Approx 50% of the entire human race lives in a city and in the very near future this will be closer to 70%.

This clearly presents a huge challenge to city governments around the world. Atos Global Public Services division asked MTD to create a motivating awareness and lead generation campaign to promote their varied range of IT services to governments local and nationally.

The challenge was be to make a proposition that is complex, because it covers a wide range of city challenges including: sustainability, security and safety, mobility (and infrastructure), education, smart solutions, social and healthcare, energy and water and governance.

The primary objective was to target decision makers responsible for building, developing and modernising city infrastructures – for the economic, well-being and corporate benefit of all city stakeholders. 

The relationship between a city and its citizens is complex and has many inter-related variables – transport, education, security and growth. Together with age and size the constantly developing city must strive to face the future with its citizens with confidence.

Our approach was to focus heavily on the ownership and vested interests that an individual citizen feels towards the city they live, work, commute and run businesses. Our campaign centred on a core driving theme – MyCity.

The MyCity campaign idea reflects the deeply personal relationship a citizen has with their city. It also actively demonstrates a core differentiator between Atos and it’s competitors – that of putting the citizen at the heart of the city and showing how Atos solutions can help the citizen fulfil their true potential – with Atos, the citizen can feel really engaged with the government and will have access to excellent services.

The inference in all campaign elements has been to say to the government decision-makers, ‘These are the people that your decisions and actions impact on. Make sure that you are servicing all their diverse needs successfully’.

MTD has ensured that the MyCity campaign can be successfully utilised and implemented globally, regardless of Atos regional capability, local market needs and status of targeted city – it is flexible and sustainable.

By considering the solutions in a holistic rather than linear way, MTD were able to create a simple yet effective way of segmenting and building a MyCity vision through a visual tool and image library, which have informed every element of the campaign including direct marketing, positioning paper, sales presentation and website content.

The campaign is currently live and has raised awareness of, and interest in, the Atos Government and citizen engagement product portfolio across the globe.

Atos, an international information technology services company with revenue of EUR 8.5 billion and 74,000 employees in 42 countries, appointed MTD to develop their sales and marketing strategy to Governments around the world responsible for building, developing and modernising city infrastructures – for the economic, well-being and corporate benefit of all city stakeholders. 

Focussing heavily on the ownership and vested interests that an individual citizen feels towards the city they live, work, commute and run businesses we created a core driving theme and interactive vision builder under the concept of MyCity.

8 years of growth and stand out in a competitive market for Four Pillars Hotels through creative, cost effective brand strategy and marketing solutions

The situation?

Following a change of management in 2004, Four Pillars Hotels needed a marketing agency that could help to develop their brand and move their marketing forward in line with their business objectives and aspirations.

That’s where we came in.

Marketing Team Direct were originally commissioned to work with the board of Four Pillars to define the vision, mission and values of the business before rebranding and re-positioning the mid-market hotel group. Since then, we have worked continuously with Four Pillars Hotels to develop and implement a marketing strategy that keeps them ahead of the competition, and helps them to meet their targets and grow their business.

So – how did we do it?

We understood their market.

Four Pillars Hotels have four key customer groups that make up their target market. Yet they have heavy competition from rival hotel groups, many of which are larger and have bigger marketing budgets. So we’ve developed marketing solutions that enable them to effectively target these key audiences in a way that is consistent, timely and cost efficient.

We were innovative with agents

Approximately 70% of corporate bookings come through agents, so it’s essential that Four Pillars Hotels maintain a close relationship with them. We delivered the Agents’ Lounge, an innovative online hub specifically for agents, which:

• Provides a platform for ongoing communication
• Features rewards, news, offers and competitions, to incentivise agents to visit the site regularly and promote loyalty
• Has created a buzz among agents – approximately two thirds of agents have signed up to the Agents’ Lounge
• Given Four Pillars Hotels a significant advantage in a highly competitive market.

We helped them to build relationships with corporate bookers

Four Pillars Hotels have meeting, conference and event facilities at all of their hotels, and this is a substantial and lucrative part of their business. We have worked with them to develop two core marketing solutions, aimed at the corporate sector.

Meetings Four You: This conference product was launched to raise the profile of Four Pillars’ conference offering, increase their commercial opportunity, reflect the needs of the market and ensures internal delivery standards. We worked with them to create an identity that reflects the brand, an optimised website and a printed brochure, which have helped to generate revenue and differentiate them from the competition.

Company Lounge: This exclusive online hub, specifically for corporate buyers, gives Four Pillars Hotels an opportunity to build a relationship with this core market, not only by communicating with them through the website, but by obtaining their data, which enables them to send them targeted communications on an ongoing basis.

We provided timely, cost effective marketing solutions for leisure customers

Located in areas that are popular with tourists, and with a wide range of leisure facilities in all their hotels, the leisure market is crucial to Four Pillars Hotels. Yet the economic downturn has made this area even more cost critical and made the need to outperform the market even greater. Marketing Team Direct have worked with Four Pillars Hotels to provide cost efficient marketing solutions that give Four Pillars real cut through.

Integrated seasonal campaigns: They needed a seasonal solution with standout that they could use to promote their short breaks and drive sales throughout the year. We delivered a strong theme that Four Pillars could own, encapsulates their offering and appeals to their broad target market. Our seasonal strategy ensures that they are amongst the first to market each season with a strong and comprehensive campaign that is more compelling than that of many of the larger hotel groups. The fully integrated campaign consists of a microsite, POS, ads, HTML email blasts and web banners. These campaigns have achieved an exceptionally high response ranging from 40:1 to 60:1 return on investment.

Online solutions: We created a sophisticated yet easy to use content managed suite of websites, which enables the client to amend, add and even share content between sites, saving them time and money. Key search terms were researched and the site optimised to increase relevant traffic. A data capture element was included and Google Analytics was integrated to measure the performance of the site. We have also given them templates and functionality that enables them to convert offer pages into HTML emails that can be broadcast to their customers. The new websites increased the value of online sales by 30%, and Four Pillars welcome 120,000+ unique visitors to the site every month.

We helped them to maximize revenue from locals

Understanding the value of their local market, Four Pillars Hotels wanted a loyalty scheme that would help them build relationships with local clientele and incentivise them to use the hotels’ restaurants frequently. We devised the Privilege Club, a loyalty card scheme, which encourages engagement with the brand and increases sales.

We created the Privilege Club website, through which the whole scheme is managed, and includes personalised vouchers, offers, news and competitions. Much of the scheme is automated, so it’s cost efficient for the client, and updating content via the content management system is quick and easy for them.

Once we’d created the scheme identity and the microsite, we promoted the Privilege Club using a low cost, yet highly effective combination of POS in the hotels, direct mail to existing local customers and promotional banners within Four Pillars’ main website.

We’ve given Four Pillars a templated email solution, which enables them to send Privilege Club members regular e-newsletters.

To further build on this market and generate additional income, Privilege Plus, a subscription based package of discounted vouchers, was conceived.

Privilege Club has resulted in a database of over 8,000 loyal and committed local customers, who regularly frequent their hotels and help to maximize revenue throughout the year.

Summary

We’ve worked with Four Pillars Hotels, helping to develop their brand strategy and implement their marketing communications, for 8 years. During that time we’ve seen fluctuations in the market, from buoyant and prosperous to a credit crunch and a recession. Yet, despite these ups and downs in the hotel and leisure industry, Four Pillars have managed to gain ground, often out-performing the market and achieving high occupancy levels.

The work that we’ve done together has helped them to build a strong brand, a loyal customer base and a reputation for getting the simple things right. By investing in their marketing and focusing on their customers, Four Pillars Hotels remain a successful business that can adapt to changes in the market and compete with other much larger hotel groups.

