Programme nominated for the Excellence in Communications Steelie Award 2023
ArcelorMittal’s purpose is to create smarter steels for people and planet. Leading our industry’s efforts to decarbonise and help the world reach net-zero by 2050 has an important role to play in ensuring we are true to that purpose.
Our climate action strategy and progress is therefore central to our communications strategy. We regularly share updates on our initiatives and the progress we are making on our journey to net zero. Much of this communication takes the form of written, visual or motion assets.
However, given the complexity of the topic and our objective to educate and reach a broad audience, we decided to communicate our strategy and progress – but also the opportunities and challenges that we see decarbonisation brings – via a series of podcasts.
We felt that podcasts would be the right medium to use to bring to life our approach to the decarbonisation challenge and spotlight some of the fantastic talent we have working behind the scenes at ArcelorMittal, individuals who are driving our climate action agenda.
Podcasts have become increasingly popular over the past few years. There are around 400 million podcast listeners around the world. When sharing a podcast on platforms such as Spotify, your story is placed in the hands of millions of new potential listeners of any age – this reach to a mass audience is a key reason why we decided to create a series of podcasts.
‘Futurising’ is a series of podcasts featuring ArcelorMittal experts who are deeply involved in the future of steel. The first series of ‘Futurising’ was launched in 2020.
The second (and current) series of ‘Futurising’ was launched at the end of November 2022 and features our executive management team in conversation with Applied Futurist Tom Cheesewright.
The four-part podcast series, focused on different aspects of climate action and decarbonisation – not limited to ArcelorMittal but the challenges and opportunities faced by the industry as a whole.
‘Futurising’ series two, released once a week over a four-week period, differed in approach to series one which featured a four-part discussion around what the future holds for steel by ArcelorMittal experts from four sectors: mobility, sustainability, manufacturing and construction.
All four episodes in series two were created as educational content that would position ArcelorMittal as innovators by focusing on our strategic priorities and the challenges the industry faces while also showcasing experts in the industry working for ArcelorMittal.
Our objective of effectively communicating our decarbonisation efforts within the steel industry and exploring the challenges and opportunities faced by the industry as whole to engage our employees and stakeholders through a new and exciting way for us was met with success – ‘Futurising’ series two reached over 9,548 listens in over 42 countries by June 2023.