Positioning Reuters as the source of truthful News

Over the past decade, the rise of disinformation has reshaped the way audiences consume information. It’s an everyday challenge to distinguish truth from lies, and Reuters is all too aware of the harmful impact that it is having on the world. 

As a source of independent, agenda-free news since 1851, the agency has become the global standard for news delivery, reaching over 100 million readers each month. And in a world of conflict and confusion, it has begun to fight back, even employing AI in its battle. 

'Pure News, Straight from the Source' is the resulting campaign, created alongside Brandtech Group agency Gravity Road. It features images of water as its metaphor for news, in both clear and murky states. The central 30-second online film opens by communicating that “with misinformation, the truth can often become unclear,” featuring AI-produced graphics for the first half before moving into real Reuters newsreels during the second. 

“It’s really important for us to help people discern fact from fiction,” says Josh London, head of Reuters Professional, who cites a Reuters Institute stat that three quarters of Americans are worried by the problem of fake news. 

The goals of the campaign were two-fold, to raise awareness of the role the news agency plays in the world, highlighting its independent, objective, fact based journalism, and promote its recently launched subscription service. 

Truth Telling

Gravity Road came in following an extensive review, reveals London, who describes the subsequent co-creation process as “iterative” as they discussed how to convey Reuters role in the news and media ecosystem. The two organisations had already been working together for a year on a few strategic review projects when the chance to lead on the first consumer brand campaign came around. 

“It was a big moment for the brand - everyone knows them, but kind of doesn’t. They’ve been hiding in plain sight for 175 years. With their move to offer news via their site and app directly to consumers, it's a big moment, and needed more than ever,” explains Mark Eaves, co-founder and chief executive of Gravity Road. 

Despite its history, it was clear that an argument was still needed to drive people to include Reuters’ platforms within their media consumption habits. The metaphor for using clean water was derived from the much-used phrase ‘news consumption’, which led to other related ideas such as ‘fresh from the source’ alongside a metaphor comparing its distillation to news reporting.  

“We couldn’t believe it hadn’t been used before by a news brand,” says Eaves, who sees it as a platform Reuters can allow to flow even further.  

The campaign is aimed at globally-minded professionals and consumers, London explains, and follows another that ran a few years ago that started to outline Reuters' role in news and media. The organisation felt that with the growing influence of AI and misinformation, another communications push was now necessary. 

“Telling the facts in an independent, objective, non-national way is really rare in the world today. How we think about that is an essential destination for audiences asking, ‘I wonder if that's true’. It really gives that international perspective in a way that is free from bias,” he adds.

The influence of AI could not be ignored, even in crafting the work, a creative decision that added another layer of knowing irony, Eaves explains. That’s because strict editorial guidelines have been introduced within Reuters, prohibiting the use of Gen AI to create photos and videos within its news coverage to ensure accuracy and trust is delivered through its journalism. 

Clear Visual Flair

The striking visuals throughout the film were captured through filmmaking prestige. Directed by BAFTA-winning cinematographer Ivan Bird, known for Sexy Beast and for lensing Guinness’s iconic ‘Surfer’ ad, the campaign highlights how creative talent can unlock the potential of Gen AI tools.

“That he could brief into our teams exactly what he wanted on a composed, generated shot - precise technical information like lens make and filters - took AI film-making to a different level. And we still used a few conventional grading tools to lift everything in post, because you need that extra 10 per cent right now,” explains Eaves. 

To stay consistent with its internal AI rules, the video contains a message highlighting which footage is AI-generated and which is not, another way of conveying trust in the information Reuters delivers. 

“We wanted to use that dichotomy, that tension that sometimes people feel, and you see this both in the Reuters Institute stats, but in our own lives, where people say, ‘Hey, have you seen this video?’ And then you have a moment of, 'Can I trust it or not?; We’re really proud that when you see something from Reuters, that you can trust it is real and verified,” London states. 

Another partner on campaign delivery was Strawberry Frog, which led the channel strategy and execution, deploying  AI-driven cross-device sequencing and next-generation video formats to bring “Pure News” to life. 

For launch, Gravity Road also led the delivery of creative for a digital out of home activation that ran in Times Square, next to The Thomson Reuters headquarters in New York. The huge screen also featured technically ambitious AI-generated content with a 3D video that looked like a giant tank of water sitting on the side of a Manhattan building. 

While this work was deliberately focused on targeting and growing Reuter’s key US market, London doesn’t rule out extending it further around the world in time. 

“I think people appreciate the clarity and the simplicity of it. And I think that it builds off of something that was well received, easy to articulate - the source campaign and tagline -and then builds on that with ‘Pure news from the source’ and I think, you'll see those iterations continue in a way that is really interesting,” he alludes. 

'Pure News' acts as a reminder that credible news sources remain, and that in a time of doubt across today’s media landscape, audiences have places where news still flows clean and clear.