Here at Proctors, we’re on a journey to become a better corporate citizen. This means making more sustainable choices, looking for ways to support our local community, and taking a close look at the environmental and social impact of our services and suppliers.

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Fortunately, many of our clients are on a similar journey, which enables us to learn and grow alongside them. We’re always looking for fresh and creative ways to communicate their messaging, ensuring it speaks to their values and reflects their identity. And in working to craft creative campaigns to promote their CSR journeys, one of the things we’ve come to find is the importance of digitalisation in this area.

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Digitalisation is the conversion of text, visuals and sound into a digital form, and we’ve incorporated it into our services for years. In fact, it’s one of the many ways we’ve been able to adapt to a changing marketplace and become one of the longest established independent marketing firms in the UK.

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When it comes to promoting your CSR journey, digital tools help to tell a story in a flexible, paperless way. Here are a few ways digital tools can help promote your CSR journey.

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Digitalising print

Proctors has a long history with print. It’s a key part of our origin story, and still very much a mainstay of our services. But in recent years, we’ve worked to bring more and more of our print projects online.

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There are a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, print is static and inflexible. Once it’s ‘hot off the press’, it can’t be updated or changed, which means it can become outdated pretty quickly. Digital resources, however, are dynamic and adaptable. And unlike print, they can be built up over time and integrated into your other digital offerings.

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As Tim Price, Head of Video and Motion Graphics, puts it: “Digitalisation is definitely not the harbinger for the death of print. More of an apex in a constantly evolving media industry. Digitalisation is just one aspect of a mindset that never stops looking for new ways of thinking, doing and evoking”. 

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A good example of this is our work with our longest standing clients, Epson, creating their annual sustainability report.

Epson needed something fresh, new and dynamic – a compelling and easy-to-digest report. It had to be really engaging, because the messages within were too important to ignore – a brilliant challenge for our creative team.

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As this was our third year producing the annual report, it was important that our creative team came to the project with a fresh perspective. Our task was to take their raw content – facts, figures and plenty of information – and turn it into an impactful, eye-catching brochure.

“...digital tools help to tell a story in a flexible, paperless way...”

Our creative team designed infographics, graphs, and diagrams to translate some of the more complex information into more visually appealing and accessible formats, breaking up the text and creating a rich and enjoyable experience for the reader. The final product was a sustainability brochure that presented Epson’s goals, achievements, product innovations and case studies – perfectly representing the brand’s bold ambitions.

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By making the report digital, Epson can continually build on it and integrate it into their other digital offerings. All while cutting down on time, money and paper.

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And that brings us to another reason we’re digitalising more print.

Paper accounts for around 26% of total waste in landfills. And paper production uses enormous amounts of energy and water, as well as contributing to deforestation, air pollution and waste issues.

“...paper accounts for around 26% of total waste in landfills...”

If you’re promoting your sustainability progress, you may not want to do so in a way that directly contributes to the problem.

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And last, but certainly not least, a digital brochure opens opportunities to gather important engagement data. You can see who’s looking at your digital documents, where they come from, where they drop off, and even which pages are most popular.

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Atomic Design

Digitalisation in marketing isn’t all about going paperless. It’s also about giving customers an engaging and interactive space where they can explore your business’s offerings. In other words, a website.

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Websites are becoming larger, more complex and information-heavy as they fight to remain relevant. It’s common for websites today to have hundreds of pages, featuring thousands of products.

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And we know better than anyone that growing your online presence is great for business. But a mammoth website can prove a challenge for consistency. In other words, what’s good for business can be bad for your brand.

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That’s why we use elements of the Atomic Design process when designing websites, ensuring they’re completely scalable wherever possible.

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Brainchild of Brad Frost, the Atomic Design web-building method allows flexibility and consistency from the start. Which saves time, improves consistency, conserves resources and allows you to make adjustments without compromising a cohesive brand.

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This is crucial for sharing your ESG or CSR journey.

Say you want to promote your commitment to an emissions reduction target like Net Zero. You’ll want to show the progress you’ve made so far – maybe a roadmap or timeline, and probably a statement from your sustainability champion. Because this journey will continually evolve as your business grows and changes, a scalable and adaptable solution is key.

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For larger companies that already have meaty websites, we’ve found that an effective way to house all this information is creating a separate ‘microsite’. By taking this approach (as opposed to simply adding a page to your company website) your CSR story can continue to grow and evolve without making a Frankenstein-esque monster out of your original site.

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Webflow and the low-code revolution

An important step in our digital journey as an agency, was embracing Webflow. As one of their only UK enterprise-level partners, we’re able to build websites faster, more flexibly and with more design flair than ever before. And it’s all thanks to their low-code/no-code interface, custom CMS setup and flexible hosting.

“There’s been a lot of opportunities that we’ve been able to take on with Webflow such as working with small and larger organisations globally. It’s been a really powerful tool for us to elevate ourselves with what we do creatively and digitally.” Dan Hardaker, Digital Design Director

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Another pro tip? Add motion design

Net Zero, carbon neutral, low emission, low impact – it’s all complex stuff that can be overwhelming for your audience. Adding motion design can help to break down and lineate information in a digestible and engaging way.

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Motion design refers to interactive elements on a website. Some elements may indicate a movement or response, like when a button depresses slightly at the click of your cursor, or your shopping cart lights up after a product is added to your basket.

“...adding motion design can help to break down and lineate information in a digestible and engaging way...”

Motion can also be used to indicate next steps, leading visitors toward a desired action, with animation naturally drawing more attention than static images or text alone. In this way, it can be an effective way to guide readers through your information – making it feel like more of a journey, and less of a slog.

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This can also help make your site more interactive and improve the user experience, whether you want to allow your reader to jump to the section they’re most interested in or engage with interactive 3D imagery.