A new perspective

Storytelling is important. It allows us to share information in a way that appeals to both the rational and the emotional. It’s been part of RELX’s communications strategy for some time.

For the past three years, we’ve been telling stories about what it’s like working at RELX; how our people deploy advanced technologies in our products; what we do to help our customers succeed; and how what we do as individuals and as a company benefits society, from improving health outcomes, advancing scientific research, manging risk and preventing cybercrime, advancing the rule of law and supporting businesses.

This campaign uses Shorthand, a leading interactive storytelling tool used by many media organisations (and is incidentally used to host this story). It has helped the RELX corporate communications team win multiple awards, while transforming the way our company communicates with stakeholders. In 2018, we had just 15,000 reads of our stories on our website. This year, we should have more than 450,000, a number that has been boosted by an enhanced social media presence. That was unimaginable just three years ago. For those who like metrics, the dwell time (the average amount of time a viewer spends reading the content) has increased from just under two minutes - already a high number - to three minutes. You can read this year's top five stories here.

We have now embarked on the next stage of that journey with the launch of Perspectives, a new section on the RELX website. Previously, our stories were stored on a website page that was in effect a repository. When we didn’t have many items on the page, it was an effective approach. However, we have increased the number of Shorthand stories from just one in 2018 - about The Lancet - to 33 in 2020. This year we have already published more than 45, making a total of about 100 stories. We also launched a RELX podcast series called Our Unique Contributions.  At the same time, ten of RELX’s businesses have adopted Shorthand and are publishing their own compelling stories with the technology. We needed a new way to showcase all that content.

The Perspectives section of RELX.com is designed as a destination site for the best of RELX’s content. It will include Shorthand stories, videos, podcasts and the latest in-depth reports from across the company, from Elsevier’s Net Zero research to LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Cybercrime Report. There are sections on how we make a difference for our customers; life at RELX; Corporate Responsibility; data for good; and insights. The section is designed to be have a similar look and feel to the rest of the RELX website, while also resembling an online magazine, aimed at drawing in the visitor so they can easily explore the different facets of RELX and its businesses.  

We hope you like Perspectives. Please sign up for email alerts as it gets updated and do share links to the RELX Perspectives page and its content with your colleagues, customers, potential employees, policy makers and other stakeholders. We look forward to hearing your feedback and your ideas for stories we might tell in the future.

Paul Abrahams
Head of Corporate Communications, RELX