The Ultimate Skid Steer Smackdown: a DM campaign for John Deere by GyroHSR

When John Deere wanted to move into a new category of earth-movers, GyroHSR conceived a campaign centred around head-to-head contests between JD and the competition. The following article looks at how the campaign evolved and the results it delivered.

Since its launch in April 2008, the John Deere ‘Smackdown’ microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and over 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have attracted 100,000+ views on YouTube.

By Christoph Becker, Chief Creative Officer, GyroHSR

Contrary to what some may think, direct marketing is not just a tactical tool, it is a strategic approach.

It can build brands and it can create an intimacy that no other approach can. Believe it, because if you don’t, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you might be left to turn the lights out as everyone else embraces a new era somewhere in the future.

This is an approach we had to adopt when launching a US campaign for agricultural and construction equipment giants John Deere.

The challenge was clear: John Deere wanted to enter a new digger category

The audience was contractors, landscapers, farmers and dealers. So a simple offline DM piece, targeted and tracked, might have done the job.

It might have done. But then, it might have gone down as another classic example of the real potential of direct marketing going well and truly unexploited. Instead, we created a campaign that incorporated the stalwarts of direct marketing and used them to create something much, much bigger.

“Smackdown” involved staging a series of head-to-head battles featuring the top machines in a ‘robot wars’- style duel. The events – the hill climb, visibility test, power lift and serviceability – were based on real-world situations that drivers experience and were staged in front of a live audience.

Initially, the audience was engaged via offline mailers, but that was only the beginning. At the heart of the programme was the ‘SkidSteerSmackdown.com’ microsite, featuring videos of digger battles. The site was fully interactive, enabling visitors to engage in a number of ways. For example, fans could create e-postcards which could be customized and distributed to friends and co-workers. This simple tool converted dealers and operators into the campaign’s strongest advocates.

A series of eDMs were distributed to alert both dealer and prospects when new content was available on the site, and finally – traditional elements such as print ads were also incorporated.

And through this activity, John Deere gained a cult following

Since the site launch in April 2008, the microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and more than 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube.

Offline, the Smackdown-themed lead generators yielded a 4 percent response rate, outpacing many other similar mailers during the year. Drive-to-site banner advertising had click-through-rates of approximately 3 percent, and eBlasts promoting the site had response rates of more than 7 percent.

This was a campaign that had direct marketing at the heart – there was an identifiable audience, a clear proposition and a measurable response. But to encapsulate it in this way does no justice to the true reach of the activity. We could have sent out the mailers and waited to track the sales. But we didn’t. We took the brand to a new marketplace and created a following populated by genuine advocates. We drove awareness, created buzz and instigated WOM.

More on Social Media:

The WOMsta monsta -  a new dimension in Word-of-Mouth

PR & B2B. The perfect couple – the importance of PR in B2B

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

The leopard cannot change its spots

In other words, basic characteristics cannot be altered.

Oh, yes they can…

The spots on these ‘leopards’ were changed to fingerprints as part of brand re-positioning for clients demonstrating biometric-based access control solutions at Europe’s biggest corporate security show in 2006.

This was just part of a campaign to influence market perceptions of biometrics – to alter highly-sceptical attitudes by encouraging a conservative, risk-averse market to re-evaluate its opinions of this emerging technology. 

The Biometric Leopards: altering market-perceptions of fingerprint biometrics

Fingerprint biometrics are pretty hi-tech products. Three years ago, the buzz around biometrics was fully-focused on the technology and its futuristic, sci-fi aura. And all the world’s biometric brands positioned themselves in this way - happy to be associated with hi-tech images of eyes and fingertips embedded with electronic circuits and binary code.

No wonder people felt alienated and threatened by the technology…

The concept of the biometric leopards was generated by three objectives:

• move away from a high-technology focus and the market’s ‘me too’ clutter
• emphasise the human, non-threatening aspect of biometrics
• highlight the technology’s ease-of-use for widely-ranging applications 

As with any big promotional event, a fourth objective was to produce a ’show-stopper’ – something that would differentiate the clients from all other exhibitors and generate as much visitor-traffic as possible.

Why leopards? The clients were both South African companies looking to build European sales by leveraging their world-class experience with large-scale, corporate access control solutions in southern Africa.

Take the high-ground. And hold it

The biometric brand in question, Sagem, and their biggest distributor, Ideco, have continued to use biometric leopards and their variants at South African events since their 2006 debut, securing hi-visibility and exceptional visitor-numbers at trade shows like Electra Mining and Securex. They are also used as part of the ‘living’ brand at roadshows, product-launches and even presentations to analysts and investors. 

