the born digital effect 

The Born Digital Effect positioned digital workspace provider Citrix as a thought leader on the future of work by quantifying the trillion-dollar impact of young workers on company success. Our campaign helped Citrix to make the business case for strong digital employee experience to engage this critical cohort.

Man Bites Dog developed a powerful economic model that measured, for the first time, the impact of Born Digital workers on corporate profitability. We found that businesses based in countries with above-average Born Digital populations gain a Born Digital Dividend of an extra $1.9 trillion in annual corporate profits – equivalent to more than the entire market capitalisation of the FTSE 100.

We then conducted opinion research across 10 countries to establish what Born Digitals want from the workplace compared with what business leaders are doing to attract and retain this vital talent. This revealed a Born Digital Disconnect: leaders are out of touch with what engages and motivates younger workers.

The majority of Born Digitals value workspace over workplace, preferring a digital-first employee experience; 90% do not want to return to full-time office work post-pandemic, but this is poorly understood by leaders who are overestimating office appeal. 

The campaign was launched globally across 10 markets with a suite of content assets including an authoritative whitepaper report authored by the Man Bites Dog team, a series of videos featuring STEM influencer Justin Shaifer exploring how the Born Digital Generation is shaping the new world of work, social assets and a campaign microsite. The integrated launch included PR, marketing, social media and sales channels, including webinars, panel discussions and client forums based on the campaign’s research findings.

The Born Digital Effect created a comprehensive campaign platform which resonated with Citrix customers, prospects and employees. The campaign promoted Citrix’s employee experience capabilities by demonstrating the critical importance of digital employee experience to this generation of valuable young knowledge workers, building a clear call-to-action for Citrix’s intuitive, personalised digital workspace technology.

By championing the business impact of the Born Digital generation we were able to propel the issue of digital employee experience beyond technology and HR media and into the boardroom by accessing key business, financial and mainstream news media.

The campaign generated over 200 pieces of positive media coverage. This included flagship broadcast pieces from CNN to Good Morning America, and print and digital coverage in business publications – including Fast Company – and tier one media – including Bloomberg, Time Magazine and Forbes – with a total readership of over 250 million.

The campaign is Citrix’s top-performing piece of thought leadership content to date. The landing page has received almost 30,000 unique page views, and influencer videos generated 6.6m impressions and 1.4m video views.