Activist Investor Campaign: Engine No. 1 vs. ExxonMobil

Challenge

Engine No. 1 was in the process of launching their firm when they approached Haystack in late 2020 to support them with a proxy fight against ExxonMobil, one of the largest players in the oil and gas industry. However, what they lacked in brand influence, Engine No. 1 made up for in the collective experience of their leadership team. 

This fight could be classically described as David vs. Goliath, and we were further challenged to spend strategically. Investing the full weight of Engine No. 1’s available budget created ownership of only .02% of ExxonMobil’s shares. This meant we must carefully craft our campaign to appeal to a wide yet specially-targeted audience.

Approach

Multiple Haystack teams collaborated with lawyers, analysts, and others to create an activist investor campaign with the objective of championing new members onto ExxonMobil’s board of directors and ultimately creating positive change for climate protection.

We were highly prescriptive not only with budget but also with ad spend and placement. Engine No. 1 and other partners had the connections to reach institutional investors based on existing personal networks. So, Haystack focused on reaching, engaging, and informing all retail shareholders.

Once we identified qualified shareholders, we further segmented that audience for targeted messaging of values-based clean energy vs. dividend information. This allowed us to appeal to both sides of the political spectrum. 

Using our collective resources, Haystack dominated the digital landscape with an approach built on an active and reactive search, social, and web strategy:

SOCIAL

• Optimized provided lists of shareholders; segmented the shareholders by the number of shares held, geography, and other identifiers

• Leveraged multiple platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and Stocktwits, to reach multiple target audiences

• Geofenced ExxonMobil’s headquarters as a target audience to deliver unique messaging to their leadership and employees 

SEARCH

• Researched the competitive search set to determine multiple campaign strategies and provide more targeted messaging to each audience

• Tweaked messaging to meet those queries

• Ensured our ads were found on top of first-page search results

• Measured and iterated every campaign to optimize for engagement

WEB

• Built a constantly evolving communication microsite hub

• Led the audience through a UX of landing pages containing actionable information for multiple objectives to support search and social efforts

• Increased audience engagement with email campaigns as new content was released

• Measured and iterated every micro-campaign to optimize for engagement

Results

In an unprecedented outcome that surpassed our expectations and made front-page news, Engine No. 1 won three out of four board seats in the election. The collective team shared a special moment when those results were called out. 

Success by the numbers:

• 17.8M impressions — very high impressions and click-through-rates on social assets showed we were effectively sharing campaign messaging

• 2.04 time on page — lingering website users indicated that we had reached the right target audience

• 215.8K users — high website traffic and interaction demonstrated that audience members followed the specific communication paths we’d built for them

• 54.9% open rate — email campaign performance well-exceeded industry benchmarks, illustrating audience engagement