Xerox’s new multimillion pound B2B global marketing campaign is aiming to reshape its brand identity and position itself as more than just a copier enterprise. Launched in the US at the beginning of September (rolling out in the UK, France and Germany in October), the campaign ‘Ready for real business’ is designed to draw attention to Xerox’s expanded service, offering business processes and document management. It also aims to raise awareness of its new ability to handle clients’ back office work.
Chief marketing officer at Xerox, Christa Carone, comments, “It’s all about communicating the new Xerox in fresh and engaging ways to disrupt legacy perceptions of the brand, and turn up the volume on the breadth and depth of our services and technology.”
Brand characters star in campaign
By taking brand characters, such as a Marriott Hotel bellboy or a Procter & Gamble Mr Clean, out of their expected roles and showing them struggling to handle back office tasks, the global marketing initiative aims to emphasise the value of Xerox’s service offering.
Besides Procter & Gamble and Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Xerox’s campaign highlights its work with other renowned brands, such as The New York Mets, Target, Ducati and the University of Notre Dame.
The campaign targets business decision makers and aims to show how Xerox has enabled organisations to focus on what matters the most – their real business.
Carone says, “We’re fortunate to have great client partners who worked side-by-side with us in showing how their businesses benefit when Xerox is doing what we do best. They are letting us use important elements of their brand/business in unexpected situations to highlight the types of services Xerox provides for them.”
She explains that the use of the brands’ iconic characters is to inject some lightheartedness in to the campaign. “In a humorous way, it answers the question: What would happen if our customers were doing what Xerox now does for them?”
She adds that the use of brand mascots is not the only innovative feature of the campaign, “We’re cutting through the clutter with innovative media, such as interactive billboards and attention-grabbing digital units.”
The global marketing campaign kicked off in the US with television, print, web and airport advertising, as well as high-tech interactive billboards that use motion-sensing and touch-screen technologies. The campaign is complemented with the microsite RealBusiness.com.
The RealBusiness is online
RealBusiness.com presents itself as the virtual headquarters for the fictional organisation Real Business International. Web visitors enter a modern five-storey-office building, where each floor features a different Xerox service, ranging from IT outsourcing to customer care, finance and accounting, document management and human resource support. The campaign’s brand characters feature on the microsite.
Carone’s concludes, “RealBusiness .com is an invitation to explore and experience what real business can be like when companies partner with Xerox. Through RealBusiness.com we are trying to deliver a different type of B2B campaign, one that offers a richer and more interesting experience.”
