Summary
The world’s leading supplier of steel trunking used to conceal overhead electrical cabling, Legrand has recently launched its all new Salamandre – a replacement of the previous range. Sales had been declining, and the challenge was to reverse this trend by persuading loyal installers to switch allegiance.
As a secondary objective, Legrand wished to raise awareness of the Legrand name. Fifty per cent quicker to fit, the new product was launched under a ‘Fit Faster. Fit Salamandre’ campaign, with a speed theme based around the ‘Legrand Prix challenge,’ inviting people to test out the product at roadshows.
As well as traditional advertising, direct marketing and sampler packs, we created a powerful CGI animation of a Formula One car, and co-ordinated a campaign which embraced Facebook and YouTube. Everything drove people to a microsite with a competition leaderboard and product specific content.
The campaign has proved hugely successful, with 1,834 unique visits to the site and 1,181 views on YouTube in just three months. Most significantly, sales have increased 12.5 per cent this year on last. With so many themed items, working independently and together to drive home messages and drive up sales, this represents an outstandingly successful product launch campaign.
About the client
With global sales, offices and subsidiaries in more than 60 countries, Legrand is a major force in the supply of wiring devices, cable management and power distribution solutions. Globally, it holds 19 per cent of the wiring devices market and 15 per cent of the cable management market. This submission relates specifically to the launch of Legrand’s all new ‘Salamandre’ range of steel trunking.
Strategy
Legrand set us three key challenges:
1. Reverse a decline in sales. Although the original Salamandre is popular, it was facing increasing pressure from other brands and was declining in sales.
2. Persuade users to switch brand allegiance. The people who use trunking are traditionally loyal to their products. Sales success depended on persuading them to switch.
3. Raise brand awareness of Legrand. Many people are unaware that Legrand is the name behind Salamandre. Legrand wanted to raise its own profile as part of the campaign.
Objectives
The new Salamandre has a number of features (including slot fitted couplings) which made for rapid installation. Independent research verified that it’s 50 per cent quicker than its predecessor and nearest competitor – so we created the ‘Fit Faster. Fit Salamandre.’ campaign and created a ‘50 per cent faster’ logo, built from the product.
But how to raise the profile of Legrand?
Easy: ‘Legrand Prix’.
As a metaphor for speed, Formula One – and in particular the ‘fast-fitting’ pit-stop – works perfectly. Its link with Legrand’s name was a gift, allowing us to tie in both product attributes with campaign objectives.
Yet the main problem remained: getting loyal installers to switch to a new product. Realising it’s not always enough to ‘tell’ people how good a product is, we needed to ‘show’ them too. We needed people to get their hands on it to test it out. Therefore, a key tactic of the campaign was to get them along to events where they could ‘road test’ the product – and to use the results to engage with the audience.
The target audience
The audience is primarily electrical installers. The technical part of their job is installing electrical wiring. The tricky part is fitting the trunking to conceal it. This is time consuming and fiddly, involving awkward angles and regularly dropped tools. With inbuilt screws and ‘slot in’ pieces, Salamandre helps cut time.
Contractors form a secondary audience. These people quote jobs on time. If they can save time on parts of the job, they can improve their margins.
Media channels or techniques used
We used a blend of traditional and digital media channels as well as live events and a purpose built microsite. While each worked individually to drive home the ‘Fit Faster. Fit Salamandre.’ message, they complemented each other perfectly in a highly creative and truly integrated approach.
Elements included:
• Branded demonstration packs, sales presenter and literature for Legrand’s sales team, to help with product demonstrations
• Press adverts in the electrical press to sell the product, and promote roadshows
• 100 fully branded roadshows/product demonstrations. If installers could see and experience the product, sales results would surely follow. To incentivise people to visit events and test the product, we offered a five star prize: a day out at the British Grand Prix. (Legrand had used cars in previous promotions and know they resonate with the audience). To win the prize, you needed to attend a roadshow, take the fitting challenge, and record the fastest time. The events were promoted in press ads, and online. An estimated 1,500 installers visited these events.
Microsite
The microsite used the popular content management system ‘WordPress’ and additional custom functionality to give Legrand greater flexibility. It enables Legrand to update the site remotely with the latest Roadshow dates and to add the fastest times to a live leaderboard, encouraging people to return to the site to see if they were still in ‘pole position’. http://www.legrand.co.uk/salamandre
Creative digital animation.
We created a CGI animation which shows a highly rendered 3D model of the trunking being used to construct a Formula One track/tunnel which a Salamandre branded F1 car races through. As well as highlighting the product features, the video ends by revealing the ‘50 per cent faster to fit’ identity. This was accessible via the microsite homepage, or on YouTube.
Social media
Legrand was alive to the potential of new media and was keen to explore digital channels. We used
Facebook and YouTube to create a community that interacted with the campaign and helped maintain its momentum. Installers were filmed taking the fitting challenge, and content uploaded. In this way, we turned our audience from ‘content consumers’ to ‘content producers’.
Timescales of the campaign
Initial advertising and brand activity were released in late 2010. The second stage ran from January to March 2011, with around 100 roadshow events at distributors.
Results
Nearly 3,000 hits were registered on the main microsite. The YouTube page had over 1,181 views and Facebook has recorded 272 page views over February, March and April. Visitors were recorded from 27 countries, giving the Legrand name huge international visibility (and showing the true effectiveness of keyword meta-tag planning and optimisation). Most importantly, sales have increased significantly. As previously mentioned, one of the campaign’s key objectives was to reverse a decline in sales. In the event, sales growth was achieved with YTD sales for Trunking up 12.5 per cent on last year, with sales of the remaining cable management products up by more than 20 per cent.
Client testimonial:
“We were impressed by the digital expertise Wyatt demonstrated, the creative concept was one that we felt really encompassed our key messages and the essence of the Salamandre product. We’re already starting to see real pull through. Sales of the product have increased by 12.5 per cent.”
Mark Evans, Marketing Director, Legrand