The fact that bright young women – with only minimal training – can demonstate the brand’s hardware and its associated software at such events has done a great deal to break-down perceptions of Sagem biometrics as a high-complexity technology that only exists in sci-fi movies.

Repositioning across all marcoms channels: building brand-cohesion

As mentioned earlier, the biometric leopards only form part of the overall strategic re-positioning. A great deal of work was also done on re-branding, and a couple of examples are highlighted a little later in this post.

In terms of re-positioning, it was important to build strong relationships with the media – in particular, relevant trade and market-related publications as well as the business press. A key objective here was to position the brand as a thought-leader and trusted ‘educator’ whilst reinforcing the ‘human’ image in preference to a pure technology focus.

Consequently, a range of media was encouraged to broadcast these messages editorially – from specialist security media through to those focused on key industry sectors within the market. Equally important was editorial coverage and support in publications targeting specific management functions within potential end-users: HR, finance, IT, SHEQ and facilities management. 

There was also communication and dialogue with all the other components that go to make up the overall B2B market – VARs, professional consultants, wholesalers, installers, market analysts and industry associations.

And then there was the competition: 

In terms of competitor-strategy, we ring-fenced the brand’s exclusive position as representing the technology’s ‘human’ appeal: accessible, non-threatening and, perhaps most importantly of all, appropriate right now.

Influencing market perceptions: reinforce the brand’s positioning at every opportunity 

To strenghten the on-going, ‘human’ positioning of fingerprint biometrics, images of hands are used as recurring themes in various print-formats – advertising, brochures, posters and banners:

Re-positioning the brand in the widest-posssible market 

Back in 2006, the access control market regarded biometrics as an exclusive technolgy that was limited to ultra-secure applications – associating it with the sort of security solutions that confront Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible or something featured in the latest Bond movie.

This perception was so strongly-entrenched that it created a major barrier to biometrics’ penetration of the access control market. Something had to be done to alter this perception – to highlight the fact that this brand of biometrics has ‘universal’ applications:

The concept of ‘universal’ applications for the brand is reinforced by the graphically-positive slogan: ‘Everyone, Everytime, Everywhere’. And it is used repeatedly as a core brand symbol across as wide a range of collateral and media as possible.

Positioning for bottom line results: brands do build business:

• 50,000+ Sagem fingerprint readers now deployed across southern Africa
• Controlling access for some two million people
• Huge diversity of applications – from nursery schools to gold mines
• Ideco is now the world’s largest distributor of Sagem fingerpint readers
• Market share for biometrics in southern Africa: 80%+

After all, the leopard can change its spots… 

More on B2B branding:

Brands are dead. Brands are now more important than ever      Brands build business

The Long Hello: building brand relationships

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Referring to social media in a post on PR & B2B, I used the example of John Deere’s ‘Ultimate SkidSteer Smackdown’ and the comments it’s attracting on YouTube – people are swapping product-opinions based on their experiences of using earthmovers.

But will this positively influence John Deere’s sales or bolster customer loyalty? Given the impact that Word-of-Mouth can have on a brand, then surely the answer must be ‘yes’.

The big WOM buzz.

If you read the marketing press, then you’ll know that social media is attracting massive attention. Most of the focus is on its applications in B2C (no surprise there), but a recurring question is how social media might develop as an interactive communications tool in B2B. (Social Media B2B has plenty of useful insights.)

The keyword here has to be ‘interactive’ because WOM has become so much more accessible. Who is talking and what they are saying is being made increasingly public. Market reflections – what is being said about a brand and the response this generates – are now being widely shared through the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

So, interact. Start talking.

A blog on a B2B website really changes the way people can use the site. It increases opportunities for interactions within the market by changing the site from a read-only, ’shop-window’ into a two-way channel – it’s a shift from information to communication.

And that shift certainly creates some new challenges in terms of how B2B websites are used as commercial tools. Does a blog replace newsletters and the trad ‘News’ section? How will it be kept active, attract and encourage participants and who will monitor and respond to their comments? How would a blog affect the rest of the site? Critically, what would its role be in terms of building sales, margins and customer loyalty? Thought provoking stuff for those tasked with market communications.

The WOMsta is here. Is it staying?

Well, it would certainly seem to be: 45m+ Twitter users, 250m+ on Facebook and 40m+ on LinkedIn. Last week, YouTube reported they were getting more than a billion views a day.

Even if the numbers themselves don’t mean much, what is significant is the fact that these channels for interactive communication are well-established. The providers themselves may change or be eclipsed by others (MySpace?) but the monsta is among us and getting bigger every day.

