gillian Tett, Pilita Clarke, John Burn-Murdoch, Sarah O’Connor and Paul Murphy have contributed. In fact, all FT employees were invited to contribute, giving the campaign a strong inside-out dimension. Members of the public will also be invited to submit their own letters, with the strongest contributions featuring in the advertising campaign.

Finola McDonnell, CCMO at the FT, said: “The pandemic has given everyone pause to reflect on what matters in life and how we could organise ourselves differently in future. We wanted to capture some of those reflections and put them out there for business leaders and those in positions of power to think about and act upon. We are at an inflection point, and the FT is positioned to encourage and lead debate about what comes next".

George Bryant, CCO of The Brooklyn Brothers, said: “The global pandemic has wrought change and demanded evolution – economically and socially – on a scale that no one could imagine. Letters to this New World is a global platform for FT and its community of leaders to share ambitions and collectively write a new agenda.”

The campaign goes live around the world today, spearheaded by stylistic quotes drawn from the content. Alongside the FT’s own print and online editions, the global brand creative will run on digital, audio, in cinemas and out of home, reaching audiences in the UK, US, EMEA and APAC. A 30 second TV ad titled ‘The Speech’ will air in the UK, US and Germany. The campaign will also feature at FT Live events and through FT partnerships, sponsorships and external communications.

‘Letters to this new world’ will run throughout Autumn across all regions in tandem with an integrated acquisition campaign.

In 2020 the FT reached record highs in readership and subscriptions, seeing a surge in readership as the pandemic took hold globally. The FT has a global print and digital circulation of 1.1m and reaches 26 million readers every month.