Our work has created a fundamental shift in Karndean’s approach to marketing effectiveness, focusing on consumer experience and engagement (rather than product) as a priority.

The adoption of our strategic direction and overarching theme by global board and UK leadership, now means that we are creating specific, targeted campaigns to consumer demographics, as well as Karndean’s 2000-strong UK retailer network.

MTD is also implementing campaigns targeting a range of commercial audiences from Architects and Interior Designers to Contractors and Home build corporates, to public and private end user groups.

For MTD, Karndean is a great example of a significant and successful business that recognised the need to evolve, move away from long established marketing principles, and invest in technology to affect change – and then reap the rewards through growth in market share, sales and retailer loyalty.

We are proud to have been instrumental in this evolution and we look forward to building on 2012 activity through 2013 and beyond.

And that’s very nice for Internet entrepreneurs. But even speaking as a web-based person working for a web-enabled business, it’s a sign that we need to think seriously about how our economy works.

Because of our mix of clients (B2B, B2C, with a vast range of industry experience, public service, NGO and others among them) we get a nice macro view. That doesn’t give us any special insight but it does give us a ‘real world perspective’ – which is that we need an economy where manufacturers, producers and strong service providers are creating the majority of the wealth.

What are the positives? Well, that the UK consumer sector is alive and relatively well. But in an environment where high street retailers are struggling, this simply tells us what we knew: that we all (as consumers, we all think in similar ways) like shopping that doesn’t take us away from the sofa.

The problem is that the Internet is not in itself a ‘sector’. It’s not tertiary, quaternary or anything else – it’s a channel. Once a channel becomes the fastest growing element of your economy, it’s time to pay attention to how that economy works at a fundamental level to get it back in balance. Or use the channel to encourage growth elsewhere.

The UK still has tremendous innovative skills in production, manufacturing, skills, the ideas economy (the quaternary sector). We haven’t lost those skills and innovation focus. What’s happened is that as well as an external brain drain, other sectors have been easier to develop, and have siphoned off innovators (effectively, since the dotcom boom we’ve had an internal brain drain as well). And most people’s lives have become divorced from the physical reality of production as our primary and secondary industries have declined.

But those skills need development and nurturing: we need to maintain ownership of them. That means investment in manufacture and engineering, new attention to our service culture to get it back where it was. That means new economic partnerships to enable us to contribute to mass production and service effectively; it also means a proper partnership between industrial sectors, channels and of course the communicators who make them effective.

Useful partnerships between manufacturing and online channels include Make It, the UK Manufacturing promotion campaign – aiming at re-energising the sector by illustrating its relevance to today. James Dyson’s call for schools to teach engineering represents another call to action. And there’s strong evidence that as a breed, manufacturers are boxing clever now in a way they haven’t for some time.

But we need more.

And our role is to help that process by communicating the need and desire to retain expertise and create a real industrial strength again; aid the drive for innovation, reach deeper with the messages that connect it with life as it’s lived now, and like Lenin in 1917, show that no matter how virtual our economy is at the moment, we need to think about “Peace, Bread, Land” and what it means today.

The reason? Well, let’s say at the top that I’m ambivalent about Goldman Sachs; on hand, I think they’re almost surreally amoral. On the other, well…that’s what I expect of a merchant bank. So I have an equitable relationship with them. If you feel me building to a theme, you’re right.

The reaction from the markets, from the financial world, and from banking customers tells us this. While there’s an obvious concern from some, and a lot of media flap, other customers are saying they care about what Goldman gives them: profits. And many key figures are saying the same.

So while of course there will be reactions against the bank, they’re used to that. Let’s look at what’s happened at a wider level. In the middle of a recession, the world’s most famous merchant bank is able to say both that it cares for its customers (overtly, in the press, as it defends itself…though it certainly took its time) while also reassuring investors that it cares about only one thing: making money. Which is the principal and overriding reason those investors work with the bank. And the bank only succeeds if it shows that businesses and investors make money from their relationship with it; so I question whether this will do them longterm harm.

