25 Apr 2025
The British Council, the UK government’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities has appointed UK-based agency JACK RYAN to work on promoting its English language courses in Asia.
The first campaign has launched this month in Vietnam, promoting The British Council’s English courses - with a huge takeover of major OOH and transport media sites in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
The British Council works with more than 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, the English language, education and civil society. Last year, it reached more than 80 million people directly and 791 million people overall, including online, through broadcasts and publications.
JACK RYAN’s media strategy for the campaign focussed on both credibility and mass awareness - with environmentally friendly media buys further reinforcing the quality associations of the British Council. The agency worked closely with the British Council and in-country partners to identify routes in high footfall areas using local knowledge and insight.
The activation includes wraps of electric bus routes across both cities, and on large-format OOH billboards. Many of these were in Vietnam’s most famous and central locations reinforcing the quality and reassurance of the British Council name - including large format motion screens at P. Hoàng Đạo Thúy & Đ. Lê Văn Lương, the equivalent of London’s Piccadilly Lights.
Sustainable media planning was crucial to The British Councils mission, and JACK RYAN worked with proprietary carbon calculators through credible off-sets providing a zero impact campaign activation. The campaign launches this month (April) and will run into the summer, with further possible extensions across the year.
“Working for the British Council in Vietnam is a really interesting brief and one that our team were delighted to rise to the challenge to support these crucial courses across APAC,” said Jon Hill, Media Partner at JACK RYAN. “High profile, accessible, environmentally conscious and built in partnership with local knowledge.”
The campaign was managed entirely from the agencies’ UK offices using the proprietary iJACK Campaign Management tool providing clear and transparent media planning and booking alongside carbon calculation and analysis.
