Mike Lomax, head of marketing communications at Lafarge Tarmac, talks to Maxine-Laurie Marshall about why marketing cement is more fun than expected, the importance of proof and his love of creative
B2B marketing is often accused of being unglamorous, but I uncovered a bit of Hollywood glitz when I went to Birmingham to meet Mike Lomax, head of marketing communications at cement manufacturer Lafarge Tarmac. One of the company’s factories in Wales doubled up as a film location for two episodes of Dr Who; okay so maybe more TV sci-fi than Hollywood, but it’s still a claim to fame.
Back down to the reality of marketing cement and Lomax tells me his job is a conversation killer at dinner parties, and it’s not because people are racked with jealousy or enthusiasm about his nine-to-five role. He says, “When I tell people I do the marketing for a cement manufacturer, they reply incredulously, ‘you advertise cement!?’ but that’s because they don’t understand what we do. By the end of the evening, I’ve won them over.”
I can see how he achieves this; his passion and enthusiasm is infectious. This is substantiated by the fact Lomax has seen numerous awards success. Lafarge Tarmac was shortlisted in the B2B Marketing Awards 2012, also winning best brand campaign in the same programme’s 2011 cycle. The brand also won best sustainable stand at Eco build. At the CMA Awards 2011, it won best inhouse marketing team and it won The Marketing Society Awards for excellence in 2012 for marketing sustainable construction, beating McDonalds, Unilever and British Gas.
Campaign success
Lomax isn’t a stranger to campaign success. After running Lafarge Tarmac’s first completely coordinated electronic promotional campaign in 2011, he turned sceptics into believers and ran it again in 2012. ‘Big boys toys’ was a promotional campaign aimed at raising awareness among builders and merchants. Entrants were encouraged to enter a competition to win a Red Letter Day activity such as skydiving.
The construction industry favours traditional marketing methods such as point of sale (POS) materials and face-to-face exhibitions. However, while Lomax doesn’t disregard these as useful techniques, he’s so evangelical about digital marketing, in particular email and the use of mobile, it’d be easy to think he worked for an ESP. “Our results from the email and banner ad activity outperformed industry benchmarks. It exceeded my expectations, hence I got a bit evangelical about electronic communication and I’m doing an awful lot more of it.”
Turning sceptics into believers
Lomax explains he faced sceptics internally and externally when he launched the digital campaign. “Builders merchants tend to be quite traditionalist, they thought we should just do POS. People internally thought the same. I have to be honest, even I was sceptical about certain aspects but I wanted to experiment. And we ended up proving our point without a shadow of a doubt,” he says.
Persuading internal stakeholders, such as board members, is vital to internal buy-in and Lomax is thankful for the presence marketing has on the board. He explains, “Our sales and marketing director is on the board for the UK group. That influence is key.” But this isn’t Lomax’s only weapon to getting the board on side. He tells me, “The more success I have, hopefully the more people will understand the budget for marketing isn’t thought of as bells and whistles, it’s actively selling too.”
In order to get his proof to as many people as possible, Lomax presented the findings of recent campaigns at a company conference with 2000 people in attendance. “With new things, people can be sceptical but prove the point and they are sold.”
Juggling agencies
Lomax seems to understand the importance of giving marketing communications a voice within the company so I asked him how he got into marketing and he told me he fell into it. “I did a stint at art school because I had a real interest in design. Then I did a qualification at Manchester Polytechnic in advertising and it just took off from there. I like things to be well designed and I like to be a bit off-the-wall sometimes because that gets people talking, and it’s doing different things in a commodity-based industry that makes you stand out from the crowd. I love it, I have a passion for it.”
With such a love for creative, it’s a wonder Lomax didn’t end up agency-side, but he’s honest in his response and says, “I have considered it, but client-side means you tend to be more in control of what you’re doing, whereas agencies have a certain amount of control but clients can be frustrating on occasions.”
A potential frustration that could be felt client-side is when you are tasked with managing the relationships between five different agencies, but Lomax seems to have this worked out. “They are specific types of agencies. We’ve got a digital agency, one that specialises in technical literature, another one for some of the promotional work, a creative agency who do background creative work and a PR agency. I run synergy meetings where I bring them all together and we debate issues and plan as a team. We’ve managed to get them into a state of mind where they’re not attacking each other or trying to take more projects, there is a bit, but you’d expect that.”
Lomax’s top tips on going digital in a traditional market
1. Benchmark industry averages so you know when your campaign has done well and you can prove this to internal stakeholders.
2. Integrate different forms of digital and traditional media. Make sure everything fits together, an integrated campaign is key.
3. Look beyond your sector or industry for emerging trends. If you think it’s something that could work for you, don’t be afraid to experiment.
4. Optimise your communications for mobile devices. The website will become a repository rather than something used tactically.
