Bright Ideas

Driving results through strategic brand evolution: CCi’s brand refresh

Driving results through strategic brand evolution: CCi’s brand refresh

The client

CCi is the global leader in business performance improvement, combining tech-enabled solutions, with deep sector expertise to enable the world’s leading supply chains to drive and sustain operational excellence.

Trusted by some of the world’s most iconic brands like Diageo, Suntory Global Spirits, Cargill and dsm-firmenich, CCi’s footprint spans more than 75 countries, and 3000+ operations across the globe.

The challenge

CCi are on a growth mission – by broadening their solutions, integrating strategic partners, deepening customer relationships and expanding and diversifying their client base. To support their goals, the leadership team recognised the need to invest in a strong brand presence. It was essential that they could effectively demonstrate the sustained value that CCi provides to clients and establish a solid foundation for market differentiation to meet their ambitious growth targets.

The existing brand was dated and confusing, featuring a disconnected user experience across multiple websites, names and visual elements. This poor positioning failed to effectively highlight CCi’s expertise, products and services, thus adversely affecting its reputation.

Jay Milligan, CEO, knew that he needed to elevate the brand, if they were to meet their growth targets. He set out to find a marketing firm that would be able to bring the agility and pace needed for the rebrand. Bright was identified as the ideal partner, combining deep expertise in marketing effectiveness and agility with B2B marketing know-how.

The Bright team challenged us to modernize the CCi brand and the result is phenomenal. The feedback from both internal employees and customers has been overwhelmingly positive. It is a significant step forward for CCi and helps to position us as market leaders.”
Jay Milligan, CEO

The rebranding process

The solution

Beginning the journey

To begin with, Bright conducted an in-depth marketing audit to understand & evaluate CCi’s current state including reviewing its existing brand and marketing activities. Rapidly identifying strengths, weaknesses, and barriers to success. Bright then defined a marketing strategy that supported the primary goals of CCi’s leadership team, a critical component was the rebrand to build reputation and market share. The implementation plans put agility at the heart of the process to ensure that outcomes were achieved with pace and impact.

Bright’s agile marketing methodology and marketing expertise in B2B focused on how to leverage continual improvement through a test and learn approach to maximise marketing ROI and impact. Bright embarked on establishing the foundations that would underpin the future brand positioning and brand strategy.

The brand refresh

The brand strategy

The new brand was crucial, the faster we could launch the new identity and build CCi’s reputation the better. The brand would underpin successful market outreach to not only acquire new clients but also expand and retain the existing base. We needed to be nimble with tight time frames to deliver the refreshed brand into market which meant taking an agile approach was vital. It was essential to work closely with the leadership team to understand their vision and purpose to distil the essence of CCi for the new brand.

Insights from the marketing audit helped to clarify customer needs and priorities. Spanning a diverse audience, including technical middle managers and supply chain and operational excellence business leaders. The insights were used to inform the process and help accelerate decision making in workshops, directly feeding into the development of CCi’s new brand positioning and messaging.

Interactive workshops facilitated the transition from product-centric positioning to solution focused messaging, bringing together both products and consulting services under the banner of tech-enabled solutions and placing more emphasis and the value CCi enables businesses to generate. We conducted further competitor research as well as validation of the proposed new positioning with employees and customers to ensure the new messaging resonated with key target audiences.

Close engagement with the CCi leadership team as well as the global employee base along on the journey was a key part of planning for success. Ensuring key stakeholders were involved during this important strategic change was vital to maintain buy-in and engagement. Using our experience in change enablement, we developed a change communications plan to support the roll out to ensure understanding of the messaging and generate buzz around the new brand across the CCi team.

The brand design

In our experience, brand identities work best when messaging is clear, simple, and visually impactful. To create the new visual identity, positioning and brand rollout strategy, we took an agile approach to project-management, forming a cross functional team including a graphic design team as well as marketing specialists at Bright and key functional areas at CCi including revenue generation, consulting, product, customer success and HR.

We leveraged agile marketing to rapidly conduct our brand development and internal preparations including research and ideation, validation and iterations to refine the brand and launch within 9 months, this is a significant improvement on average rebrand refreshes [1]which on average take 12 to 18 months.

