2018 Ranking of America’s Most JUST Companies

Project Overview

In 2018 I joined JUST Capital, a non-profit that aims to align U.S. businesses with the priorities of the American people. One way they do this? Their annual ranking of America’s Most Just Companies , which are determined by polling over 80,000 Americans on what a Just business means, how they feel companies should prioritize their responsibilities, and ranking the largest companies in the U.S. based on how they perform on these metrics.

And the good news? Companies that do best by the American people (treat their workers better, invest in local communities, pollute less) actually make more money than their competitors.

For their 2017 Rankings (their first) they partnered with Forbes for the launch. Of the JUST 100 (the top performing companies), 31 of them promoted their inclusion on the list across social, with another 20 putting out some sort of press release or adding the award to a page on their website. Upon joining in 2018, I was asked to blow that out of the water. Not only were we established, but after launching one of the most successful ESG ETF’s ever in June 2018, it was time to really step our marketing game up.

The problem? Despite the fact that Forbes was our partner, they were only going to market their articles around the Rankings, nothing else. Which meant the bulk of getting companies to promote their inclusion fell on our team.

Step 1: Creating Amazing Visual Assets

Many other companies that release rankings have very inconsistent branding. While seals would remain unchanged, the marketing copy, images companies used in their materials, and general output varied wildly by awards, and it was obvious many companies were left to their own devices with promotion.

To punch above our weight, we worked with an outside team to develop a cohesive set of short animations and images to give to our companies. It was my job to look at the data of what worked/didn’t in 2017, and guide the team in creating the assets. I made very different recommendations than the team initially wanted, including heavy emphasis on animation, and to not spend time on landing page or website takeover templates (which were only used once in the prior year, but required MANY resources to accomplish).

After many drafts, we wound up with a suite of PHENOMENAL looking, cohesive assets for companies, influencers, and ourselves. Here is a small sample:

To look specifically at the full suite we handed off to companies, click here.

Step 2: Writing a Full Promotional Suite of Copy

We wanted to make it as easy as possible for companies to promote their award. So in addition to everything we had already created, we also made a sample press release, blog posts, emails, website blurbs, and more. We wanted companies to have easily editable templates for every way they could choose to promote the award.

However, the biggest hurdle for me was the social copy. While I’d created a simple sheet of 4 tweets and 2 FB/LinkedIn posts for the JUST 100 and influencers, I wanted to take things much, much further. For the Top 25 companies, I created specific copy highlighting exact things they did in 2018 that helped them achieve a high ranking, figuring the specificity would increase the chances of promotion.

But the biggest lift? Deciding that EVERY SINGLE company in the JUST100 would be shouted out by us on social at least once, highlighting a specific accomplishment they had during the year. That decision led to a near 20 page document filled with tweets and posts for everyone in the list. I figured this would help us create a better initial splash, and give the program a much longer tail.

It worked. And in fact, the list only became exhausted at the end of March, months after the launch on December 10th.

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Step 3: Tracking Our Success

The final component of the campaign was instituting a robust tracking system. The 2017 launch was severely handicapped because no one on the team had much experience with analytics and data tracking. While there was some information (i.e. how many companies used the seal digitally), there were lots and lots of things that we didn’t know. I sat around creating a robust tracking effort, from multiple Sprinklr listening campaigns to make sure nothing fell through the cracks, to google analytics tagging, to excel sheets cataloguing the different uses of each asset along with links and clipped pictures.

If someone promoted us, I wanted to know it.

Step 4: Manning the Torpedos

All of this pre-planning was great, but it meant nothing if I didn’t make sure every bit of social and digital promotion was tagged, captured, and clipped as it went out. For 3 straight days I basically didn’t leave my computer while fielding all of the social.

Not only was my job to work with what companies put out, but also utilizing press hits. Our press team was busy pitching different stories about the JUST 100 to many other news orgs besides Forbes to get the maximum amount of potential coverage, and I needed to be ready to incorporate that into our digital efforts as they came through.