ABM Brand To Demand: Strategy To Success – 2025 ANA Masters of B2B Session

2025 ANA Masters of B2B – Presentation

In collaboration with Brittney Frank, Associate Director, US Brand & Media Lead at EY, Captivate hosted a session at the 2025 ANA Masters of B2B Marketing sharing behind-the-scenes insights on EY’s “brand to demand” marketing strategy and the role of Captivate’s ABM targeting accuracy to pinpoint messages to key service accounts to drive success.

The session includes high level approach of EY’s global, omnichannel ‘Shape the Future with Confidence’ brand strategy. And spotlights compelling case study from Captivate demonstrating how precision targeting coupled with unique attentive reach in high-impact environments drives demand, action, and generates ROI in today’s complex media landscape.

As a leading premium video solution, Captivate is a vital partner for B2B brands to target key accounts or BDM titles with accuracy. Opportunities for dynamic creative solutions, content alignments coupled with high-impact environments deliver elevated engagement during the workday where B2B decision makers to drive full funnel conversion.

Interested in learning more? Check out our MEDIA KIT

Summary

Captivate has evolved from an in-office media network into a broader North American distribution and targeting platform, with lobby and elevator screens across Class A office towers and luxury residential properties. The network spans 9,000+ screens in 170 DMAs, reaching audiences at “lean-in” moments when people are in elevators and lobbies. Captivate also offers advanced B2B targeting via partnerships with Data Axle and TransUnion, enabling building-level targeting based on the companies inside, including industry, employee size, and revenue size.

The transcript highlights a brand-to-demand, account-based marketing (ABM) campaign with EY tied to its fall 2024 global brand expansion, “Shape the Future with Confidence.” EY’s strategy blended high-visibility brand channels (airport out-of-home around major January travel moments, premium digital takeovers in business publications, and TV/CTV placements) with demand-driving tactics (events and experiences, sector-specific messaging, and priority-account ABM execution).

Captivate played a central role by delivering awareness messaging in a highly targeted, workday context. The campaign reached 170 priority accounts across 294 U.S. offices. Using Captivate’s brand study (6,000 representative viewers), results among business decision makers included 61% ad recall (aided and unaided), 85% reporting increased interest in EY, and 55% taking an action after seeing the ad, with about half visiting EY’s site. EY positioned Captivate as a measurable, scalable component of its ongoing ABM mix.

Key Takeaways

Captivate = elevator + lobby digital screen network (office + residential).

Scale: 9,000+ screens; 170 DMAs; North America; reaches people during elevator/lobby dwell time.

Audience context: “lean-in” attention moments during the workday.

Targeting: building-level B2B targeting via Data Axle + TransUnion (industry, company size, revenue).

Advertiser case study: EY global brand expansion (Fall 2024) → tagline “Shape the Future with Confidence.”

Strategy framework: Brand-to-demand continuum + ABM.

Brand channels: airport OOH (CES, Davos, JPM Healthcare travel window), premium digital display, TV/CTV + linear.

Demand channels: events/experiences, sector/function-specific proof points, priority account ABM.

Captivate’s role: bridges brand + demand by delivering awareness creatives to priority accounts in targeted buildings.

Campaign delivery: 170 priority accounts; 294 U.S. offices.

Measurement: Captivate brand study (6,000 viewers); business decision maker results: 61% recall; 85% interest lift; 55% action; ~50% visited EY site.

Full Transcript

00:00
Most of you probably are familiar with Captivate as the in-office media company, but we have evolved significantly over the past I would say three to five years. We’ve added distribution to our overall platform and we added advanced targeting capabilities as well. So most of you probably are familiar with Captivate either working in a Captivate building or living in a Captivate building. We are that

00:25
ever-present content and news and information network engaging and entertaining our audience throughout the day. It’s truly a lean-in experience. We have them engaged at that moment in time when they’re either in an elevator or in a lobby.

00:41
Our distribution has expanded significantly, both on the office side and the residential side. We now have distribution in luxury residential properties, as well as Class A office towers across the country. And our distribution is lobby screens and elevator screens in those buildings.

01:35
Just wanted to give everyone a quick look at our platform live and in the wild. So our distribution now is across North America. We have

01:58
Over 9,000 screens in 170 DMAs across the country, engaging and reaching with over 80,000 businesses on a daily basis. Now, how do we actually engage with those businesses and how do we target them? So Captivate has an advanced targeting capability in partnership with Data Axle and TransUnion. We can literally target a building with precise data understanding the companies in the building,

02:27
the industries, the employee size, and the revenue size. So with that targeted capability, you’re really getting down to the granular level to make sure that the campaign is as efficient as possible.

02:43
Now with that, I’d like to turn it over to Brittany. Brittany and team worked with us this past year on a brand to demand ABM targeted campaign. It performed very well. We’re excited to partner with them. And I want her to go through a little bit about their strategy, their creative, and how it came to life.

03:02
Thank you. Hi, everyone. So a little bit about our brand expansion. So in the fall of 2024, EY embarked on a global brand expansion. And so our purpose remained of building a better working world, but really what we wanted to do was to add the how to the why. So how are we really thinking about helping our clients getting to that purpose? And out of that, Shape the Future with Confidence was born.

03:29
And so I want to show you just a quick video that showcases a bit of our approach and how we help clients achieve that. In a world of seismic change, will your business shape the future or be shaped by it? How will we capture the imagination of tomorrow’s consumers? Overcome operational constraints to focus on future growth and harness technology and AI to power entire industries.

03:59
With EY’s full spectrum of services across sectors, we’re all in to shape the future with confidence. Now, Brittany, can you share a little bit about how the business need formed the strategy around the brand and demand effort, the global campaign that you guys just launched?