We further increased efficiencies by collaborating closely with the CCi team to review of all existing branded assets across the business, creating a backlog and prioritising what was needed to ensure a consistent and professional look and feel at launch. By leveraging the backlog to optimise existing content and make sure we only redesigned or repurposed those assets that aligned to the tech-enabled solutions focus whilst retiring irrelevant or underperforming content.

Internal preparations were key to ensuring CCi’s refreshed branding rationale was communicated in a straightforward and easily understood way to both clients and all CCi employees. We also listened to feedback and considered where future enhancements might be needed and backlogged for future phases.

The website relaunch

CCi wanted to streamline their online presence by merging two existing websites – ccitracc.com and traccsolution.com into one website. The aim was to create a streamlined and much improved user experience, aligning CCi’s TRACC solution with the organisation’s overarching corporate messaging and branding. This created a unified approach for introducing new products and services in the future.

A new website was scoped and tailored to meet the needs of CCi’s target audience. We worked closely with Bright’s trusted web development partner to deliver an engaging user experience built on a robust, easy to maintain and future proofed architecture. Extensive content mapping was conducted to ensure seamless navigation and coherence across every page.

SEO-optimised content was core to support CCi’s success in the digital landscape going forward. We focused on ensuring a friction-free browsing experience for visitors. We also implemented seamless automation processes for all forms on the website, ensuring a smooth journey for users from submission to receipt of communications in the new branding.

Throughout the project we were continually testing and validating content, design and functionality to optimise the user experience.

The project had to be completed at pace with tight deadlines for launch. By taking an agile approach we were able to rapidly replan, overcome barriers and work collaboratively with key stakeholders to meet the launch date and get ccitracc.com live!

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2023/10/05/how-long-does-it-take-to-successfully-rebrand-a-business/#

The results

The refreshed brand positioning and identity launch created a phenomenal amount of positive energy and sentiment, reigniting interest and awareness that has already enhanced the reputation of CCi across employees, clients and other key stakeholders.

Commenting on the brand refresh, CEO of CCi, Jay Milligan, said “The Bright team challenged us to modernize the CCi brand and the result is phenomenal. The feedback from both internal employees and customers has been overwhelmingly positive. It is a significant step forward for CCi and helps to position us as market leaders.”

The refreshed brand messaging, design, and tone of voice has provided clarity on who CCi are as an organisation and who it can serve. The website is an easy to navigate shopfront for both new and existing clients, employees and partners to get to know CCi better.

Impressive early results in the first quarter post-launch, include:

Improved audience engagement: website dwell time increased by 17%
Longer time on site: Decreased bounce rate by 4%
35% increase in C-suite LinkedIn page engagement
Over 50 assets rebranded or created to support the new identity.

With the brand now in market, Bright and CCi are continuing their journey to meet CCi’s growth targets leveraging the new brand to support demand generation, client acquisition, and expansion.

“The brand refresh has been transformative, positioning CCi at the forefront of our industry. Working with Bright as our agile marketing partner has allowed us to prioritise what matters and drive our marketing forward with precision and impact.” Head of Marketing and Brand, Robyn Macé added.

Bright remains a key partner for CCi, providing the agility, pace, and results of a world-class agile marketing approach. Our expertise in B2B marketing and commitment to continuous improvement ensure the most effective strategies to support CCi’s business goals.

Find out more about how to inject more agility into your team with our agile marketing training

September 11, 2024 Alaina Roberts

Embracing marketing agility: ADP’s strategic leap forward with Bright

The client

ADP, established in 1949 and listed on the NASDAQ, is a Fortune 500 company and a global leader in payroll services and HR solutions. With a heritage of over 75 years, ADP manages global operations across many countries and sectors. Partnering with Bright, ADP launched an ambitious initiative to instil agility within its International marketing team (known as ESI), improving responsiveness and aligning operations closely with sales and business goals.

The challenge

Facing the challenge of disparate international teams and varied operational practices, ADP’s ESI marketing function needed a realignment—not just in tools and processes but fundamentally in mindset. The goal was to transition from traditional practices to a more integrated, agile marketing approach that could unify global efforts and increase operational efficiency.

