Our judges are working overtime, and our events team hasn’t slept in weeks putting the finishing touches before we head up to sunny Far North Queensland for Cannes In Cairns and the inaugural Cairns Crocodiles Awards presented by Pinterest in just over three weeks.
Today, we are celebrating the shortlisted entries in the B2B category, sponsored by LinkedIn. Check out the entries below, a breakdown of the process and the impressive results.
So if you’re sick of all the rain and are dreaming of a tropical escape, head up to Cairns for the first of many Cairns Crocodiles Awards on June 6.
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Salesforce
The Challenge:
AI has captured the world’s attention, spurring billions in technology investments. However, business leaders and consumers are concerned about the rapid implementation of AI. They are looking for leaders who will stand up, fill the AI trust gap, and lead us to a future where AI solves more problems than it creates.
As tech companies rush to market with AI solutions, two trends are emerging: a trust gap among consumers on how companies are using their data with AI and a lack of understanding of how companies can leverage AI technologies to deliver tangible business value with trusted AI
Salesforce’s Ask More of AI program challenges the blind AI rush and seeks to establish Salesforce as the trusted authority in AI. It does so by targeting Australian business decision-makers and empowering them to be thoughtful about AI and how we approach the technology with trust and safety at the forefront.
The Thinking:
A bright future begins with the courage to question. The notion of “what if” has sparked scientific and technological advancements for millennia. But now, when humanity is on the cusp of its next great leap, are we asking the right questions? Salesforce’s ‘Ask More of AI’ campaign is driven by the recognition that the rush into AI adoption without questioning its impact and guardrails is a concern.
PwC Australia’s CEO Survey reveals that 73 per cent of business leaders feel pressure to implement AI, but consumers express cautious sentiment about AI’s impact on personalisation and data security. Senior IT leaders also emphasise the need for ethical use and collaboration to address risks and bias. Salesforce aimed to fill the white space in the Australian market by guiding responsible AI adoption. By leveraging expertise in ethical AI and incentivised business models, Salesforce takes a proactive approach to ensure the ethical and effective use of AI.
The campaign encourages businesses to ask more of AI, foster a culture of thoughtful scrutiny, and promote the reliability and trustworthiness of AI solutions. It positions Salesforce as leading the way in shaping the future of AI and prioritises ethics and responsible adoption.
The Idea:
Acknowledging the skepticism that new technology often faces and a growing mistrust within the domain of AI, Salesforce saw an opportunity to encourage audiences to start asking important questions about this technology. Its creative strategy of bold questions was provocative and thought-provoking, crafted to capture attention, inspire reflection, and convey playful wit all at once.
The strategic approach centred on engaging future business decision makers who are not actively in the buying cycle. To reach and engage these audiences the CRM employed a widespread media strategy, including:
- Owned: The campaign thrived on owned social channels (LinkedIn and Instagram with over 5M followers), The 360 blog, and Haiilo, the employee advocacy platform, leveraging compelling storytelling to boost awareness and engagement.
- Earned: 224 articles aligning Salesforce to AI were published across reputed ANZ mainstream and trade publications.
- Paid: Out-of-Home, print, local video, cinema, sponsorship, audio, digital display, paid social, and an experiential activation.
These channels worked collectively to build mental availability to position Salesforce at the forefront of their consideration set over time. This involved a diverse channel mix with two main goals. The first, to be unmissable in the places and spaces audiences expect Salesforce to be in the business context. And second, to meet them in those moments of habitual downtime where they are more likely to have the mental space for thoughtful consideration. By ensuring its presence in these contexts with consistent messaging, the software brand aimed to enhance brand recall and strengthen Salesforce’s brand association.
The Outcome:
To determine the campaign’s success and impact over the five-month reporting period, ‘Ask More of AI’ brand association uplift, media coverage for ‘Salesforce AI’, and search growth for ‘Salesforce AI’ terms were analysed in addition to Paid Media results.
The campaign resonated with audiences, increasing Salesforce’s ‘Ask More of AI’ association from 2 per cent to 17 per cent since October 2023. This surge is credited to the distinctive campaign, notably videos with Matthew McConaughey in glitchy AI settings posing thought-provoking questions, and static creatives pairing critical questions with AI visuals, showcasing AI’s limitations and distinguishing the message from standard B2B content.
The open-ended questions left audiences in suspense and eager for more. The intention was to pique curiosity and drive online search of ‘Salesforce AI’ terms as well as AI-related Salesforce website traffic. As of January 30, 2024, searches increased by over 1025 per cent YoY, and 43,639 online campaign content views were generated, inclusive of over 24k campaign landing page views.
Since launch, 242 articles aligning Salesforce to AI have been published, inclusive of syndications, earned and sponsored content, proactive and general news. This demonstrates the comprehensive effort undertaken collectively to amplify the ‘Ask More of AI’ campaign’s message across both earned and owned media channels.
