In consumer marketing it’s fairly typical to create an audience for a new product. Think cereal bars. Kellog’s recognised that some people could not afford the time for breakfast so they created ‘breakfast in a bar’. Then Lemsip came along with a flu solution for people who are too busy for sickness: just tip the yellow powder on your tongue for a super productive day wowing the boss with reports.
But surely the B2B market cannot be so easily manipulated not with the multi-layered DMU and the complete suspension of emotion and compulsion. Or can it? Hardware manufacturer Brother has been on a mission since early 2004 to cultivate the home working market with its ‘all-in-one’ machines which can print, copy, fax and scan. And marketing has been the driving force with Chris Hinds, head of marcoms, steering this from the core.
The Brother offices are located on Shepley Street in one of Manchester’s less glamorous areas replace images of footballers’ mock Tudor mansions with low-rise estates and visions of Selfridges food hall with Aldi, and you get the picture. This is a neighbourhood where interest in current affairs is ‘very low’, yet it’s from here that Brother is challenging if not already changing the status quo of where we work.
Currently there are 2.2 million home workers in the UK (Source: DTI) and this is predicted to rise to 4.5 million by 2007. Hinds and his marketing team are not only tapping into the current market but they are actively encouraging its growth by conducting research into the benefits of working at home, by sponsoring the ‘National Working from Home Week’, by publishing a booklet of helpful ideas and tips as well as simply raising awareness by advertising. This is much more than skipping breakfast: it’s changing a way of life.
Brother’s move into the SOHO (small office home office) and the COHO (company office home office) market was prompted by Harry Suzuki, Brother’s MD until May 2004. Hinds says, He suggested that we do some research into these markets. We worked with agencies BDH and Staniforth and found that home telemarketing had experienced huge growth over the previous three years and that with the roll out of broadband more and more people could potentially work from home.
This is where a little product knowledge is required: the Brother range tends to be smaller in size than the competition and for a home worker (where space is of the essence) this proved to be a key selling point. Hinds remembers the moment the penny dropped: It was ‘Oh, my God this was perfect for us’. We were hitting the size demands and price range for this market perfectly.
Epiphany over, Hinds and his team set about growing this market. By November 2004 Brother had launched a TV advertising campaign, produced 150,000 booklets promoting the benefits of home working and run ads across the national press. The TV ads were soft sells, promoting Brother products as much as the comfort and ease of working at home. All of the ads finished with the line: ‘Brother, designed to work from home’.
Where the product is designed to work from home, the campaign was designed to create empathy. To truly deliver, Hinds believes that it is imperative to empathise. He cites Honda’s diesel engine TV commercial, ‘Hate something, change something’ as a brilliant example of this. People see that ad and they think, ‘They [Honda] understand me. I wasn’t even thinking that but I agree’.
The 24-page booklet works on a similar premise with information on Brother products juxtaposed with tips on getting the work-life balance right. Hinds comments, This is not a time-share sell. There’s information in this which they [home workers] would find useful. The guides were distributed as inserts in Computer Shopper, Business Equipment Digest and PC Pro magazines that people might peruse when deciding which printer to purchase.
This all seems perfect: company discovers new market and immediately taps into it in an innovative way. Hinds’ sounds like the dream job if it wasn’t for one glitch: brand awareness. Half joking, half serious, he says, You ask someone to name the brand of printer in their office and they’ll hum and haw and then guess ‘HP’. Add to this the fact that Brother’s targeting was skewed for a long time and his job starts to lose the appeal. We did research two years ago which found that 80 per cent of those who purchased mono laser printers were from companies with 49 employees or less. We do brand awareness with the 49ers and it’s ‘No’. It was then we realised that our targeting was wrong we were sending our message to the consumer and corporate land.
Despite this, small businesses were purchasing Brother products, Hinds opines that this was more to do with the products their design and price range rather than the marketing. This problem is not exclusive to the UK market. He recalls a TV campaign which ran in Australia a couple of years ago. The voice over said: ‘You may have a Brother printer in your office but you will not know it’s there because it just sits there quietly doing its job, never causing any problems. It’s a bit anonymous but it doesn’t get a bad name’.
The push to get the Brother name noticed by SMEs began in earnest in November 2004 with TV advertising. Aiming to empathise with the so-called 49ers, one of the ads shows the MD of a small company running around, doing mundane office tasks such as refilling the water barrel before attending a meeting with some bemused looking clients. Hinds comments, The ads are trying to empathise with people in small businesses who have to be the tea boy and the MD.
This was Brother’s television debut in the UK, and Hinds admits that whilst initially it was a big deal, the euphoria quickly wore off. It was big news for the sales people but when we came to do a second slot in January and March this year people become blasé, ‘Of course we’re advertising on TV dawling’, he mimics.
Acknowledging this apathy, Hinds felt it was time for something new. At this point he started to seriously consider sponsoring Channel 4’s ‘Risking It All’ a series which follows real life entrepreneurs striving to make a success of their start-up business. I took a while to convince myself but I did think that we needed to do more. Then I had to convince the board.
His argument to the sales & marketing director, communications director and the managing director (who comprise the board) sounded like this: In terms of value for money, sponsorship is much better than straight advertising we would get 33 per cent more airtime. The demographics fit: the show’s target audience is not totally male but it’s more weighted to the male men are predominantly the owners of SMEs. Also, we would be the first IT company to sponsor a TV programme.
They signed a cheque for £2 million and Hinds, in the spirit of the show, took a risk, albeit one that he tried to minimise as much as possible. On signing the contract he stipulated that a consultant must be on hand to offer advice; business guru Martin Webb was drafted in. Hinds explains, We didn’t want the brand to be associated with people making bad business decisions but even when they do, Webb is there to say how it should be done.
Another issue which Hinds had absolutely no control over was product placement. The British Advertising Council Standards stipulates that when a company sponsors a programme, product placement is not allowed. In reality, this was a risk for Hinds as the show could inadvertently become an advertising vehicle for the competition and this is exactly what happened with the first show.
It launched at the Channel 4 cinema on 15 September we had 70 trade people there and in one of the first scenes they showed a Lexmark, right in the middle of the shot. Hinds is nonchalant about this hiccup which indicates a high level of confidence in the sponsorship.
Brother’s relationship with the trade has changed in recent years. While the resellers, distributors and online shops are crucial to the sales process their importance on the marketing side has diminished because it was hampering the company’s perception of the end-user. We’ve realised that we can’t just push, we have to pull also, Hinds comments. The ultimate objective getting the brand on to people’s radars before they go into the shop cannot be achieved by marketing through the channel.
Despite this Hinds still appreciates the power of good POS or the right positioning instore and the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the reseller. This is evident by his stance on search engine optimisation (SEO). When you’re selling through the channel, SEO is not counter productive, but all you end up doing is betting on another horse in the same race. I think it’s best to give them the investment [the channel partners] and then you get more buy-in and you don’t annoy them.
Hinds is definitely on a roll. In late October Brother made front page news in Metro and while the story was not overtly complimentary referring to how computer printers can spy on users with a secret tracking code it was still coverage. For every cloud there’s a silver lining, he says, and if people didn’t know that Brother manufactured printers before, well they do now.
Then a second TV sponsorship was announced in early November of Channel 4’s ‘Make Me A Million’, so it seems that Hinds has got buy-in from the board again. But if party venues are any reflection on how well a business is doing, then Brother’s doing very well. The venue for Brother’s press Christmas bash is ‘restaurant to the stars’, Momo. Geographically that’s about 240 miles from Shepley Street, metaphorically in terms of how the business is thinking and where it’s going it’s spot on.
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