We need to bear in mind at least some of this when we work for our customers. What matters to them? First, success, money, growth and profit. Second they want their expectations met, managed and exceeded. Third, and a distant third, they want respect, a friendly culture and working relationship – because it makes the other two easier.

The point is (a) that across the board what matters to customers of all kinds is results; (b) that there is a massive difference between a friendly relationship and an equitable one. Banks and customers are in it for one thing – money. Everything else is great, but it’s not essential. They have an equitable relationship. Of course, if real financial rules are broken, that’s another thing – but the overall picture still tells the financial world “Goldman know what they’re doing”.

And let’s take a look at another level again: that we find it reassuring to hear these stories. Perhaps, in the middle of a time when people are asking questions of increasing complexity and introspection, we need things that are solid. We WANT, in short, to know that the financial world is robust enough for Goldman Sachs to act like this. We’ve all seen Wall Street – and how many of us didn’t side with Gordon Gecko? We want a world strong enough for the ‘greed is good’ motto to still be true.

Lastly, for Goldman itself it’s given them what they needed – that villain again. Now, they can feel betrayed, and join together.

There are deeper questions about the changing nature of business models here; that even financial businesses need to take more overt care of their customers and enable them to do more. And in many sectors, a closer customer relationship does in the end equate to greater profits.

But merchant bank customers at least, I think, expect to see results. It’s the high street bank, and their millions of ordinary citizen consumers, who have to think about respect.

And Goldman Sachs? They will weather the storm and emerge, probably, stronger. In the end, while there’s a fuss in the media, the Goldman ‘brand’ is being shown to be exactly what their customers want it to be: ruthless, strong, focused. They’re doing what they’re best at, and they’ve just had a letter giving them all the free press they want published that proves it to the world.

Everything that uses data, separately, is now coming together and converging. Yep. We know that too. So what’s new?

In our industry, unless you’re really immersed in data, it’s easy to tell yourself you know these things without actually looking at them. We are living in an unanalyzed state – in a world richer than ever with the tools and processes of analysis, this seems strange. It’s just one of the problems of a wider one – which is that as Big Data comes to dominate the world, the nature of every industry, every economic movement and every interaction will shift.

The problem for marketers is that we’re using words to describe something that reaches beyond words and into the nature of business, the economy and into the inner nature of the world – because we can now ‘open the box’ of any dynamic, industry or movement and understand the numbers that underlie, define and embody it.

Does that mean we can’t use words and creative approaches to describe the Big Data world? Obviously not. But right now, we’re seeing a false split between quantitative and creative. It’s a nonsensical schism, produced by a misunderstanding about what Big Data can do and what it is: truth, at a finer grain – so long as you don’t worship it alone. And as Tom Morton of Euro RSCG NY makes clear, creative and quantitative people have always worked best together and must do again. His point is neatly reinforced by some thoughts on Quora. But at the moment the perception of data+creativity is that it = infographic, which has led to an overload of data visualisations, which often serve to mask, not illuminate, the data they describe.

The split however is real. It’s forced by increasingly complex data on the one hand (and therefore sophisticated people to run it) and simple interfaces that make it easy to see, select, decide and act without thinking. Perhaps ironically, the more we become addicted to the devices that drive simplicity at the top level (because more and more data is created and shared, and creating simple interfaces is of course extremely complex in itself). So the general populace and the data manipulators get pulled apart – and because ‘creatives’ more easily talk the language and use the tools of the former, they get pulled in that direction.

Big Data is often compared to an ocean – it’s the cliché of choice. But maybe we should consider it anew and look at what it might really mean. It is like an ocean in the sense that it is infinitely wide and deep, we utterly depend on it, and most of us have no concept of what extraordinary entities and objects lie under it. And getting deep into it requires real specialists, real training, and preparation.

And while we’re rich in ‘creatives’, increasingly the engine of forward motion is the data. And our economy – that of the US and Eurozone countries – is currently falling behind in terms of attracting the skilled coders to drive big data forwards. Which is odd, in a world where clever = sexy. However, many coders are being hived off to the more attractive worlds of gaming etc (which of course rests on its own pool of ever-more complex data) rather than BigData itself.

So as Jonathan Wai states here (aggregating a bunch of resources nicely) we need to market the data as sexy in and of itself – to stop coders choosing the route of gaming, UI, etc. A nice attempt is made here on the Behance Network – old now, but still good – and there are some hints of the same call to action in this presentation. Now, it’s even more important that creatives and data get more intimately acquainted – both to mend the perceived split between ‘creatives’ and ‘quants’ and to ensure the latter gets the penetration it needs.

To release the value of big data, and discover the ever-finer grain truth about our world and into every sector of our economy (here illustrated, sorry, with an infographic) and create new meaning from it, therefore, we must think differently. We must get creative about our data, and drive good data into our creative approaches, to do our work effectively in a data-rich, creatively stimulated world.

Where is your business? Firmly in the Creative camp, completely Quant, or somewhere in between? And how do you use data to get more for your clients and yourselves?

Question: Is the brand the CEO’s or CMO’s responsibility?

MTD reply; “The short answer is neither of the options listed, as brand is owned by consumers and customers.

The long answer is that if brand strategy is the key influencer on business strategic development, all cascading operational strategies and leadership decision-making (which it is), the CEO must be the key advocate – inspiring all internal stakeholders. Seemingly counter to this is the emerging concept that the whole organisation is now responsible for marketing – that successfully optimising brand value (marketing’s traditional role) is now so inter-dependent on others in the org. that marketing cannot take sole ownership of this now.

The real answer then is that the whole org. is equally responsible for growing brand asset value and marketing effectiveness… sales, operations, technology, culture, R&D, acquisitions, CS, data etc etc. Anyone of these could be the fail point because all impact on the true brand custodians – customers – or ‘people who can now broadcast brand advocacy or criticism more effectively than the brand ever could’.

How to orchestrate this integrated, organization-wide dynamic is another matter – particularly in orgs that have an entrenched view of both brand and marketing. Surely this is the true mission for brand strategists and good leaders operating in our transparent, transforming and technology driven world.

It’s certainly ours.”

However, while a lot of attention goes on merger processes from legal, business strategic, cultural and HR perspectives, brand (as distinct from branding), marketing and communications are often ignored. Proper consideration of brand, marketing and communications drive M&A processes and enable success; their absence can lead to business integration, brand reputation and market penetration failure.

There’s been a lot of recent merger ‘fails’ and acquisitions disasters. High-profile deals that have somehow failed to take hold. Startup acquisitions that haven’t resulted in return on investment or innovation gains. At root this is down to lack of true alignment of culture, trust, and communications.

We work with organisations before, during and post acquisition transformation – with a blend of brand, communications and marketing approaches that ensure that business and M&A transition achieve real value. This involves understanding of working practice, infrastructure, development methodology and go-to-market processes as well as philosophy, cultural makeup, HR principles etc.

Brand: We look at your Brand at strategic, operational and business-enablement levels; this way, we can see how new assets and businesses add to your portfolio and enable to add new services etc. We use ‘brand science’ (IE insight, analytics, portfolio management, architecture) to inform the ‘brand art’ (positioning, naming, etc) that drives the development of new identities and logos.

Marketing: We engage every relevant stakeholder to develop the marketing insight that will take the realigned, relaunched business to market. The M&A process is a profound marketing organisation challenge, where everyone has a stake in the reputation management, portfolio, long-term cohesion of the business. In M&A more than anything else, marketing must play a strategic role in engaging people, discovering how to deliver value, and getting it into the world.

Communications: We develop a coherent communications platform that expands and scales to any activity. Internal education and outbound sales collateral ties together; the merger and acquisition process feels seamless, so the organisation feels no drag and the market sees the business transformation as coherent and well-paced.

