Summary:
Blackberry/Research in Motion (RIM), view Germany as an emerging market. Although their smartphones are considered premium business tools, they are significantly behind other manufacturers in terms of sales and brand awareness across the German smartphone market as a whole.
RIM is keen to significantly improve this market position in Germany. To do this, they need to increase end user brand engagement, but also improve their own sales team knowledge and education across the varying network channels.
Ambition were briefed by RIM Germany to create a campaign to work for Mobilcom (a leading network in Germany) in a call centre environment. The activity needed to work over a six week period, deliver against some fierce sales targets and ensure product knowledge increased among call centre staff.
Ambition’s campaign, Wake up to Blackberry, combined training modules with product road show/demonstration opportunities. A sales incentive was woven into the activity to ensure it worked as hard for sale as it did for knowledge and training. The campaign’s overall budget was £30,000 and took place in the first quarter of 2011.
About the client company
Blackberry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Research in Motion (RIM) since 1999. Available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators, Blackberry were named as the UKs number one smartphone earlier this year.
Strategy – What issues or challenges did the organisation face?
Germany is still a relatively small market for RIM. However, there are huge opportunities and their current focus needs to be on increasing knowledge and sales in their current sales channels.
Objectives of the campaign:
There were three key objectives:
1. Increase knowledge via training
Create excitement, interest and attendance at the training sessions held prior to the road show.
2. Change perceptions through product demonstrations/road show
Communicate that Blackberry isn’t the corporate, stuffy brand that it is often considered. Rather, it is an entertaining consumer brand that is approachable and easy to use.
3. Increase sales
Sales were the main objective of this campaign. The target set was to increase sales from 480 over a six week period to 1160. This equates to a 241 per cent increase – quite a challenge.
The target audience:
Seventy call centre staff who are desk-based with high daily targets to meet in terms of answering inbound customer calls. Each team member is requested to attend the road show and take part in training and the incentive.
Competitors will have undertaken similar activities in the months prior to Blackberry’s presence and they will be present once our incentive has finished. So, our campaign needs to be immediately impactful, memorable and deliver against the targets set.
Media, channels or techniques used:
A mix of media channels was used, challenging the limited budgets to full effect. A multi-channel approach was chosen to generate the broadest reach and to allow a London-based agency to run it within the limited budget.
Prior to the activity starting, emails were sent to all staff to alert them to the activity and generate interest. They also arrived at their desk to find a breakfast pack containing edible goodies plus road show and incentive details.
Training
Training consisted of teams of 10 in a classroom, a compulsory session for all staff. The training focused on Blackberry basics and was the first stage in trying to remove the barriers to selling Blackberry – helping position it as a consumer smartphone and showing maximising the range’s USPs.
Product Demonstrations and Roadshow
Attendees entered the lobby to find a Wake Up To Blackberry bedroom set, with a Kylie Minogue look-alike in attendance, with whom they could have their photo taken. The branded photo was printed out for the attendees to keep on their desk, generating huge interest, not only with Mobilcom, but also among the other businesses in the call centre.
Whilst in the lobby, staff received a product demo and literature as well as cookies and brownies to enjoy. They were also encouraged to enter a quiz to win a Blackberry smartphone based on the knowledge gained in their training session. Printed items included product leaflets communicating benefits and spec, branded photo frames for attendees to display their photos and posters and pull ups that promoted the incentive and prizes to be won.
Incentive
For every Blackberry connection made, the sales person received €5 and the top sales person every week won a Blackberry smartphone. The incentive was run entirely online via a dedicated microsite which communicated weekly results, winners and regular message updates.
A gallery was also created online, so attendees could view their photos with ‘Kylie’ and check the weekly winners.
Timescales of the campaign:
From initial briefing to the evaluation, the campaign took 3.5 months.
- Brief – 4th January
- Proposal submission – 13th January
- Sell in to network partner – 1st February
- Logistics / event planning – 2nd-14th February
- Launch comms – 14th February (2 weeks prior to launch)
- Training and road show – 1st March
- Incentive – 1st March 2011 – 12th April
- Results – weekly throughout incentive
- Evaluation – 17th April
Testimonial:
“We set Ambition a huge challenge with such an increase in sales, as well as to run a road show and training with a very tight budget. Plus, the added challenge of running the campaign from London and deliver everything in German and to also run and attend the event on site. Well, the results speak for themselves and the project couldn’t have run any smoother. Due to the success we are now looking to run this campaign in another six call centres.”
Sandra Klumpen, Channel Marketing Manager, RIM
