The Client
Vandersanden BV
(VDS) is a major European manufacturer of specialist building bricks, based in
Belgium. They turn over c€80m, with most of their revenue coming from northern
Europe. They have a long history of making very high quality bricks from
locally sourced clay, as well as designing new and innovative building systems.
The Objective
VDS wanted to
launch their flagship product, the Zero Bricktm into the UK
market. Their target audience was wide, ranging from small private
self-builders, specialist low-volume house builders and architects and
specifiers from commercial architects and building contractors.
The key sales
message was that the Zero Brick was new, different and unlike competitive
solutions could be easily and quickly implemented without any additional
training required by the brick layers.
VDS set themselves
a target of having the Zero Brick firmly specified on a “significant” UK
building project by the end of 2011. By significant, they specifically meant
greater than 250k bricks. For reference, a typical UK 4 bedroom domestic
property has c15k bricks.
The Problem
Vandersanden do
not have a presence in the UK, except via their sales partner, Hoskins Brick,
based near Cambridge. Historically, both VDS and Hoskins had only managed
sporadic, ad-hoc display advertising which had not been backed up with
awareness building via press releases. As a result, very few members of their
target audience in the UK would have known either Vandersanden or their
products. Whilst VDS knew what they wanted to achieve, they had little
firsthand understanding of the UK construction or architectural media space.
The Solution
VDS turned to
Business Vitamins who had been recommended having recently designed and built
the new Hoskins Brick website. Business Vitamins drew upon their prior
experience of marketing high quality products to the architectural and
construction space, to create a workable marketing plan for VDS.
An initial mediaplan was built, listing the likely key publications read by the intended target
audience. Using this, a range of PR opportunities was identified; a number of
full page display adverts were created and a small number of direct mail pieces
were designed. Each of these had specific tracking mechanisms in place to
ensure that leads could easily be attributed to each media channel, and within
that, which specific media title.
Additionally, an
existing Zero Brick microsite was recreated by Vandersanden on a
.co.uk domain, with tracking code in place in order to measure visitor numbers.
The Results
The campaign
commenced in late June 2011 and ran for circa 5months. In total there were over
200 leads generated from the campaign. Of these, 128 leads were captured and
recorded directly from the advertising, direct mail and PR. In addition, there
were around at least another 75 instances of prospects contacting Hoskins Brick
directly via telephone.
Most importantly,
the campaign met its key objective. A major project, relating to the new
construction of a major public sector building in Battersea, south-west London,
has seen a deal specifying c6million Zero Bricks being specified for the sites
marketing suite.
Business Vitamins
understand there is considerable potential for further sales leading directly
from this initial opportunity; due mainly to interest from other public sector
projects that are planned nearby.
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I tend not to speak furiously about the finer points of my industry at such meetings, but this response always intrigues me. So, a few questions: