We all like a bit of professional jargon. It makes us feel part of a club with its own secret language. For journalists, forget shorthand skills; it’s about dropping words like ‘freesheet’, ‘DPS’ and ‘Berliner’ into conversations with like-minded hacks. And for marketers it’s no different frankly they’re in a much better position as the marketing lexicon is broader than most professions.
Mark Savage joined telecoms company Colt in August last year as director of brand and he is no stranger to jargon. In fact, his first four months with the company can be summed up in one jargon-filled sentence: firstly, he created an ‘awareness roadmap’ which is now being rolled out across the ‘footprint’, more recently he initiated a ‘culture mapping exercise’ in an effort to highlight the company’s ‘vision and values’ by tapping into all of the ‘brand touchpoints’, with the overall aim of positioning Colt as a ‘challenger company’.
Some people use jargon as a smokescreen to disguise a lack of knowledge. This is not the case with Savage he talks the talks and walks the walk.
When he joined Colt, the brand was hazy it had identity issues. In 1992 the company was founded to support the telecoms’ needs of London’s banks, hence the name ‘Colt’ City of London Telecoms. But in the last year it’s been branching out from this audience of banks and top FTSE companies to include the mid-size sector. Colt’s roots are in the financial markets. The top 25 banks in the world as well as the top seven stock exchange companies are customers, Savage explains.
And while this market is lucrative, it is finite and certainly not as large as the mid-size sector. There was a mandate for change so that the company could sweat the assets of its network, but to do this it required greater visibility. Thus raising brand awareness in the mid-size market, while maintaining a strong presence in the corporate sector, were the key elements of Savage’s remit on taking up the position.
He also had to bring the brand to the Continent. Since 1996 Colt has been building a presence in the European market but the brand hadn’t been invited. The picture gets grimmer when you learn that the competition is the state incumbent BT, Spain’s Telefonica, France Telecom etc. where brand awareness is simply a non-issue.
Savage had his work cut out for him but instead of launching in headfirst with a pan-European awareness campaign he carried out some market research. The most telling comment was: ‘we sort of know Colt, but if we saw more Colt presence that would give us additional confidence to purchase’. More inspiring words a brand director could not dream of hearing.
Quite fittingly the awareness roadmap started with London cabs in September last year. The exterior of 200 cabs were embellished with the Colt logo, visual and strap line ‘Exceed with Colt’ and a further 20 were ‘fully-wrapped’; meaning the interior was also branded. But Savage went further than just getting the ‘look and feel’ right. We worked on the emotional side with the taxi driver. We briefed them so that they could talk on a basic level of what Colt stands for they’ve also become a medium through which we could gauge the customer’s reaction to the advertising.
Noting how much this device impressed his interviewer, Savage admirably admits it was nothing new. In fact, it was one of the tactics he’d employed during his 18 month stint on the Olympic bid team where he co-ordinated its branding activity across London. The number one medium for building a brand in London is taxi drivers. They could have destroyed the bid so we talked to them, explained how this could be brilliant for London, gave them a point of view.
The Colt taxi campaign (which will run until the end of this year) is purely focused on London, so with the next stage Savage was keen to take it beyond the home market. In late October 2005 an outdoor and press advertising campaign commenced in London, Paris and Frankfurt the company’s ‘top-tier’ countries. For four weeks Colt had 200 poster sites on the Paris Metro and 40 Van Wagner sites in and around London. This was perhaps more geared towards the mid-sized market than the taxi advertising, he says, though the taxis were not exclusively targeted at the corporate market.
The next stage, which commences this month, will extend the ‘footprint’ in the European network to Spain, Italy and The Netherlands. A softly, softly approach has shaped the strategy. This is not a blanket campaign. I think we’ve been extremely disciplined in the way that we stop and listen after every campaign. Stop and listen? Savage explains, We pay an outside company to carry out analysis. They speak to key people [IT directors, office managers, FDs] in various size companies and tease-out their understanding of Colt, the brand and ultimately whether they are prepared to purchase.
I think the taxis have been successful so far, but really the brand tracking will determine that and the onus is on me to prove that the activity is working.
This reliance on analysis to prove ROI stems from the fact that Savage operates on a tight budget one that is a million miles away from the vast funds available to the competition. The result of this, he says, is Absolute discipline. You are far more focused on where you spend, and afterwards you’re also far more disciplined when it comes to analysing ROI.
Even on the Olympic bid committee despite the £2 billion plus spend Savage is adamant that his outgoings were minimal and says that these grand costs were for the day-to-day running of a start-up, medium-sized company; albeit one with very flash offices in 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf.
My remit was, ‘with exactly a pot of zero money, raise awareness of the bid’. It was all about talking to the right people the five boroughs that would benefit as well as Westminster and City of London. I had to liaise with them to get support for the bid, for instance I got free advertising space with TFL (Transport for London).
I’m very proud that I spent so little money. At one point London had 200 street banners, flags all down the Mall, dozens of branded taxis, two fully dressed tubes; and this was all forged on good will.
However it should be noted that when the International Olympic Committee were in town last February, funds were spent on advertising.
After playing such an integral role in the most high profile branding activity in recent history, employment-wise, Savage could have taken any job at any company. So, why B2B? To borrow from his jargon, he is a ‘challenger’. I’ve never wanted to be one of the big boys, I wouldn’t have dreamed of joining BT. The challenge [with Colt] is more exciting and you’ve got to spend more wisely and be more clever with tracking.
This has been the trend in his career to date, in 2003 he rebranded London Electricity Group to EDF Energy shunning the incumbent British Gas. Following this he joined the bid team, a risky move as it could have flopped. There’s also the fact that he doesn’t view the brand as something that’s linked to what the company does. Whether it’s the telecoms or energy industry the brand is fundamentally the same thing: the employees they are the heart of the brand. The products, they’re just the mechanics, the tools that link to it.
In an effort to get to the heart of Colt’s brand Savage conducted a ‘culture mapping exercise’ with organisational consultants Mercer Delta late last year. To gauge the internal perceptions of the brand, focus groups were carried out on seven per cent of its 3800 employees and 20 managers were interviewed one-to-one.
Embarking on this, Savage was determined to get feedback from every level, In the past I’ve seen it where companies go to the highest echelons and get their vision, but that’s not the full picture. To do this successfully you need to engage with everyone in the business. Once the analysis comes back from Mercer Delta it will be filtered through the company and Savage imagines the whole business from those who lay cabling on the roads to senior management living and breathing the brand, espousing its visions and values.
A utopic vision perhaps but one that Savage is determined to make a reality. He will work with his brand team of nine people who between them cover PR, above-the-line communications and brand strategy. The team will liaise closely with the marketing team, product teams, human resources, senior management etc.
Savage, We will work closely with all of the areas that touch and impact on the brand. There is no territory. We are a challenger company. Coming from other people these statements may seem trite a syntactical string of jargon but uttered from Savage’s mouth they’re credible, even ‘legit’.
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