Marketing Excellence 3

Case Studies

Hugh Burkitt

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780749474386
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

These case studies from Marketing Excellence 3 showcase winners from The Marketing Society's Excellence Awards to celebrate and promote the contribution that great marketing makes to the commercial success of a business. Each of the 30 case studies features an award winner from 2012 to 2014 who employed strategies, tactics, tools and techniques worthy of recognition. As such, the case studies are ideal reading for both marketers and students looking to be inspired by the very best in marketing campaigns.The available case studies and related themes are as follows: Mercedes-Benz (Finding Consumer Insight)
Macmillan (Finding Consumer Insight)
O2 (Connecting with Customers)
Notcutts (Connecting with Customers)
EasyJet (Connecting with Customers)
Aviva (Connecting with Customers)
McDonald's (Communicating Brilliantly)
John Lewis (Communicating Brilliantly)
Sainsbury's (Communicating Brilliantly)
MINI (Communicating Brilliantly)
Galaxy (Communicating Brilliantly)
Burton's Biscuit Company (Mobilising the Organisation)
PwC (Mobilising the Organisation)
AMVBBDO (Mobilising the Organisation)
McLaren (Building Powerful New Brands)
Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey (Building Powerful New Brands)
BT Sport (Building Powerful New Brands)
Hailo (Building Powerful New Brands)
The Famous Grouse (Building Global Brands)
Axe (Building Global Brands)
Foster's (Re-energising Long Established Brands)
British Airways (Re-energising Long Established Brands)
National Lottery (Re-energising Long Established Brands)
Jaguar (Re-energising Long Established Brands)
Unilever Small Cans (Marketing Sustainability)
The Fairtrade Foundation (Marketing Sustainability)
British Gas (Marketing Sustainability)
Sainsbury's and Channel 4 (Marketing to Make a Difference)
Paddy Power (Marketing to Make a Difference)
Depaul (Marketing to Make a Difference)

CASE STUDY 1

MERCEDES-BENZ

Enjoying the sound of brand success

SNAPSHOT

Mercedes-Benz took a lateral approach to insight-gathering by using biometric science to make the brand relevant to a key target market.

AGENCIES

AMVBBDO, Maxus, Weapon7, Holler

KEY INSIGHTS

• Mercedes-Benz had to confront a brand image among the important 35-54 year-old target audience that saw it languishing in terms of its sporty and dynamic credentials.
• The revelation that the sound of the exhaust was what really got hearts racing led to a multi-platform campaign centred around an engaging sensory experience.
• The power of that insight saw the brand beating both its rivals in terms of sales for the first time in many years.

SUMMARY

Mercedes-Benz is a world-famous automotive brand, part of the German-based group Daimler. It was facing a challenge in the UK with its E-Class range, one of its oldest model brands and a critical bridge between a new range of small, dynamic cars at one end and large high-end luxury limousines at the other. Even with the launch of a new E-Class model, the brand images of the two other key competitors in the class, Audi and BMW, were rated as more desirable by the target audience of 35-54 year olds.

The company needed to get that group to think again about the E-Class to give sales a boost. In-depth research found that among younger drivers characteristics such as ‘sporty’ and ‘dynamic’ resonated the most so the company decided to put the focus on the E63 AMG, the sportiest E-Class car.

Rather than follow traditional routes to gathering actionable insights, the brand team decided to employ the modern science of biometrics to gauge actual physical

responses to driving the cars. This revealed that the sound of the car provoked a strong emotional and physical response, confirming its sporty credentials. The resulting interactive, multi-media campaign imaginatively exploited these findings to show how powerful sounds can trigger emotions such as excitement, happiness and nostalgia. A key element was encouraging users to create sound ‘mash-ups’ to share on social networks.

The results exceeded expectations. Brochure downloads increased by 117% and test drive requests by 80%. More significantly, sales went up by 38% compared to sector growth of only 9%.

