Thank you!
Early feedback from the event has been excellent. The team felt it gave them good insight and ideas that they can use with their customers.
Thanks again for an excellent day.
Laurence Backler, Director, NatWest Business Banking, Ashford & Tunbridge Wells Area
Panduit
Our client
Panduit is a world-class developer and provider of leading-edge technologies that give large enterprises the capability to connect, manage and automate their communications, computing, power, control and security systems. Strong relationships with technology leaders, such as Cisco, EMC and Emerson amongst others as part of the “Datacenter of the Future” consortium, complemented by Panduit’s global staff, make it a key player in the industry.
Objectives
Despite Panduit’s success, there is an ongoing need to maintain brand awareness and to recruit distributors and partners across the globe. Like any business in the current economic climate, there is also pressure to reduce costs and ensure a positive return on marketing investment.
The major industry event is Cisco Networkers Live, which in the EMEA region for 2009/10, was being held in Barcelona and Bahrain. The Middle East is one of Panduit’s fasting growing regions and Panduit had a clear strategic objective to support the Middle East offices. With the economies in Europe down, however, the decision to attend Barcelona was more finely balanced and the commitment to the expenditure was only made after important assurances had been obtained from Cisco.
The impending deadlines for the first event in Barcelona created a double pressure: firstly to get the physical elements of the conference exhibitions completed on time; secondly to organise a supporting programme of marketing that would ensure the exhibitions would be a success. Catrina turned to The Marketing Eye for help.
Approach
Prior to undertaking any work on the stand, it was important to look at the inter-action of all the marketing and to determine how the number of visitors to the stands and the levels of enquiry could be maximised. Neil Edwards, Managing Director of The Marketing Eye said: “Attending a tradeshow as an isolated piece of activity is a fairly limited method of marketing. If the show is chosen wisely you will get visitors, but your success is in the hands of the marketing efforts of the organisers. “Panduit had clear objectives and there were certain members of the data centre community that the senior management wanted to get to the show and onto the stand. Even if these people didn’t attend the show, it was an opportunity to put the Panduit name in front of them once again”.
Solution
A fully integrated programme of marketing was therefore developed. To build awareness of Panduit’s impending presence at the show, a direct mail campaign and email campaign was organised. This involved collecting data from the countries across the Region and organising it into a format that could be used for the mailing.
Direct marketing
One wave of direct mail and two waves of email were planned for each venue before the event, followed by an email after the event. An innovative insured incentive was used within the campaign and offered a prize fund of $25,000 to anybody who could correctly guess the 6-digit combination. The transparent locked vault, with the cash visible inside it, would later form the centre piece of the stand.
Collateral
A dedicated micro-site which housed a complete library of Panduit’s marketing collateral was built and translated into 7 languages. Visitors interested in finding out more about a particular product ahead of the show could download the relevant product sheet. Copies of the microsite were placed onto branded DVD’s for handing out from the stand, and other collateral items were sourced, for example eco-carrier bags and USB sticks.
PR
At the Barcelona show, speaking opportunities were organised on various topics for Andy Caveney, VP of Global Alliances and Channel Partners, Sander Kaempfer, Senior Account Manager Datacentres and Mark Costard, Product Marketing Manager, EMEA. In Bahrain Vineeth Ram, VP Strategic Global Marketing spoke on his vision for the data centre of the future and other important developments in the market. The talks demonstrated thought leadership and a clear point of difference over more commoditised competitors.
Design
The plan was a comprehensive one and while the strategy was being agreed, attention was being given to the design. Joanna Allen, Creative Director with The Marketing Eye said: “Developing a visually attractive design for the campaign, which would work across all applications, including the stand itself, was important to maximise the opening rates and engagement. If the design was to work and endure it had to capture the personality of the business as well as the imagination of the target market. “Working within Panduit corporate guidelines, we created a sophisticated, yet attention grabbing design that reflected the Panduit motto of ‘Collaborate to Accelerate’.”
New designs and artwork were created for the supporting activity and the stand.
Logistics
The last, but by no means least, stage of the process was to organise the shipping of the stand and supporting materials to Barcelona and Bahrain and to have people on-site to manage the construction and take-down. The Marketing Eye provided a project manager who flew out to both venues and was on-hand throughout.
Results
Barcelona suffered from the economic conditions, so the number of attendees was down in comparison to previous years, but the quality of enquiry was higher than ever before. Bahrain proved to be the most successful event Panduit has ever attended with the Cisco Emerging Markets team. This was the first event of its type in the Region and it was very well attended with visitors from all over Africa and the Middle East.
At both events, the Panduit stand was something to see: it was continuously packed with visitors and there was a very positive atmosphere. Many on and off stand discussions were held and a large haul of leads gathered. The opening rates on all waves of the email campaign were in excess of 30%, which is well above industry norms and showed a good level of interest in the content. After de-duplication and removing companies where Panduit already had opportunities, just under 600 new leads were created across the two events, which was about 50% higher than the objective. All leads were passed to the Panduit marketing and inside sales teams for follow up and nurturing. In terms of brand positioning, attending the events in Barcelona and Bahrain has helped to put clear blue water between Panduit and its nearest competitor, Commscope, in one of Commscope’s strongest regions.
“We couldn’t have achieved what we achieved in Barcelona and Bahrain without you guys. This was a total team effort! Thanks for all your help, going the extra mile and for helping me to deliver excellent results in this climate!”
Catrina Clulow, Marketing Communications Manager – EMEA, Panduit
