Explained: Iberdrola’s innovative campaign to lead the green energy transition

Iberdrola’s objectives were to:

• Reinforce understanding and confidence in Iberdrola’s expertise.
• Build understanding of and catalyze investment and regulatory change around networks and transmission as a vital enabler of the energy transition.
• Continue to build both familiarity and favorability for Iberdrola among international business, government, and wider stakeholder audiences as a trusted global leader in the whole of the energy transition.

The Strategy

Iberdrola is a longstanding partner of the FT, and for the past six years we have come together to bring the FT’s informed senior readers the latest and most important developments around the future of energy.

Our strategy built on this success, informed by learnings from our previous campaigns and leaning into FT platforms and formats that we knew were strongest at driving prolonged, meaningful engagement with time-poor senior audiences.

The FT and Iberdrola had previously partnered to create highly engaging partner content executions, which allowed Iberdrola to craft the messaging and own the narrative, while hosting the content in a trusted FT environment. This was complemented by Iberdrola’s sponsorship of the FT’s editorially-led Energy Source video channel, which was to run in parallel.

To evolve our partner content strategy for Iberdrola and further enhance engagement opportunities, the FT proposed a scenario-building game that would add an experiential and interactive element. This format built on the success of Iberdrola’s previous interactive partner content, while also harnessing the success of the FT’s award-winning gamified content by our editorial team.

The brief went further than simply reaching the target audience—to really convince them of Iberdrola’s expertise, we needed to achieve prolonged, in-depth engagement. It would not be enough to launch a flash-in-the-pan content campaign; we knew we needed to create an immersive and memorable execution.

Sometimes a serious topic is best tackled through gamified content. We’d already found that gamification is a great way to connect with FT audiences; in 2022 we had astronomical success with our 'Climate Game,' which has over 900K page views to date and won Gold in the ‘Sustainability and Environment’ category at the Corporate Engagement Awards.

The Execution

A decision- and scenario-based game that blends the urgency of real-world challenges with an underlying tone of optimism. Players feel the weight of their decisions while being reassured that meaningful solutions are within reach.

The aim was to create an engaging and educational experience that immerses players in the challenge of leading Europe’s transition to clean energy by 2030. The content is both accessible and informative, helping players grasp complex issues with clarity.

Our creative direction was to transform this ambitious, high-stakes mission into an interactive, emotionally resonant journey—one that educates while it empowers. We crafted a narrative-driven experience where players navigate real policy dilemmas, balancing urgency with hope. Each decision sends ripples through future scenarios, reflecting the true nature of climate leadership. 

With vibrant visual storytelling by acclaimed artist Louis Otis.

The Impact

The strong results delivered by the game serve to showcase this format’s effectiveness at creating meaningful engagement through an enriched content experience.

Performance highlights include:

• The game performed 107% above site benchmark for attention time
• Users spent a total of 942 hours actively playing the game
• 38% completion rate with 45% of players reaching at least the halfway point. Of these users, a significant 85% went on to fully complete the game, demonstrating a strong retention once initial engagement was captured.
• 34% of the known audience identified as part of the C-Suite, surpassing our internal benchmark by 36%
• Exceeding our estimated page views by an impressive 30%
• Among those who completed the game, 28% chose to click on these buttons, indicating a clear appetite to explore the content further. This behavior reflects not just surface-level engagement, but a genuine interest in the subject matter and a desire to dive deeper into the topics presented.
• For display, the overall CTR finished on 0.18%, 45% above our benchmark of 0.11%. We created new, bespoke animation style creatives to bring the theme of the game to life. As a result, we saw this stream of promotion become very successful in generating awareness of the game.

The game was a very in-depth execution that demanded significant time investment from the audience, which further underscores the compelling completion rate, which suggests this interactive format successfully captures and sustains audience attention. It also highlights the value of using dynamic, user-led formats to communicate complex content in a way that is both informative and engaging for FT readers.

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