Panasonic TOUGHBOOK & Sharper

A creative solution to direct mail...

The Headlines:

  • 400 on-target leads generated (in just 3 weeks)

  • A wonderfully creative solution to a real challenge

  • 'One of the most successful campaigns I've ever seen'

 

Here's how we did it...

 

Panasonic TOUGHBOOK was keen to broaden the wider awareness of its brand to both existing and competitive audiences. With the tagline ‘Different is in our DNA’, TOUGHBOOK love to create marketing campaigns that haven’t been done before.

As a wider brand play it was important that the campaign captured attention and, with the majority of the UK in lockdown for the first quarter of 2021, TOUGHBOOK were keen to grab people’s attention from where they were… at home.

Following a brain wave from Sharper B2B Marketing, the idea for the CHOCBOOK was born…

What's the angle?

To ensure that the CHOCBOOK campaign generated the right results, we had three main objectives:

• Capture the right people’s attention (from their home office)
• Raise awareness of the TOUGHBOOK brand in a fun, feel-good and stand out way
• Generate new leads to drive into the sales pipeline

To successfully deliver against these objectives we created a ‘spoof’ product launch campaign, just in time for Easter.

We created a brand-new product in the TOUGHBOOK range – the CHOCBOOK. As you’ve guessed, unlike traditional TOUGHBOOK’s the CHOCBOOK was made of chocolate.

It was a 10x10 solid chocolate bar, 3D printed in a range of 6 designs.

The CHOCBOOK was ‘launched’ with light-hearted and pun-filled marketing comms all riffing on the idea of a real product launch. These included a spoof Press Release to a relevant Tech media list and targeted social promotions to drive orders from a microsite where users could ‘configure’ and order their free CHOCBOOK.

To drive engagement, CHOCBOOKs were only available for a limited time over Easter, with just 500 available.

And, that's not all...

 

The campaign was targeted at IT and Technology Operations decision makers within key target verticals including Defence, Manufacturing, Logistics, Supply Chain, Construction, Emergency Services, Field Services and Transport.

As there are several competing technology solutions in the Rugged device space and IT decision makers are often time poor, we needed to offer them immediate value with this campaign.

Offering the free CHOCBOOK was a great hook and stood out from the usual product adverts they are used to receiving.

We used several channels for this campaign, to maximise the results and support the associated key direct mail portion of the activity.

Campaign microsite:

  • Chocbook.co.uk was created as a branded microsite and campaign hub. All promotional activity linked to the site and target individuals were invited to order their free CHOCBOOK while stocks lasted

Paid Social:

  • The main promotional activity within this campaign. We used highly targeted paid ads across both LinkedIn and Twitter from 22nd March – 2nd April to drive traffic to the microsite to generate CHOCBOOK orders

Organic social:

  • To support the paid activity, we promoted the CHOCBOOK to the existing TOUGHBOOK audience via its LinkedIn company page and Twitter page.
  • TOUGHBOOKs UK Head of Marketing, also created some organic social videos showing the CHOCBOOK ‘in-action’ riffing on real device demo videos – this included a drop test, heat test and water test video – which were then also hosted on the microsite.

Direct Mail:

  • Once orders were placed via the microsite, batches of orders were shared with the fulfilment partner Candy Mechanics. They created the custom CHOCBOOK and shipped each order directly to the individual’s home / office address as required.

 

The Results...

Over the short lifecycle of the CHOCBOOK campaign – 22nd March – 9th April 2021 (and with a modest Paid Social Ad budget of just £2000), the campaign generated 400+ unique relevant opted-in marketing contacts and future leads of sales pipeline in just over 2 weeks.

Every element of the campaign was a success with impressive performance stats across all channels:

• Overall engagement with the CHOCBOOK microsite over-exceeded all expectations – the site generated an 11.3% conversion (from site visitors to order) smashing the industry average of 2.23%

• The site generated more than 420 unique opted-in leads (including their home mailing address) for future marketing use and sales pipeline generation

• Paid LinkedIn Social Ads drove over 79,000 impressions and a CTR of 0.45% against forecast 0.21%

• Paid Twitter Ads drove over 145,000 impressions with a CTR of 1.92%

• Spoof Press release was picked up by over 50 media contacts, with the editor of Computer News calling it ‘the best press release I’ve seen all year’


But don't just take our word for it...

“The CHOCBOOK campaign got people talking for all the right reasons.

Not only did the internal Panasonic teams love the campaign (bringing some welcome attention to the TOUGHBOOK brand as part of the much larger Panasonic company) but externally clients and prospects loved it too.

It created a great buzz and conversation among our current and prospective client base and was a really fun and feel-good campaign.

But, most importantly, it generated us over 400 opted-in new marketing leads, and with a conversion rate of over 11% is one of the most successful campaigns I’ve overseen in my 6+ years at TOUGHBOOK.”

Daniel Creasey, European Enterprise Marketing Manager

Need to take a more creative and commercially successful approach to your campaigns? Lets talk.