Graham Wylie, VP International Marketing said “By adopting agile practices, we can drive success, maximise our potential, and ensure our team remains innovative, efficient, and highly engaged. This transformation is vital for meeting the growing demands of our business and achieving our ambitious goals.“

Agile marketing has been a game changer for us. Whilst asking the teams to change their way of working was challenging at times, it bore fruit in the end once they understood that it’s not just about speed; it’s about being strategically aligned and responsive. The clarity and focus that Bright’s training brought have enabled us to be more adaptive and impactful.
Els Humphreys-Davies, the ESI Senior Director of Field Marketing and programme sponsor

The solution

Bright developed a bespoke agile marketing training and activation programme, tailored to the teams specific requirements and incorporating use cases that the ADP ESI marketing team would use as the pilots to activate the new ways of working and thinking.

The initiative began with an in-depth discovery phase, followed by an interactive agile marketing training programme delivered across the global marketing teams. Introducing the agile marketing principals and best practice in a way that fit the ADP ESI marketing environment, the programme focused on the role of experimentation and taking a test and learn approach, through measurement and KPIs to sustainably use agile to overcome barriers. Over 60 marketers worldwide were engaged in this transformative process.

Leadership engagement

A critical component of the solution was leadership training to help the marketing leadership team role model a growth mindset and allow the new ways of working to flourish. As well as embracing experimentation, reflecting the agile principles instilled across the function.

Activation and support

The training was hands-on, involving over 30 hours of virtual classroom instruction & interactive sessions segmented into five strategic modules. This approach ensured that the concepts taught were not only understood but also immediately implemented, fostering a learning-by- doing culture. Bright’s team, comprising B2B marketing practitioners and agile experts, provided ongoing practical support, particularly as teams transitioned into pilot phases, ensuring the new ways of working were successfully adopted and marketing effectiveness was enhanced.

The results

Agile marketing is not just a methodology; it’s a mindset that has helped propel the ADP international teams to new levels of excellence, delivering significant improvements across several key performance metrics:

Increased speed to market: Campaigns were launched faster, with a marked increase in creativity and innovation due to greater experimentation encouraged by a culture fostering curiosity and a growth mindset
Data-driven marketing: A strong emphasis on data-driven decisions and continuous improvement allowed the team to access campaign results during whilst the campaign was running and pivot activity, rather than waiting for final results.
Data-driven marketing: By prioritising data-driven decisions and continuous improvement, the marketing team gained real-time access to results, enabling them to adjust their strategies throughout the campaign.
Professional development: Marketers appreciated the investment in their skills and career development, acquiring valuable new capabilities that bolstered their professional growth
Cross-functional collaboration: Enhanced collaboration across the teams throughout campaign lifecycles aligned KPIs, shared regional learnings, and underscored the benefits of integrated marketing strategies.

Team insights

Els Humphreys-Davies, the ESI Senior Director of Field Marketing and programme sponsor, reflects on the journey: “Agile marketing has been a game changer for us. Whilst asking the teams to change their way of working was challenging at times, it bore fruit in the end once they understood that it’s not just about speed; it’s about being strategically aligned and responsive. The clarity and focus that Bright’s training brought have enabled us to be more adaptive and impactful.” Catharina Rozendaal, Marketing Growth Director for Emerging Markets, noted operational improvements: “Agile marketing allows me to reconnect with the wider marketing team faster. Using workflow tools and kanban boards means that projects & campaign information is centralised and accessible.”

Leadership perspective

Graham Wylie, VP of Marketing, whose vision was foundational to this initiative, reflected on its success: ” Agile marketing offers a method to enhance our capacity and efficiency without merely adding more staff or increasing costs. This approach allows us to continue delivering exceptional results while adapting to meet increased demands.”

Summary

Looking ahead, ADP ESI Marketing is committed to further refining agile marketing practices to continue driving operational efficiencies as well as ensuring they engage their audiences through effective marketing. The focus will be on scaling these successes to drive even greater business impact and market leadership.

ADP’s strategic partnership with Bright has redefined standards in agile marketing. By successfully integrating agile methodologies, ADP’s ESI marketing team has become more dynamic, empowered, and effective — driving both increased revenue for the business as well as operational efficiencies.

Find out more about how to inject more agility into your team with our agile marketing training

August 20, 2024 Alaina Roberts

Agile marketing training drives 123% revenue increase for Informa Pharma showcase event

Discover how Informa Markets EMEA undertook a significant agile marketing training programme to upskill their marketing teams spanning 529 hours and 57 marketers with the help of Bright’s certified agile marketing trainers.