BATTLING AGAINST BRAND IMAGE

Mercedes-Benz E-Class is the long-standing centre of gravity of the Mercedes-Benz brand. One of the oldest model brands, it represents a bridge between a new range of small, dynamic cars at one end and large high-end luxury limousines at the other. A brand new E-Class had been launched a year earlier (Figure 1) but, after an initial period of interest, it soon came under sales pressure once more. So the company set itself two challenging objectives:

• Make 35-54 year olds reappraise the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and increase the level of enquiries (requests for test drives and brochures) from this group.
• Drive a 10% increase in Mercedes-Benz E-Class new car sales, year-on-year.

Figure 1. Mercedes-Benz E-Class

This would not be easy. First, the new E-Class was going up against two of the most respected models in the world. Mercedes’ rivals had come to dominate the sector in the battleground of ‘medium-sized executive saloons’. Audi’s A6 had garnered both plaudits and sales since the latest version was launched in 2011. Even more revered was BMW’s 5 Series, widely regarded as the best four-door saloon ever produced.

As AutoCar magazine put it: “For 23 years, every iteration of the BMW 5 Series that has gone up against the Mercedes E-Class has come out on top.” In other words, to succeed the brand would have to break with a pattern of defeat more than two decades old.

Secondly, it had to confront its image problem. The 5 Series and the A6 were not only seen as the pre-eminent cars but the manufacturers behind them, BMW and Audi, were both generally regarded by the target audience as comparatively more desirable brands. In their eyes, a Mercedes-Benz was a status car for ‘the more mature driver’. As one Audi owner put it: “I wouldn’t want to buy a badge that says: ‘You’ve made it but you’re putting the brakes on’”.

So there was a problem at both the product and brand level in terms of facing superior competition. Admittedly, some inroads had been made into the problem over the last two years, but for the E-Class segment, the problem was particularly acute. The company and its agency needed to find a more radical solution.

WHAT MAKES THESE CAR BUYERS TICK

The starting point was to connect with BMW 5 Series and Audi A6 owners, inviting them to describe their cars. They responded with fondness and enthusiasm. That was followed by correlation analysis of brand consideration and brand perception in the prestige auto sector. Two discoveries were integral to the eventual creative solution.

1. Sporty credentials are fundamental.

The way that rival products and rival brands were fondly described was remarkably similar – descriptions that were subsequently confirmed by New Car Buyer Survey (NCBS) car characteristics tracking studies. Perception that a brand is driven by younger people, it turned out, is highly correlated with perceptions of the brand as being ‘sporty’ and ‘dynamic’. So the decision was taken to showcase the sportiest E-Class model of all – the E63 AMG – to emphasise the sporty image of the class as a whole.

2. Physical experience is more important than design.

BMW 5 Series and Audi A6 owners tended to use descriptions of ‘experience’ as evidence of still being young(ish). Adventure holidays, extreme sports (though often not so extreme) and even risk-laden business deals were among the activities mentioned that got their pulses going.

As one respondent put it, these were things that meant “you’re living, not just existing.” It reminded the brand team of a quote from a colleague at AMG: “We develop the engine to prompt the release of large amounts of adrenaline”. To put it another way, the experience of driving an AMG is specially engineered to elicit a physiological response in its driver.

However, while it had been engineered for a specific purpose, the big question to answer was whether it actually delivered on its promise. The answer was to measure what it really means to experience the E63 AMG. Historically, that would have been done by commissioning qualitative groups with drivers, but this time it was decided to take a lateral approach: use biometric science to understand the real, unbiased biological effects of driving the car.

READING THE RESPONSES

The team approached Hidalgo Ltd, the company that monitored Felix Baumgartner as he base-jumped from the edge of space. Together they devised a methodology to gauge the true physiological impact of driving an E63 AMG. Three male subjects aged between 29 and 50 were fitted with a life monitor, which was a unique piece of mobile technology designed to increase understanding of how the body is performing and adapting to different pressures, strains and environments, along with a Brainband EEG headset.

Each driver independently performed circuits of a private race track, with their biometric data viewed under acceleration and braking conditions. Each driver also had a complete set of biometric measures tracked, including: activity in the pleasure centre of the brain, heart rate variability, breathing waveforms, breathing rate, tri-axis accelerometry, temperat...