Kern calibrates and distributes a range of the world’s most precise and sensitive scales and weights, capable of weighing to a staggering seven decimal places. Customers include scientists, pharmacists and engineers.
Strategy – broader business issues the company is facing
Despite their impressive capabilities, precision scales have become commoditised. There is very little to differentiate suppliers of such technology. As well as boost leads and sales, we wanted to create brand equity for Kern – and make their precision scales much more desirable.
Objectives of the campaign
- To generate UK leads.
Kern’s direct mail creative - To boost sales.
- To grow the Kern brand.
The target audience
The audience can be split into three groups:
End users: scientists, engineers and pharmacists
Buyers: of scientific equipment, for labs, pharmacies, etc.
Resellers: who need to offer brands they trust to their customers.
Insight: Our audience are extremely intelligent and inquisitive types. Nothing is more important in their line of work than precision. They’re the kind of people proud to be called ‘geeky’.
Media strategy
Direct mail perfectly suited our idea. Plus, it was the best way to reach our list of decision makers in this field. Additionally, this was our first job for Kern. They had a small marketing budget and had never tried anything ‘creative’ before. (Marketing in the industry is, without exception, product and price-led.)
So we needed an idea that would express everything about the brand – but with a very small budget, using media that they were confident using. Media we also were sure would reach the right people.
Creative strategy
This mail pack fits into a larger campaign – our precision ‘guess the weight contest’.
We asked our audience of scientists, engineers and pharmacists to estimate the weight of extremely low mass objects – items that would be impossible to weigh using anything less than the world’s most precise scales. After making their estimations, prospects could watch the actual experiments and see the results on Kern’s website.
To drive to the website, we used emails which posed the challenge and detailed the incentives (£50 credit with Kern just by entering – and the prospect who estimates most precisely wins £1,000).
For the direct mail pack, we redesigned Kern’s entire range of stationery, printing the weight of each element – from the letterhead to the compliment slip to the ink used on the business card. We glue-tipped a feather to the letterhead to encourage prospects to share Kern’s obsession with precision by estimating the weight.
Timescales of the campaign
Campaign development: March – May 2009
Implementation: June – July 2009 (8 weeks)
Results analysis: July – August 2009
Results
Twenty four per cent response rate resulting in 167 leads, four resellers signed up (predicted £200,000 revenue for next year), but judging the £31,000 revenue created by direct sales alone, that’s already over 750 per cent ROI. These results prove that a creative idea also has a precise (and very significant) value.
Client testimonial
“Aside from the astonishing results, what’s really exciting is that this campaign built our brand. It’s also really original. Nothing like this has been done before in our industry. It made Kern precision scales seem sexy.”
Thomas Fimpel, marketing director.