More on PR and social media in B2B:

PR & B2B: the perfect couple

Getting results: John Deere ‘Smackdown’ - outstanding B2B marketing

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Cultivating communications is no job a public-relations agency can do for a company.

This emphatic little gem comes from Regis McKenna in his book ‘Relationship Marketing’. Published in ’92, it’s about how to ‘Own the market through strategic customer relationships’ and is still seen as one of the books on the ‘customer-is-king’ topic.

Well, I think he’s wrong.

Surely, ‘cultivating communications’ defines the very purpose of a PR agency. Particularly in B2B.

A recent post dipped into why brands are such powerful commercial tools and how market reflections are having an increasing influence on B2B sales, margins and customer loyalty. To save you looking for it, here’s the relevant bit:

Very often in B2B, the market may well include distributors and wholesalers, overall solution-providers, specialist consultancies or professions, and support and service providers - as well as direct customers or end users.

In addition, there may be user-groups, financial analysts, shareholders, commentators in the media, standards boards and statutory regulators, industry associations and the general public.

Each of these represents a market reflection – the way the brand is seen by each individual component of the market.

Markets become confused and uncertain if the image reflected by the brand is unclear and inconsistent. So people draw their own conclusions. They create their own associations, set their own expectations and decide for themselves how much they trust the brand. Consequence? Ownership of the brand is lost.

Are they talking about us?

More than ever, market reflections - that diversity of associations being made with the brand by the market – are what influences a B2B company’s ability to increase sales, retain customers and protect margins. And this influence is increasing rather than decreasing.

For example, there is growing B2B interest in the significance of social media as a way for people to share their experiences about suppliers and products. And this goes both ways, companies are joining and encouraging the discussions in order to present their brand-messages.

It’s now probably more important then ever for B2B companies to ensure delivery of an honest, balanced and relevant reflection of their brand to each component of the market.

Sorry, Regis. This is the work of a PR agency.

Managing this delivery is surely the work of a PR agency? As is co-operating on defining the different audiences and working towards creating and broadcasting consistently relevant messages. 

Unless a company has the right resources internally, it makes perfect sense to engage an external specialist.

What’s interesting here is the notion of the ‘right resources.’ It’s not limited to having the internal resources to, say, produce and distribute press releases or set-up an interview with a journalist.

In B2B, the ‘right resources’ must include the internal ability to appreciate the significance of market reflections and their impact on sales, margins and customer loyalty. Senior management may already appreciate this but perhaps lack the tools or experience to do anything about it. Welcome, agency.

I’d say this is one area that warrants serious discussion within B2B companies and within PR agencies themselves: what must be done, specifically, to manage market reflections?

Get a plan and get going.

Planning is in a PR agency’s blood so that won’t create any challenges. Populating the plan can be a little trickier in terms of defining the outcomes required. That becomes easier if the outcomes are related to marketing’s two objectives: cultivating consistent customers and preventing price pressure.

But populating the plan – defining what’s to be done, who’s doing it and by when – demands some serious thought and time in terms of pinpointing how market reflections are affecting the company’s sales and margins.

Brief?

If ever there was a misnomer in PR, it has to be the word ‘brief’.

‘Just nip round there and take the brief. Oh, and pleeease don’t forget to pick-up lunch on the way back.’

Sales, margins and customer loyalty are critical business issues. Building related communications is a complex process that requires a detailed knowledge of the market and a company’s position within it.

How a company sees itself may differ wildy from how the market sees it. To put it facetiously, I’ll let Donald Rumsfeld explain: “…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”  A company may know what it knows about itself, but does it know what the market knows?

Developing that knowledge doesn’t require a ‘brief’. It’s a continual, interactive process between the company, the agency and each market reflection. Driving that process – in order to ‘cultivate communications’ - must surely be an agency priority.

Social media in B2B. You’re kidding, right?

You might like to look at how John Deere is promoting its earthmovers in the US. When you have a few minutes, (er, quite a few minutes actually, ‘cos it does take a while to load) check the Ultimate Skid Steer Smackdown to watch JD’s machines competing with their rivals.

But also check the comments. Users and owners are swapping opinions. The people who buy and use earthmovers are talking to one another.

Social media and earthmovers? Wow. Way to go JD and GyroHSR!

GyroHSR: ‘Smackdown’ for John Deere

Related posts:

The WOMsta Monsta - Social media and B2B      The Long Hello: building brand relationships

Getting results: John Deere ‘Smackdown’ - outstanding B2B marketing

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line