Just a fraction of engineers in the UK are women. Ahead of International Women in Engineering Day, Petrofac wanted to celebrate its female workforce. Katrina Marshall reports on how the energy services company set out to achieve this.

Challenge

Disrupt convention. Display the pride and tenacity of female engineers. Demonstrate their worth. These were the guiding principles when energy services company Petrofac decided to use a video campaign to mark International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June 2023. It’s first order of business was to scrap the original global campaign slogan ‘Make Safety Seen’. The majority of Petrofac’s workforce comprises engineers and a target of 30% of women in leadership roles had been set for 2025. 

The original message was felt to lean too much into the traditional narratives around women as carers. Petrofac’s head of digital content and channels, Stefan Stojadinovic, and his team stoutly rejected it. “Our perspective was you’re doing something for women reinforcing the nurturing portrayal that already exists,” Stojadinovic says. “We didn’t want to approach it that way. We wanted to do more in your face, more achievement-based messaging.

“As a company it’s absolutely paramount that we care about safety. It’s not the job of a woman.  It’s not the job of a man. It’s everyone’s job.  That’s how we explained it [so] it wasn’t too difficult to get an understanding of why we don’t want to go that way.” 

Strategy

In the logistics of pulling assets together, getting approval at each step and getting subjects on side, the purpose of a campaign can be lost. In this instance, Stojadinovic’s team used the human story being told by existing figures in the research around female graduates. As of February 11, 2024, the United Nations reports that “despite a shortage of skills in most of the technological fields driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution, women still account for only 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of graduates in computer science and informatics. Female researchers tend to have shorter, less well-paid careers.”  What is more, according to Engineering UK, there were 936,000 women working in engineering roles in 2021, equating to 16.5% of the total engineering workforce.

A misconception about using video to tell corporate narratives is that one must use conservative shades of blue and grey, glossy animations and a soundtrack that’s somewhere between a Marvel movie theme song and a Mexican mariachi band. In partnership with another colleague, Stojadinovic’s instructions for the treatment was simple: ultra-high resolution – everything was filmed in 8k. A plain white backdrop and using just the facial expressions of the subjects to tell the most poignant part of their story.  No busy film sets – four people on site maximum. A small office and a single continuous down the lens shot. Stojadinovic recalls his instructions to those being filmed: “Just stare down the lens until you hear me ask a question, and then the question we asked everyone was ‘think about the moment that makes you the most proud of your achievements’.

“And every single time you see a change in the face, that just spoke more than any message I could put up there,” he continues. “But that change in emotion - from ‘be very serious’ to ‘think of your proudest moment’ - that’s what gives you goosebumps. Combined with the music and everything that’s the goosebump moment that made the video for us really, really stand out”.

With the visuals storyboarded and the June deadline inching closer, it was time to rinse and repeat at the three designated Petrofac sites in Woking, London; Aberdeen, Scotland and the United Arab Emirates. Three locations, however, did not mean just three subjects. “We have more than 80 nationalities at Petrofac so it’s a great way to represent that as a secondary notion.  Yes, you’re doing a ‘women in engineering’ video, but you’re also working with people from all around the world,” Stojadinovic explained. 

Results

The objective was to get more than 15,000 organic views across Petrofac owned social channels – LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. That figure was eclipsed on LinkedIn alone with over 17,600 views. YouTube gained 900 views and Instagram, 1,400. Furthermore, the campaign video was among the top five most shared videos on Petrofac’s main channel for showcasing company culture – LinkedIn. The video was the second most shared video on LinkedIn in 2023 with 38 reposts. To put those figures into context, over 25 videos were posted on LinkedIn up to the day this video was uploaded. It was also the eighth most shared piece of LinkedIn content on the Petrofac page in 2023. Beyond the objectives, the more insightful results were the comments about how it stood out in a sea of content and the organic follow-on discussions the video inspired. 

Despite the success of the video and the awareness its theme created, it would be foolhardy to think the world of corporate narratives in film has cracked the code and we can all move onto the next shiny thing. Stojadinovic thinks CEOs are still reticent to use film to its full potential.  For him the new challenge is forcing the C-suite to drill down on the impact it wants to have and be clear on its objectives and messaging. Just because there has been an explosion of video content doesn’t mean a few bits of shrapnel don’t go flying along the way.