With newly empowered teams working more efficiently and effectively, the implementation pilot programmes had an impressive impact with outstanding results achieved, such as 123% year-over-year ticket revenue increase, an 34% increase in attendees (almost 54,000—their highest ever) and 17,000 more C-level target attendees.

The client

Informa Markets EMEA, part of Informa plc and a FTSE 100 company, operates in over 30 countries, with over 11,000 employees. Informa Markets enable people to connect, learn, and do business through events, digital services, and data solutions across various global sectors including healthcare and pharmaceuticals, energy, agriculture, hospitality, fashion and more.

The challenge

The pandemic significantly impacted Informa’s events business, requiring a reassessment of growth strategies. EMEA marketing leadership wanted their teams thinking and working differently, feeling inspired, be more adaptable to change, while improving efficiency and productivity.

Victoria Hardiment, Pharma Marketing Director, and a key driver of this programme within Informa, identified that adopting agile marketing methodologies would be the launchpad, however changing mindsets and habits isn’t an easy task. Certified agile marketing trainers from Bright were brought in to educate the leadership on the value of agile marketing and provide the skills and tools to the team to run their pilot programme.

“What an incredible result! Thank you for your hard work, expertise, and support… This year, we’ve changed everything about our campaign and approach to marketing.
Through our Agile Marketing Hubs, we’ve targeted our communications more, relaunched our digital touchpoints, tested and experimented. This has enabled increased engagement across all channels. I am so proud of the amazing marketing team who have worked tirelessly to innovate and deliver this brilliant result.”
Victoria Hardiment, Pharma Marketing Director

The solution

Bright aimed to revolutionise Informa Markets marketing through a certified agile training programme that empowered the teams to work more efficiently and effectively, ultimately increasing revenue through improved audience engagement. Leadership buy-in was crucial for successful adoption, so the first step was to successfully engage this audience. The initial training programme targeted marketing directors from London, Amsterdam, and Dubai, across diverse sectors.

A discovery phase ensured the training messaging and content was customised to the team’s requirements, Bright developed a two-day interactive course demonstrating how agile practices improve audience engagement and drive more effective outcomes. Surveys and in-person feedback sessions were undertaken to gain insights, capture and address challenges, develop action plans, and create relevant content for the internal newsletter. Subsequent sessions were provided to local marketing teams launching pilot projects, introducing new agile practices and fostering a test-and-learn approach.

Delivered by Bright’s trainers, the ICAgile certified training was highly relevant, interactive, and engaging. It provided a robust understanding of agile marketing principles and best practices and identified practical use cases within the Informa workflow.

Learners gained practical tools, an easy-to-use playbook, and a set of resources and templates to activate the new ways of working and thinking. Accompanied with ongoing coaching, feedback, and support, teams felt confident in applying their new skills to real-life scenarios and during pilot programmes. The largest pilot, led by the Pharma team, served as a blueprint and focused on growing the showcase CPHI Europe event. Ambitious targets were set to measure the success of agile marketing adoption. Additional pilots were also initiated globally, including in healthcare, energy, and cityscape sectors.

Achieving tangible outcomes was essential to build a compelling business case for a more structured and widespread adoption of agile methodologies across Informa Markets.

The results

The outcomes of the newly adopted agile marketing approach are impressive. So far, 57 marketers have been trained, totalling 529 hours of training.

The Pharma marketing team applied agile methodologies to their showcase event, which delivered the best results ever achieved:

123% year-over-year ticket revenue increase
34% attendee increase (almost 54,000—their highest ever),
17,000 more C-level target attendees.

Qualitative results were captured through regular retrospectives, reviewing what the team “liked,” “lacked,” and “learned.” Key collective learnings included the importance of:

Regular communications
Making room for creativity
Addressing risks and issues early to improve adaptability
Being agile not just doing agile
Establishing effective baselines for effective measurement.

Actions were then implemented to ensure continuous improvement.

Across other Informa Markets verticals pilot agile teams set specific objectives for their tactical campaigns which provided great learnings:

Cityscape Bahrain: Aimed to collect 1,000 leads. By the end of sprint two, they surpassed this goal, achieving 1,065 pieces.
Energy Nigeria: Targeted 2,800 leads but achieved only 1,000 learning to address risks and issues early, break down tasks to better understand priorities, and set seasonal targets.

These overall successful results have led to continued investment in agile marketing training and activation programmes across Informa Markets.

