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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 iphone

Spotlight in action

We have published five Spotlight Stories since launching the platform. These are:

VDF – 5G

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. 

VDF - Innovations in healthcare 0

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.

VDF - Learning to Distrupt 0

Learning to Disrupt

Explore how technology can improve access to online learning and transform how students engage with resources.

VDF – Internet of Things

Internet of Things and the Future of Agriculture

Discover digital agriculture and the impact of digitalisation on farming across Europe and Africa. 

VDF – Automotive greener, smarter, safer

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.

Frame 4

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.

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Learn more about Vodafone’s global corporate website in our
entry for the ‘Best Use of Digital’ category, The Corporate Content Awards Europe 2023