The British Council
A campaign in Vietnam, bought from the UK
The British Council's first major in-country campaign for its English language courses, planned, bought and carbon-accounted from Britain with no agency in market.
2
Cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, planned and run as a single campaign
Zero
Net carbon impact, via proprietary calculation and verified offsets
0
In-market agencies. Planned, bought and audited from the UK on iJACK
The Challenge
The British Council reaches 791 million people a year across more than 100 countries. In Vietnam it had never run a major in-country campaign for its English language courses.
Two jobs had to happen at once, and they pull against each other. The campaign needed mass awareness, which usually means buying volume. It also needed to reinforce the British Council's credibility and the quality of its teaching, which volume alone erodes.
There was no agency on the ground. Planning, buying, management and reporting all had to run from the UK, across two cities nine time zones away, with full auditability for a publicly accountable organisation.
And sustainability was in the brief rather than bolted onto the report at the end.
Credibility is bought by where you appear,
not by how often.
Every site had to pass two tests rather than one: does it deliver reach, and does appearing here say the right thing about the organisation appearing on it? A cheap site that reaches people and cheapens the brand fails, however good the rate looks on a plan.
So site selection became the strategy rather than a buying exercise, chosen alongside the British Council and in-country partners using local knowledge we could not have had from Glasgow.
The second decision was to run it from the UK anyway. Planning, buying and management all on iJACK, which gave the British Council something an in-market agency arrangement rarely does: a single auditable record of what was planned, what was booked, what it cost and what it emitted, in real time rather than in a reconciliation three months later.
What We Did
Electric bus wraps, large-format billboards, and the Vietnamese equivalent of Piccadilly Lights.
Electric bus wraps ran on selected routes through Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, putting the campaign into the daily movement of both cities and keeping the emissions profile down at the same time.
Large-format out of home held central positions in both cities, chosen with in-country partners for footfall and for brand fit rather than for rate.
Large-format motion screens at P. Hoang Dao Thuy and Le Van Luong gave the campaign its landmark moment, in positions that function locally the way Piccadilly Lights does in London.
Everything was planned, bought and managed from JACK RYAN's UK offices on iJACK, with no in-market agency, and the whole activation was carbon-calculated and offset to zero net impact using proprietary calculators and verified offsets.
The Results
A first campaign in a new market, run to a standard the organisation can defend publicly.
Accountability. iJACK gave the British Council auditable media planning and booking end to end, with real-time carbon analysis alongside the cost, rather than a sustainability estimate produced after the fact.
Sustainability. The activation was delivered at zero net carbon impact, calculated with proprietary carbon tooling and closed out with verified offsets.
Brand fit. Every site was signed off against both reach and quality association, so mass awareness was achieved without diluting the credibility the courses are sold on.
Model. Vietnam is the first proof point for a scalable international model, with further APAC extensions planned on the same operating basis.