From vision to impact

Even in the corporate arena, storytelling has the power to touch emotions. And few businesses can capture the profound effect that they have on society as Octapharma can. This year’s Annual Report marked a monumental year for Octapharma as it celebrated its 40-year anniversary. The report had to carefully balance the past, the present and the future, looking back on 40 years of rich history.

As a privately held company, one of the Annual Report’s primary objectives is to inspire employee pride by sharing the positive impact they have had, and how, through living Octapharma’s values, they have changed the lives of countless patients.

To maximise the engagement opportunity for its 40-year anniversary, we first set out to create a unique campaign identity that could be rolled out across a range of channels and activated with the launch of the 2022 Annual Report. This included creating a ’40 years of Octapharma’ ident, featured throughout the report and on the front cover.

To bring the theme to life from a narrative perspective, we hosted a communication briefing workshop with the Octapharma team, which led us to the cover line, ‘It started with a belief’. This messaging carries throughout the report on the opening spreads, the CEO’s intro and a dedicated ’40 years of Octapharma’ section in the middle of the report which features inspirational employee stories, including from Octapharma’s first ever full-time employee!

Like with any annual report, each year we look for new ways to build on the previous year. With previous reports predominantly focusing on patient stories, this year we also looked to feature the donors who enable the life-changing products, allowing us to tell a more rounded ‘From donor to patient’ story.

To capture the patient, employee and donor stories, we commissioned and art directed a global photo shoot in locations ranging from Prague to California. For the patient stories, we looked not only to capture the individuals but how the life-changing therapies impacted families and generations.

We also believe in the power of concise communications and worked with the client to streamline content and messaging. The design has a modern, contemporary feel with plenty of space, which allows key messages and content to stand out. In a world of 200+ page ‘door stopper’ annual reports, Octapharma is a breath of fresh air at just 72 pages and without lots of dense text.

Furthermore, we maximised the digital opportunity, creating a landing page for the website and developing supporting video content for the 40-year anniversary to be shared on social media and the intranet.

www.octapharma.com/annual-report