The Guardian

The Guardian Labs

The Guardian Labs, the branded content wing of British national daily The Guardian, dedicates itself to delivering exceptional branded content across devices. With a team of over 130 content specialists, The Guardian Labs reaches 131 million unique browsers every month worldwide.

Guardian Labs - Education - Laptop

1

The Business Problem

Expensive, Inefficient and Unscalable

The Guardian Labs was burdened with an inadequate story framework, system and content strategy. The existing framework failed to provide advertisers with the tools to tell compelling stories that matched The Guardian’s rigorous, tailor-made editorial standard. Like many publishers, The Guardian found the integration of bespoke native content expensive, inefficient and unscalable.

The Questions

How can The Guardian Labs deliver engaging branded content that readers will value as much as editorial content from The Guardian?

How can we build a system that allows repeated and expanded creation with each new advertiser?

2

The Experience Strategy

Treat Branded Content like Editorial Content

Readers will accept—and even enjoy—sponsored content only if it's thoughtful and compelling. We needed to give The Guardian’s advertisers the means to tell stories that readers care about.

With that in mind, advertiser integrations needed to be treated with the same level of care, experience design, interaction design, design presentation and engagement as editorially-created feature stories.

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3

The Solution

Iterate to Innovate

Using the production of the first article to define a set of rules and modules, we incrementally grew the number of components. With each consecutive article came a new set of learnings, which we then fed back into refining the library of useful modules.

Building a flexible, individually-shareable component framework that accommodated infographics, interactive animations, videos, pull quotes and audio quotes, we updated the formats used within long-form feature stories around The Guardian Labs' observed editorial behaviors.

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The Story Goes On

Complex stories transcend single articles. We crafted narrative arcs to engage readers, providing them with the opportunity to enhance their experience with further exploration. At the end of each story, a package provides an overview of upcoming articles so readers can keep exploring—a technique we’ve implemented to great success for publishers like Mashable and Bloomberg.

4

The Results

With our framework and CMS, Code and Theory has empowered The Guardian Labs to create complex interactive series for future branded partnerships with ease, elegance, and clarity.

  • The first five interactive articles created with our new platform and CMS circulated widely, with more than 105,000 shares.
  • Cisco, the first advertiser to use our new framework, was the top performing native advertiser in The Guardian’s history.

Driving B2B Growth

Partnering with some of the world's largest companies to fuel their business-to-business expansion.

Tipico Featured Module
Tipico

Succeeding on a Mission to Win Ohio

AOR leading an integrated campaign to capitalize on the moment and bring Tipico to market.

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  • Challenging category conventions to create a differentiated connection with audiences
  • Speaking with Ohio sports fans the same way they speak to each other
  • Working in an Integrated Agency team to connect through all media channels, including the app

Evolving E-commerce to Fit Modern Audiences

We are shaping the digital transformation of the industry by creating strong connections between audiences and brands.

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Reimagining Marriott Bonvoy as a Hub for Travel and Commerce

Evolving Bonvoy’s design system to be more modern and immersive while staying true to the core strong brand identity.

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  • Mobile-First
  • Contextualized Conversion
  • Flexible Design and Content Systems

Leading With Empathy and Inclusivity

Having deeper conversations, widening the funnel, and driving innovation with an inclusive-first lens.

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Allspring

Speed to Market for a Portfolio Optimization Tool

Crafting a UI for a complex product through user input and clear data visualization.

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  • Improving workflow processes through enhanced user interface design
  • Clear and simple data visualizations for complex data sets
  • Designing a roadmap to continue to iterate and optimize the product on a rolling basis post-launch

Transforming Education's Forefront

Defining the future of digital experiences in education.

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Pfizer World

<p>Pfizer World</p>

Transforming a platform into a meaningful beacon to set new priorities and ways of working.

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Galleri| Introducing a Revolutionary Medical Feat to the Market

Galleri

<p>Galleri</p>

Creating the first B2C campaign and user experience for a first-of-its-kind cancer detection test.

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Evolving the Financial Services Model

We’re transforming an antiquated industry through cutting-edge design and driving the future of finance forward.

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Recognition

  • Code and Theory

    Webby Awards

    2022 Best Magazine – Websites and Mobile Sites
  • Code and Theory

    W3 Awards

    2021 Best in Show General Websites-Associations
  • Code and Theory

    Ad Age

    2020 Agency A-List

All Work

 2023

Says a Lot —

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