Find out more about how to inject more agility into your team with our agile marketing training

July 30, 2024 Alaina Roberts

Up-skilling 5,500 employees across 14 time zones in a single day to become more data confident

5,500 employees trained in a single day – the benefits of an agile approach

Informa is a globally recognised leader in events and digital services, a member of the FTSE 100 which operates in over 30 countries, with more than 11,000 employees. They teamed up with Bright, to launch a ground-breaking educational programme. Our joint mission was to transform Informa’s teams into data-savvy innovators.

The challenge

Informa is on a journey to transform its business, creating products and services that meet the evolving needs of its customers. A crucial part of this transformation is empowering colleagues with cutting-edge technologies to harness the wealth of data at their disposal.

Central to this initiative is IIRIS, a formidable platform that provides brands with access to a wealth of audience data. The executive team at Informa recognised the enormous potential of IIRIS and the need to strengthen colleagues’ data skills. To monetise the value of the array of data and tools at colleague’s disposal, we needed to create a focus on analysis, interpretation, and data-driven decision-making, giving the workforce the capabilities to maximise the benefits of the IIRIS platform.

8,500+ hours of training across 33 countries in one day.
5,500 team members obtained their Green Belt certification.
Over 2,100 individuals proudly shared their certification on social media.

The solution

With the goal of honing data literacy, we initiated the playful yet impactful “Data Driven Journey” in Q4 2022. The objective? To spotlight data and nurture a data confident Informa workforce, fluent in Informa’s “Data, Insight, Action” framework. 

Unveiling this event across 33 countries and 14 time zones was a grand endeavour. Despite global and regional complexities, the Informa team aimed to train 5,000 colleagues worldwide in a single day, marking Informa’s largest one-day internal event. 

The training was gamified using a karate-belt grading system. Starting with the Green Belt level, this ‘dojo’ theme introduced an element of fun, fostering engagement and healthy competition among colleagues. 

The results

The first phase of this initiative was focused on participation and getting as many colleagues as possible Green Belt certified. The Data Driven Journey was the first event of its kind bringing together colleagues from across Informa’s divisions and territories. 

 Colleagues from 33 countries took part, with 70% of the target audience learning about the data, insight, action framework. The team provided over 8,500 hours on training on one day alone worldwide. Upon completion of the event, 5,500 colleagues obtained their Green Belt certification.   

A notable ripple effect of the campaign was social sharing. Over 2,100 Informa colleagues showcased their Green Belt certification on social media platforms, amplifying employee engagement and propelling Informa’s reputation for comprehensive training and development. 

Summary

Through the collaboration, Informa and Bright have cultivated a reinvigorated, data-savvy workforce, alongside tangible metrics of success. This initiative sets a benchmark in employee engagement and data-driven innovation. 

Learn how Bright can help your organisation accelerate your marketing transformation.

December 20, 2023 Alaina Roberts

100 days to implement Agile Marketing foundations within Informa PLC’s Pharma Marketing division

In a rapidly evolving landscape where innovation meets customer expectations head-on, Informa Pharma and Bright embarked on a groundbreaking journey of agility and adaptability. Informa is a globally recognised leader in events and digital services, a member of the FTSE 100 which operates in over 30 countries, with more than 11,000 employees.

The challenge

Informa Plc is a globally recognised leader in events and digital services, a member of the FTSE 100, which operates in over 30 countries, with more than 11,000 employees. One of Informa’s subsidiaries, Informa Markets, has a dynamic pharma marketing team. They were tasked with targeting the pharmaceutical sector with the challenges of a growing number of customer touchpoints and increasing customer expectations.

Their solution? A shift towards agile marketing practices to foster flexibility and responsiveness.

We’re witnessing a shift in how our audiences interact with us not just joining our events but an increasing shift towards a long term, always-on relationship based on knowledge and access to critical insights. To thrive in this environment, we must be agile and adaptive, placing the customer at the centre of our strategy.
Victoria Hardiment, Pharma Marketing Director

The first phase

The first phase of the marketing transformation journey started by enabling the marketing leadership team with an awareness of agile marketing principles and best practices. This inspired Victoria Hardiment, Pharma Marketing Director, to delve further into how agile marketing could help the Pharma marketing team evolve their ways of working, secure better prioritisation, and use data to deliver greater business value ultimately.

