Chevron/McGarryBowen | The 2019 Excellence in Marketing and Communications Awards

Describe the Challenge

Chevron relies upon the expertise of STEM professionals to drive their business. But American companies like Chevron face a potential challenge to their ability to source top-tier talent. A 2012 report indicates that America will need 1 million more Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) workers by 2022 to keep up with the STEM economy.

While women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, they only hold about 25 percent of STEM jobs. Chevron believes greater diversity and inclusion in STEM will lead to better solutions and can help close the gender wage gap, given that STEM jobs are typically higher-paying jobs. How can we work to address this disparity? With inspiration, that's how.

Define the Target Audience

We targeted the informed public in the U.S. with an emphasis on women. The media ranged from TV in 10 key markets, along with national preroll, social media, STEM-focused events, and STEM/Women Influencer conferences. Through Chevron’s internal channels, we targeted Chevron employees globally, a key audience with stories to share.

Describe the Solution

From research, we learned that role models can play a critical role in encouraging young women to pursue STEM education and careers. Role models are frequently cited as one of the most effective interventions to address the high dropout rate of young women in STEM education and in early career. Many role models are unaware of the importance of their actions or even of the fact that they are a role model.

To celebrate their significance in inspiring women to pursue STEM, as well as their ability to encourage others to become role models, we invited people positively impacted by a role model to create and share a Thank You video through a custom online platform. This social activation campaign was designed to be mobile first to easily encourage video submissions and to seamlessly share to social networks through ThankYourRoleModel.com. Our initial goal was to capture 800 videos during the campaign and to have the participants share their videos to their social networks.

Describe How the Solution Was Deployed

Although we had many points of contact with our audience, social media and presence at events had the biggest impact on gaining video submissions. Social media allowed us to review data weekly to gauge which creative assets and messages had the most engagement and then swiftly optimize our media and creative strategy. Through this analysis, we realized that Instagram Stories were providing the highest amount of video creations. Based on this insight, we optimized the media buy to put a stronger investment with Instagram Stories, which eventually pushed us over our initial goal.

To launch our campaign internally, we selected four female STEM leaders at Chevron who were positively impacted by role models themselves to serve as ambassadors. To allow for meaningful communication across the global employee base, we utilized Facebook Workplace, employee events, internal newsletters, and town hall meetings.

Events and conferences helped Chevron reach audiences in a more personal way. By leveraging social geo-targeting efforts, we could encourage people to stop by Chevron’s activation booth or visit ThankYourRoleModel.com post-event. At the Chevron employee-manned booth, attendees could record a 15-second video thanking their role model.

Interacting with employees allowed attendees to gain a deeper understanding of Chevron’s efforts to get more women into STEM careers and how the participants’ videos could inspire future positive actions. These personal interactions were especially helpful in getting people to overcome their doubts about recording their message or even being camera shy.

Describe the Qualitative or Quantitative Measures of Success

In total, the campaign earned over 830,000 social engagements. Video submissions to ThankYourRoleModel.com surpassed our stated goal of video uploads by 25 percent. Many of the videos we received were created by Chevron employees, and many were featured in the hero video. The first 100 employees to upload a video during the campaign received $200 gift card from Chevron to DonorsChoose.org, which helps fund educational projects for classrooms in need.

Sentiment around the campaign was 97 percent favorable and natural conversation around the initiatives used words like “love,” “excited,” and “inspired,” indicating that the campaign was having the desired effect. Many Chevron leaders applauded the campaign as well. Posted comments were overwhelmingly positive, especially on internal channels. Users called out their former teachers and tagged inspirational friends. Over 53 percent of participants chose to share their videos to their personal networks. Because of these results, the Thank Your Role Model Campaign was a massive success, and Chevron will continue striving to help change the face of STEM for the good of us all.

List the Tools Involved

• Vivoom
• HelloWorld
• ICUC
• WaveMaker
• McgarryBowen
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn