Summary: Coming off the back of a brand repositioning campaign, we continued the momentum building preference with a critical group of people who largely felt ignored in corporate deals; IT departments. Rather than put product messaging first, we played on this sense of neglect and made them the heroes.
Problem: We knew that the IT departments were the main decision makers in most small to medium business telco decisions, but most of our communications were aimed at business owners and managing directors. We needed to prove to the IT people we understood them.
Strategy: Make them feel important and give them the opportunity to show their true talents and be rewarded; both at work and at play.
Creative Idea: The Optus IT Challenge – a competition where different IT departments duelled against each other (and sports starts like Alicia Molik) for the ultimate geek status.
Results: Entries were 150% of target and sales people reported an un-precented increase in the sales ‘pipeline’ in previously unreceptive IT departments. The competition was also picked up on the Australia’s premier breakfast TV show ‘Today’.
Television led awareness in the campaign and featured the sports stars.
Direct mail to customers and prospects drove entries into the competition.
Sales collateral was provided to the relationship managers to encourage their customers to nominate their IT teams. This was incredibly successful as Optus didn't have credibility to approach all of them direct. It also gave a great talking point for setting up a meeting.
Whilst the tone was humourous, we were careful to hero the IT departments.