It seems self-evident that strong marketing, communications and brand support can significantly add to the effectiveness of acquisition integration and future asset value. Downplaying their role is at best, neglecting a tool for success and can hurt mergers and acquisition processes that could have succeeded. Perhaps the best way forward is to partner with someone who sees both the business and strategy imperatives of your acquisition integration process, and the marketing and communications ways that this can be achieved and improved.

Empathy is nested in empathy: from Harper Lee’s assumption of the voice of 6-year-old Scout Finch, through constant repetition of the concept of putting oneself into the ‘shoes’ of other people within the book. Scout herself sees everything in terms of how other people feel and what they want, and by changing how she behaves to resonate with others’ viewpoints she gets what she needs to. Her father’s entire philosophy is to see the world as other people see it.

It’s a masterpiece of imaging other people’s hopes, fears and dreams (as well as being a masterpiece of so much else)…

Which makes it, of course, the perfect lesson for us; because everything we do depends utterly on putting ourselves into the position of other people. Without that, no campaign would ever work, no design would ever be seen, and no lead would ever be generated.

Empathy has never been more critical. In a world where consumers drive and play an active part in every product and service evolution – increasingly in the B2B world as well – the ability to understand others in order to influence them is a must-have skill that can be learned, or at least framed, quite simply.

This month’s MarketingWeek training article looks how understanding of business decision makers’ processes can enable any campaign, to the harshest B2B stakeholder or to the widest consumer or social group, with six key ideas. These aren’t new; but it’s worth looking at them again:

1. Reciprocity. Always show how your client benefits the target. What are they getting? And what are they getting for free, on top of that? Sometimes it’s good not to bend too far (you just show the recipient you’re desperate). But bear it in mind. When we look into the wider social universe, reciprocity could be just offering a free game or membership of a community. Think about what the group values and give it to them.

2. Scarcity. It’s vital to show how people will be losing out if they don’t listen to you. But scarcity of what? In the social world, for instance, the scarcity equation is very different from that in a hard-nosed business proposition. They’re connected, but you must flex the scarcity argument for your audience: in social it’s worth exchanging this for ‘Immediacy’ – because social groups are more or less defined by their need to act first, be ahead, have the social/product/insight ‘edge’. What does your target worry about losing? Show them how they can get it with you. If that didn’t work, Viagra would never have taken off.

3. Authority. Does your client have it? A lot of clients think they do, without having the proof points or reputation to back it up. How do you get around that? Refer wider, to other sources. Find the authority hooks. And in the social space, authority may simply be followers, likes, and trends. But try not to be too blatant, or you’re just a 1950s cigarette ad citing a doctor – although who knows, maybe that’s an idea…

4. Commitment. A tricky one in B2B; you always feel like you’re weaseling around for approval and support. A good direct reference from a close colleague or co-worker goes miles to securing this. For large businesses this is why constant data work and telemarketing always drives contacts forward from the ones before. As with Authority, in the social universe this is often composed of likes, followers. In forums like LinkedIn we find commitment to at least a conversation through referencing common contacts, etc.

5. Consensus. In B2B campaigns this is hard to provide, which is why we spend so much energy referring to case studies, trying to pull people into webinars etc. We’re trying to create the ‘shoal’ around our proposition. This can be almost instant in the social campaign – because of the speed of action and reaction. But beware – the world is littered with brands whose attempt to gain consensus have backfired just as fast.

6. Liking. Nothing’s more important. Making people like you is the synthesis of all those other empathy triggers. If people like you, they’ll do what you want (unless it’s outrageous). If they don’t, you aren’t going to shift them easily. Everything you do is about getting closer to that ‘like’ status. Take that lesson – the ultimate ‘must have’ for social media – into your B2B campaigns. It’s why lead nurturing works, and why sometimes the best way forward in an email campaign is simply to ask for a chat.