Paid media efforts also yielded significant results, including 168.9 million potential out-of-home (OOH) views, 52.2m digital impressions, and more than 35 print placements in the Australian Financial Review and The Australian, targeting a combined readership of 6.64m.
The ‘WAILD West Saloon’ activation, an experiential part of the media strategy, brought the AI narrative to life beyond traditional channels. Inspired by the Wild West-themed TV ad, this interactive pop-up in Sydney engaged visitors with immersive experiences that fostered discussions on AI trust. Over three days, it attracted 2.7k participants and achieved 350k social media impressions.
Enigma, Kennards Hire
The Challenge:
When Kennards Hire shared its ambitious FY22/23 growth targets with Enigma, there was a significant challenge to step up to. As the second largest tool and equipment hire company in Australia and New Zealand, the key strategic challenge for Kennards Hire for the year ahead was to punch even higher above its weight with a meaningfully different creative platform. The aim – to gee up the business from inside-out, justifying the premium pricing, value added services and customer experience of Kennards Hire.
The key strategic challenge for the year ahead was to punch even higher above its weight considering the daunting new competitive partnership with a meaningfully different creative platform to gee up the business from inside-out.
The Thinking:
Knowing it was out-spent, out-priced and out-distributed Enigma needed to out-smart.
Brand Health research conducted by KPMG showed that 11 of the top 14 category consideration drivers for tradies were service related. Range came in 10th on that list and Cheapest Price at 13th.
NPS and Customer Relationship Research conducted by KPMG Acuity found 63 per cent of existing customers ranked “The service provided by staff” as the top reason they chose (and stuck with) Kennards.
Surveying branch team members, Enigma found that 82 per cent were proud to make their customers’ lives easy. Digging deeper, there was a simple reason for this outstanding service culture.
Kennards unrivalled pride in customer service became a secret weapon. Enigma knew from research that existing customers loved Kennards for it. The strategy was to leverage that love.
The strategic solution was to make Kennards Hire famous for “taking pride in making jobs easy”.
The Idea:
Ken Oath. A creative platform that embodies and celebrates Kennards’ next-level commitment to customer service.
Ken Oath works in two critical ways.
- It means yes. Can I return this tomorrow instead? Ken Oath! Can you show me how this equipment works? Ken Oath!
- It’s a customer service oath that staff take to providing unrivalled customer service.
Cutting through with irreverent humour, the integrated campaign stretched across TV, Radio, OOH, Social, Experiential and much more. But the most successful channel was the pride it created for the Kennards Team. By connecting with the frontline team Ken Oath moved away from being an advertising idea and into an ethos that embodies the competitive advantage of Kennards Hire.
The icing on the cake? Ken Oath bumper stickers. A tool that’s turned over 200,000 customers into Kennards Hire brand advocates. Sure, they’re lo-fi, but their power is undeniable.
The Outcome:
Ken Oath has become a creative platform that’s transformed the business and created a meaningful connection between customers and the brand.
Across Australia and New Zealand, over 200,000 tradies proudly display the Ken Oath bumper sticker on their beloved utes and vans as advocates of the brand.
And has it grown the business and kept the competition on the front foot? Ken Oath it has!
Today The Brave, True North
The Challenge:
The travel industry is in a time of huge expansion, as consumers embrace adventure again post Covid-19. The cruising category in particular is heating up, experiencing triple digit bookings and ATL media growth. Travel agents, corporate bookers, and influencers have never been more bombarded with opportunities to recommend for their customers, and the premium category True North competes in has seen particularly aggressive expansion.
The travel brand needed to find a way to the top of the travel recommendation engine, finding the most valuable B2B prospects that could best understand and relay unique proposition for customers – as more than a cruise, True North offers a truly life-changing adventure. True North needed passionate travel storytellers, with expertise and commitment, to drive aggressive agent and trade sales target back to pre-covid levels, a 5 per cent growth YOY. This included bookings via agents, large corporate charters, and trade famils.
The Thinking:
True North’s agent share of bookings was only 20 per cent, and had declined from 25-30 per cent average pre-covid. Two key drivers of this decline were identified:
- 6 New Kimberleys small-boat excursion companies had opened up as competitors during that time, all copycat versions of existing True North itineraries, but less premium overall. Agents were being targeted by these companies to sell to consumers on the Kimberley, but ‘more affordable’. In reality the activities and onboard experience were very different on these competitor boats, but agents weren’t understanding that clearly.
- Corporate travel bookers found it hard to place group charters on the True North, due to its relatively high price point and generally remote locations. They didn’t know that the True North II had been launched with a lower price point for groups, and with a lot more flexibility to customise short itineraries on the East Coast of Australia, the most attractive product to this group.
