ESG: Make the Difference
The Brief
Position KPMG as the world's most trusted voice on ESG
One Blue Marble had built awareness, but KPMG’s ESG service lines weren’t seeing the commercial engagement to match. Clients knew the firm had a position on ESG — they didn’t know the depth. KPMG needed a campaign that could drive engagement with specific services across Decarbonisation, Transparency, Climate, and IDE — debuting at COP 28. The goal was authority, not awareness. And the production had to walk the talk.
The Solution
Four films. Four landscapes. Real people in unreal worlds
A suite of four cinematic adverts, each placing a real KPMG subject-matter expert inside a stunning Unreal Engine CGI environment. No actors. No aviation fuel. Just genuine expertise framed by landscapes that are both metaphor and reminder of the planet ESG exists to protect.
Background
Eight million views later, it was time for the next chapter
In 2022, One Blue Marble had set the standard: a virtual production film that introduced KPMG’s ESG credentials to the world. It racked up over eight million views and delivered strong commercial returns.
But awareness without depth was a diminishing asset. Client conversations were stalling at the surface level — KPMG needed content that could move prospects from “I know they do ESG” to “I need to speak to their Decarbonisation team.”
But a single film covering ESG broadly wasn't enough to drive deeper engagement. KPMG needed to show depth across four critical territories: Decarbonisation, Transparency and Controls, Climate and Nature, and Inclusion, Diversity and Equity.
The films would spearhead the global Make the Difference campaign and debut at COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates. The production process itself needed to align with KPMG's sustainability commitments.
Production
Approach
Let the landscape tell the story
Each film was built around a single visual metaphor drawn from Earth's own geography. For Decarbonisation, a wind-blown desert where sand slips through fingers — carbon footprints, shifting sands, the ticking clock. For IDE, a wildflower meadow in full bloom.
We used Unreal Engine to create environments of extraordinary realism, then filmed KPMG's own experts against green screen using the Ronin 4D — a cinema camera and gimbal in one unit that delivered impossibly smooth movement without heavy grip equipment.
Each script followed a disciplined narrative pattern: open with a provocative question, anchor around an undeniable statistic, and close with KPMG positioned at the centre of the solution.
The result: adverts that look like high-end brand films but sound like trusted conversations with people who genuinely know their subject.
The Four ESG Worlds
Key Project Assets
Four-Film ESG Advertising Suite
A coordinated set of cinematic adverts covering Decarbonisation, Transparency, Climate and Nature, and IDE — each delivered in 30s, 15s, and 6s cuts across two aspect ratios.
Unreal Engine CGI Environments
Four bespoke photorealistic landscapes built in Unreal Engine, each serving as both visual spectacle and narrative metaphor for the ESG topic it represents.
AI-Assisted Pre-Production Pipeline
Midjourney-generated styleframes fed into Unreal animatics, providing accurate lighting plans and camera movements before a single frame was shot on set.
Cloud-Based Post-Production Workflow
A fully cloud-native pipeline using Dropbox and Blackmagic Design Cloud, enabling simultaneous collaboration across Unreal design, compositing, editing, grading, and sound.
Impact
The campaign launched at COP 28 and rolled out globally, harmonised with the wider Make the Difference brand platform. The films proved that high-production advertising and genuine human expertise are not mutually exclusive.
Gallery
Project Insights
From corporate talking head to cinema
The temptation with subject-matter expert films is to point a camera at someone behind a desk and hope the content carries it. We proved there's another way: put real people in unreal worlds, and the combination of expertise and spectacle becomes something entirely new.
These films didn't just communicate ESG. They demonstrated it — produced with the same sustainability principles they advocate. When the medium is the message, the message is impossible to ignore.
Whenever I present them to marketing colleagues and stakeholders, they're wowed by how far we're pushing the quality, emotion and impact.
Adam Gill, Senior Manager, Brand & Firm-wide Campaigns Lead — KPMG