The journey has been challenging but rewarding. We’ve successfully launched three pilot hubs and gained buy-in from all levels of seniority. The Scrumban method has facilitated our work tremendously, allowing us to launch our main event CPHI Europe registration earlier than ever.
Lizzie Knight, Agile Marketing Lead, Informa Pharma

Informa hired Lizzie Knight as an Agile Marketing Lead to pilot their agile transformation. Lizzie worked with Bright to launch a 100-day plan to lay the foundation for agile marketing adoption. The plan defined clear objectives and empowered the agile marketing hub teams with alignment to business goals.

Bright plays a crucial role in this transformative journey as an active practitioner, providing strategic support, training, coaching, and advisory services to the agile marketing lead. With deep expertise in agile marketing, they are reshaping the team’s marketing operations, resulting in effective outreach, increased engagement, and significant efficiency gains.

The results

With the roadmap defined and Bright enabling the change, the journey towards greater marketing agility to support the business with its ambitious growth plans is well and truly underway. The Pharma marketing team’s early experiences demonstrate the transformative power of agile marketing when well implemented. As the journey unfolds, agile marketing will continue to empower how they evolve and adapt in an ever-changing business landscape.

Early launch of major event registration: Leveraging agile marketing methodologies to drive efficient execution and timely delivery
Alignment around personas and segmentation: Refining marketing efforts by gaining deeper customer insights, improving both customer experience and journey
Advanced tracking and reporting: Increased visibility of marketing activities and their impact on the business allowing the teams to take a test and learn approach to drive continual improvement
Greater team alignment: Enhancing internal collaborations for a more seamless and efficient workflow

This is just the beginning of our journey into the world of agile marketing. We’re taking an ‘agile’ approach to our rollout; testing, learning, and iterating as we go. We’re excited to continue on this path, reap the benefits and share our experiences as we transform.
Victoria Hardiment, Pharma Marketing Director

Learn how Bright can help your organisation accelerate your marketing transformation.

November 2, 2023 Alaina Roberts

Agile experimentation achieves 1030% increased engagement, 273 leads and 213% ROI

Agile experimentation & audience development: Bright’s campaign strategy delivers impressive results for a publishing company

The Challenge

A global B2B digital media company specialising in publishing and information sought to enhance brand awareness and drive subscription growth for three of their brands on LinkedIn and Meta platforms. To achieve this, Bright was challenged to create and execute a successful campaign that would elevate brand recognition and bolster subscriptions.

The Solution

Bright identified thought-leadership content as a key driver for lead acquisition, along with influencer engagement within each brand’s vertical. To drive subscriptions for the three brands, Bright implemented a 16-week campaign with 23 ad campaigns, each highlighting a unique topic and presented on a gated page to drive subscriptions.

Employing agile marketing principles and a collaborative team with capability from Bright and the publishing firm. To adopt a test-and-learn approach, Bright collected valuable insights, including audience engagement with native platform gating vs. website gating and preferences for ad creative. Bright’s agile experimentation resulted in four varying creatives per campaign on average, with a focus on audience engagement and development.

The Result

Bright’s tailored and targeted approach to paid media marketing delivered a significant impact by increasing brand awareness and subscriptions for the three brands. The application of a test-and-learn methodology enabled Bright to collect valuable data insights, which informed campaign optimisation efforts. By focusing on resonating with the target audiences, Bright was able to use these insights to achieve optimal campaign results.

The paid media proof of concept campaign, generated:

1,490,724 impressions, resulting in 273 leads.
An ROI of 213% based on the commercial value of acquired subscribers
1 of the brands’ LinkedIn page saw a 1030% increase in clicks YOY
Another of the brands’ LinkedIn page experienced a 737% increase in followers YOY

It has been a pleasure to work with the team at Bright. The outputs generated and performance we’ve seen is incredible. They’ve helped share their expertise and knowledge whilst injecting audience development and agile ways of working to upskill our existing marketing team.
Director of Engagement and Operations

September 28, 2023 Alexandra Jefferies

Exceeding ARR £400k targets with agile marketing approach for SaaS business

An agile marketing approach to SaaS success for Reward Gateway

Reward Gateway, an employee engagement benefits solution provider, aimed to launch a new low-touch, scalable SaaS service for SME customers (Reward Gateway for Small Business known as RG4SB). They partnered with Bright to challenge their traditional campaign format and experiment with social media platforms, tone of voice, content, and incentives to understand how to reach and connect with their known and new audience personas.

