The Grand Prix winner at the B2B Marketing Awards 2008 was Stanley Tools’ ‘Judgement day’, a campaign that stands out for its innovation, sense of theatre and use of experiential marketing to get its audience truly involved. For a 160-year-old brand rooted in a traditional industry, this kind of campaign is certainly unusual. David Osborne who has headed up the UK’s marketing department at the brand for over two years now is part of the team responsible for this innovative approach.
We wanted to do something effective, rather than just spend all our budget on display or TV advertising, which can work, but is quite conventional, he explains. And effective it was. The campaign (which is ongoing) promotes Stanley tools by inviting tradesmen to touch and feel them at events set up at building sites and trade shows. Challenges are run throughout the day in a full-size boxing ring, so the audience can take part in competitions such as ‘Hammer time’ a race against the clock to see how fast a six-inch nail can be driven into wood using Stanley tools. So far, it has helped to increase sales in the UK by 17 per cent last year.
Experiential marketing has been absolutely pivotal to our strategy, which involves re-engaging with our audience, and more importantly, converting them to using the products, says Osborne. We know that a key driver to people buying in our sector is holding and using the tool to experience the benefits of that product. ‘Judgement day’ does just that.
It gets people involved, creates excitement and makes noise. It means everyone remembers the name and the products. You can tell them about something until the cows come home, but it’s not until they actually experience it that they know it works. We wanted to create an integrated and experiential strategy that is very targeted and very relevant to our audience, he adds.
Being relevant to the brand’s audience is a challenge Osborne doesn’t take lightly. With a remit of communicating to a target market of 1.7 million tradesmen in the UK from builders to joiners, plasters, roofers and electricians he says that Stanley’s strategy simply has to work at their level.
Absolutely everything we do is end-user driven, he says. We have a global discovery team that talks to the tradesmen, watches how they use the tools, finds out what construction techniques are being used, and the materials of the moment. These change all the time so we make sure we adapt and change to suit their needs. Once the product is right, promoting it by using experiential marketing makes sense.
Advocacy is the next step once one tradesman is convinced of the benefits of the tool, word-of-mouth helps spread the news for the brand. Opinions from within the industry are respected the most, so once we’ve converted someone, it’s likely he will tell his colleague, which soon multiplies out and creates a ripple effect.
This is also something he says is happening online and the company is in the process of introducing areas on its website where tradesmen can read reviews of its tools written by other professionals. I think there will definitely be an increase in all kinds of digital marketing in our sector. However, we still have to tailor it to the people that actually work on the sites. They aren’t sitting on computers every day, so email probably isn’t the right thing. But they are heavy mobile phone users. So we just have to make sure that we tap into a medium that they are actually using, he continues.
Of course, once we’ve tapped into their current lifestyle and behaviour patterns and worked out the best way to communicate to them, there’s no reason why that won’t change again, so we just need to make sure we’ve always got our eye on what’s going on and change our techniques accordingly. It’s all about insight and reacting to that insight. I am constantly on the look out for ideas of how we can move things on.
It seems that moving on and always keeping things fresh is what inspires Osborne. Prior to Stanley, he worked for Trident Showers for 13 years one of the reasons he stayed for so long was because the company itself kept on changing and he was constantly presented with new challenges. He feels the same way about working for Stanley.
I love that my work is so variable I’m not doing the same thing everyday and there are always new challenges. You can’t just find one solution to something and roll it out year after year it’s vital to keep things fresh, he says, adding, I find it exciting marketing can be the hub of all activities in successful companies particularly for those that have brands it really is a dynamic function and can drive a business.
And the future for Stanley? Osborne is tight lipped on future initiatives but says that taking the brand forward and continuing to grow its market share is the ultimate goal. It’s a global brand with exciting products, and we certainly aren’t looking to stand still. The world of B2B marketing is becoming more sophisticated with the lines blurring between B2C and B2B, so I’m excited about what the future holds.
For more on Stanley’s success at the B2B Marketing Awards, visit www.b2bmarketingawards.co.uk
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