We began working with MICOM Communications Corp in the Fall of 1992. They hired us to introduce a new technology that would integrate voice and fax communication with their normal data traffic between branch sites.

This presented a marketing communications challenge.

We were asking the LAN manager to accept a piece of hardware that would produce savings for somebody else's budget. And we were asking the operations people to suggest to the data processing people that they should add equipment to a (presumably) good working system.

We had several choices: we could do what Fort Howard, the toilet paper manufacturer did: in a gound-breaking campaign to CEOs, they presented the case for a product normally far below the notice of top management and won an increase in market share by making a good case.

We chose not to do the same thing because of top management's FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) surrounding technology issues.

Instead, we presented the idea of the end-end benefit of discovering the company savings from this system. We spoke of the Company Hero. The person who took extraordinary steps not to benefit his department, but to benefit the company by stepping outside of his expected role. We asked readers to picture themselves reaping the rewards of a grateful top management--perhaps on the beach in Tahiti.

The result? After only 18 months, sales of the new MICOM voice integration equipment far exceeded expectations, reaching $20,000,000.

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Robert W. Wood, Inc.

 

Even the smallest clients have benefitted from our pragmatic approach to marketing.

This small company refinishes factory alloy wheels for expensive cars (mostly Porsches and Mercedes).

Since this is a low frequency-of-purchase category, we had to establish a continued presence in the audience that accounted for the largest portion of sales through advertising, while building relationships with car dealers through sales calls and mailings.

While a big, expensive, broad-scale campaign might be the first thing most ad agencies would think of, we couldn't see the likelihood of a good return on investment from that approach.

We placed ads in the car club magazines and some select marque magazines in order to establish a brand name. We produced dignified, long copy ads that were nearer in tone to a fine men's clothing store than to an auto parts purveyor.

Meantime, in a direct mail campaign to dealershipos, we informed the Sales Managers and Parts Managers that we were not competing with them, but by building a 'brand' would allow them to get good prices for our wheels while setting their Porsches and Mercedes apart from the rest with a distinctive look.

This positioning and the constant presence, combined with an absolute commitment to quality on the part of our client, resulted in this company dominating the market for refinished wheels year after year. Many larger and smaller companies came into the market and left, but Robert W. Wood, Inc. remained the acknowledged leader.

Today, when you look at classified ads for the best cared-for Porsches and Mercedes in club magazines, you will see references to 'Wood wheels'.

We are proud to have helped them become the standard to which all other wheel service companies are compared.

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Side Track

If you're not tired of the marketing discussion, we have a growing section on Marketing Case Histories in which we have been directly involved.
There are some pretty good lessons to be learned here, we think.

Show me a lesson from the past.

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Kelley Advertising and Marketing