04:15
Yeah, so you just saw a little bit of the creative, but I want to take a bit of a step back to the conversation around how do we bring this to market. You know, what we understood was that in sort of this brand expansion and really bringing this how to the why to our clients, we needed that right balance of awareness building showing that we shape the future with confidence, but also how we help our clients to do it through the stories of our people, our sectors, our services, our solutions.

04:45
And so what we really understood in that regard is that we needed a brand to demand approach. And I know we’ve been talking quite a bit about brand to demand yesterday, today, tomorrow. And so this is really kind of how we take that thinking and put it into practice. How do we build the brand in these high visibility channels, making sure that we’re reaching our audiences in sort of that broad way?

05:07
but also then bringing that down to what are our sectors? What are our solutions? How are we driving those insights that are specific to our target audiences? Can you tell us more about how you identified and understood the omni-channel mix that you were gonna go to market with?

05:27
yep so as we’re seeing our um our animation here so we really thought about that full sort of continuum of brand to demand and what channels made sense where and you can see here on the brand side you know what are those high visibility channels where are we maximizing our reach things like airport out of home so we thought about you know what are those high travel moments like

05:53
CES and Davos and JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, all of those happened in January. So we said, let’s show up in some of the higher traffic airports in that time where we know C-suite executives, business decision makers are traveling and really make sure to capture their attention in a high impact way.

06:10
If you think about digital display, so hero units, homepage takeovers in some of the major business publications that really extend that reach to our audience. And then television, so the ad you just saw, 60s and 32nd versions of that running across CTV and linear in the high visibility.

06:29
And so that’s how we thought about kind of the brand side of things. But how do we bring that to life in a demand way? How do we take that message to our priority accounts and our sectors in a highly targeted approach? And first, if you think about experiences, both EY’s own events as well as events that we sponsor or events that we show up, how do we really create those differentiated experiences on the ground with our clients?

06:56
How do we customize the message with specific insights and proof points by sector, by function? So how are we helping a CPG company shape the future of their sector? How are we helping a CFO drive confidence in their growth strategy in the current market? Really, how do we bring those stories to life and allow our people to do so? And then I’d say the third piece of kind of the demand lens of this strategy was,

07:23
getting to our specific accounts. How do we think about ABM and ensuring we’re front and center with the priority accounts that we’ve identified from the business that we really need to target?

07:36
Wow, that’s an ambitious strategy. I think it came together very nicely. Just can you give us a sneak peek into how Captivate was kind of integral and how you developed the strategy around Captivate and why we worked, and maybe any areas within the plan that worked well together as far as the omnichannel approach?

07:55
Yeah, so Captivate was a key part of our ABM strategy. And the beauty of it is that Captivate sort of sits in the center of brand to demand. It allowed us to build that awareness, but in a super, super targeted way. So, you know, between Burke and our media agency, I said, hey, here’s our list of all of our priority accounts.

08:17
who can you reach, who can we get to? And, you know, Burke came back and said, here’s the sort of list of accounts that we can get to. And the great thing is we were able to reach our target audience, but in their workday, when they’re in the mindset to really be open to the consumption of B2B content. So for us, it was really,

08:38
important that yes, we were using awareness level messaging, but in such a targeted way that we sort of consider this more on that demand side of things. And ultimately, we reached 170 priority accounts across 294 offices in the US, which for us being able to go back to our senior leadership and give them that metric to say, this is where we’re showing up, we have coverage across 170 of our priority accounts was

09:06
super important and very impressive in terms of just the reach that we were able to achieve.

09:12
Amazing, amazing. Now, Captivate being more of a brand awareness vehicle, Brittany did challenge us with how can we measure the outcome of the campaign? What key metrics did it drive for the brand? Now, we have had for over a decade a brand study offering that we can deploy on behalf of our clients. It’s 6,000 representative Captivate viewers that we can poll for brand health questions.

09:38
So for this campaign specifically, we looked at the business decision maker sample size, and 61%, both aided and unaided, recalled the ad on Captivate. 85% actually found the ad effective in increasing their interest in EY.

09:55
Now, these are far above our benchmarks for this category, so we were very happy with that, but was an action actually taken? With brand campaigns, it’s difficult to measure, but we do have some reported results that actually 55% of the audience of business decision makers took an action after the ad, and one in two actually went to EY’s site to learn more. So I thought those were pretty impressive results. Brittany, can you frame up the results

10:23
in your overall mix of media and KPIs you have in the marketplace, and just give us your thoughts on them. Yeah, so I think what’s interesting here is that when you think about an awareness KPI, eyeballs, impressions, that’s certainly important, but when we’re thinking about this brand-to-demand continuum, what Burke pointed out here is very interesting in that we’re able to sort of see

10:49
from a brand perspective, who we reached, how many impressions, how many people saw, but also then what action they took, what demand were we able to drive and sort of measure that through the funnel of bringing them to our website and then nurturing them

11:04
to continue down the funnel with our brand. So I think from our perspective, you know, having seen what we were able to do with our global brand campaign, it really has sort of set us up to understand Captivate as part of our overall ABM strategy going forward.

11:22
That’s amazing. Thank you, Brittany, so much for doing this with us and sharing a little bit of a glimpse into your strategy and how it came to life, both with Captivate and other partners in the marketplace. And thank you all for attending. I know, again, it’s beautiful outside, so hopefully you can take some time in between lunch and the next session. But do scan the QR code for a chance to be entered for a $250 gift card. And our marketing lead, Kara, I don’t know where Kara is at the moment,

11:50
There’s bag tags on everyone’s place setting. Make sure you drop by our booth at some point between today and tomorrow. We’re going to have a calligrapher there to personalize a tag for you. So I think it’s actually a misspoke today. So come by today. And if you have any other questions, myself, we have a handful of other Captivate folks present. Feel free to swing by. So thank you, everyone.