To combat this, True North needed to feel like a heavily talked about brand in the trade community – leveraging the Kimberleys’ destination alone wasn’t good enough any more.
The Idea:
Firstly, True North reshaped its direct comms, moving trade assets beyond destinations to focus on the experience on board, emphasising the consumer’s personal experiences and transformation. This gave it a unique way to stand out.
The travel brand then sought ways to connect deeper with the trade partners, and garner more earned coverage:
- Built a B2B strategy that emphasised long-form or high-impact earned media placement. Rather than small mentions/lists, it wanted to be the hero of the content. It sent various journalists and influencers on True North itineraries, and used their coverage to tap into latent demand in the trade press for higher quality reportage, photography and video.
- Conducted a series of in-depth interviews identifying the core customer it sought, and the role of the True North II as a more accessible option in the fleet for the east coast and larger groups. It captured this content in a series of targeted eDMs to key agents to drive growth.
- Expanded partnership with Luxury Lodges Australia, including hosting the whole LL group on board the TNII for a week of immersion. It gave peers key talking points and resources to communicate with their discerning, high net work customers, and high spec materials to distribute.
- Ran a ‘speed dating’ event at 3 major travel conferences (AU and UK), where sales reps met with agents 1:1
- Set up a specialist corporate events product specifically for the TNII, via a new partner Business Events Australia (part of Tourism Australia)
The Outcome:
The results were phenomenal – not only did trade enquiry grow 5 per cent in 2023, the campaign earned 9 million impressions across trade & Travel publications. It also saw a direct increase in corporate large group bookings of 20 per cent via successful BEA partnership.
A creative diagnostic research was also run via Kantar with a cut of travel industry professionals, to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach.
This found that the campaign elicited a strong response from content readers and viewers making them feel more positively towards True North and encouraging them to recommend more. Creatively, all trade content pieces that ran were incredibly strong for True North delivering high scores across branding, relevance, new information and difference from other cruise companies. High levels of likeability were driven through the high visual appeal, captivating storytelling and unique content with the True North experience being central to the story.
The content pieces focused on delivering information on the ships and cruise experience that brings together aspects of adventure and luxury. This approach was very successful and drove strong engagement amongst the travel agent and corporate travel audience. As a result, the content pieces have worked to build the True North brand in trade, with double digit uplifts amongst brand perceptions and awareness, achieving key campaign objectives of increased agent bookings. The successful content execution also delivered strong impacts across the lower funnel, shoring us up for future conversions efficiency.
Today The Brave, Fetch
The Challenge:
In August last year, Telstra bought a majority stake in the Fetch TV business. A move which would supercharge sales by opening up new retail channels and dialling up their marketing budgets.
The challenge; was to make sure that the Telstra sales team were aware of the brand and product (top of mind awareness) before they arrived at their annual sales conference on the Goldie.
The Thinking:
The growth of streaming services has been exponential over the last few years, with SVOD penetration in Australia now at 90 per cent. The number of services Aussies are accessing reached 24.6 million in June 2023, up by 5 per cent year-on-year. By 2027, the number of users in the Australian Video Streaming (SVoD) market) market is expected to reach 12.5m users.
The result; we now have access to more video content than we could ever hope to consume which means we can largely watch whatever we want, whenever we want.
The challenge; that content is split across multiple platforms and streaming services making searching and navigating those content ecosystems problematic. User experience is optimised within the App or Platform, not between them. So simple things like finding the last show you were watching or picking up where you left off can be complicated for those (like most of us) watching concurrent shows across multiple platforms.
The opportunity; Fetch TV is different to other content platforms and streaming services in that it aggregates the content from each individual user’s existing subscriptions into one place.
The strategy; simply communicate that you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, ALL IN ONE PLACE.
The Idea:
The creative platform (and resulting line) developed was titled “The way to watch”, reiterating that Fetch is the simple solution to a world of overwhelming content.
With more content at our fingertips than ever before, viewers often spend more time trying to find TV shows and movies than they do watching them. To emphasise the issue Fetch developed “TV purgatory” a metaphor for the frustrating limbo we all find ourselves in when it comes to navigating the huge amount of content available in streaming apps and channels.
All this was packaged up into a series of four billboard and poster executions highlighting the key benefits of the platform from universal search, to aggregated home page and seamless pick-up where you left off.
The media plan focused on delivering that message when the content platform knew its audience would be primed; on arrival at their annual sales conference at the Gold Coast airport.
The Outcome:
It’s difficult to isolate the results of the B2B component of the campaign other than anecdotal feedback and awareness at Telstra’s sales conference. Which, needless to say, was through the roof. The tactical messaging and placements not only communicated key messages but they also demonstrated to the Telstra Sales Team how important a partner they are.
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