Challenge

Reward Gateway needed to take an audience centric approach to define themes and topics that appealed to the SME market, understand where and how existing content could be adapted and explore new marketing methods that could rapidly acquire clients and secure the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) required to demonstrate success.

The Solution

Bright worked with the RG4SB team to rapidly research and understand the audience personas and implement an experimentation-based approach to test, learn, and optimise activities and processes in short sprint cycles to capitalise on learnings. Bright focused on setting experiments and optimising across social media, inbound marketing, events, nurture flows, high-value content, LinkedIn prospecting and a limited free trial offer. This meant RG4SB could reach the new SME audience and convert them through the sales funnel at each stage of the buyer journey.

The Result

Target ARR of £400,000 and 550 customers exceeded
187 new paying business clients acquired
Individual membership increased by 3,454 (64% increase)

The limited free trial and associated campaign messaging significantly increased traffic and generated qualified leads, resulting in exceeding the target ARR. Combined with the agile marketing strategy implemented by the RG4SB and Bright which drove acquisition and reduced churn.

The approach from Bright has been a complete game-changer for us. We’ve seen growth both in audience engagement and sales. I have no doubt this is down to our new way of thinking and working.
Pippa Van Praagh, Product & Strategy Enablement Director at Reward Gateway

June 27, 2023 Sian Heaphy

It’s About Time | Positioning and re-brand for London City Airport

The only airport located in the city; London City Airport opened its doors in 1987. Because of its proximity to Canary Wharf in Royal Docks, its operations are restricted, and its growth limited. As the airport has a steep approach and short runway, no airplane larger than an Airbus A318 can use the airport, and operating hours are limited due to noise restrictions, meaning the airport is often overlooked.

There is also a perception that London City Airport is just for business travellers rather than families and holiday makers.

Bright was challenged to help increase awareness, loyalty, and revenue to compete effectively through their two most prominent marketing elements: website and advertising; working with the airport’s internal marketing department and design agency Endeavour across this campaign.

Advertising campaign

The campaign depicts nine different customer personas reflecting the airport’s target audiences, from business travellers and young city breakers, to working parents and retired travellers, alongside ideas how they can put that time saved, by choosing London City Airport, to better use. The nine adverts have launched in the U.K. and key European markets, as well as print and digital outdoor sites owned by the airport and around London, including road-side panels at Euston, Canary Wharf and Holborn.

Challenge

Raise awareness of London City Airport, increase the number of passengers, and position it as not just for business travel.

The Solution

Exploring the key benefits of London City Airport, we saw that its proximity to the city centre reduced travel times from home or work to the airport compared to competitor airports such as Gatwick and Heathrow. This allowed passengers to spend more time where they wanted to be – either at home or at their destination.

From our research and passenger persona exercises, we put together a series of user journeys and stories that we captured through informal photography. The accompanying copy, with tagline ‘it’s about time’, emphasised the concept of passengers spending their time how they wanted to, rather than on travel to the airport. The campaign ran across a range of media including out of home and print, and we then developed the creative into a series of tactical adverts promoting specific routes and destinations which ran digitally.

Customer experience is a priority for our business. To stay ahead of the game, we need to better understand customer wishes, needs and behaviours.
As the airport continues to diversify with new and exciting business and leisure routes, in addition to the core business traveller, we want to speak directly and in a very human way to new customers, who may not have considered the airport before, supported by an intuitive new website.
Cyrielle Wagenfuhr, Senior Marketing Manager at London City Airport

October 24, 2022 Alexandra Jefferies

Securing new pipeline and over £125k investment within 6 weeks for community platform Zapnito

Securing pipeline and over £125,000 in investment

The challenge

Zapnito needed to build a pipeline of investors to pursue for its seed-round funding while also raising interest and awareness of the company within the investor community. It was also key to build the CEO’s personal network for future brand-building and sales opportunities.

Method

A 6 week agile-lead demand generation campaign established across the UK, US and Europe.
Rapid, iterative approach to optimise key messages and nurture investors towards conversion.
Established audience motivations and analysed the data to curate highly engaging and targeted communications.

Results

28 qualified, opted-in leads who were actively investing
16 new meetings with prospective investors
12 new angel investment groups
£125,000 in confirmed investment after 6 weeks
320 warm contacts within the target criteria
Over 100 positive responses

£125,000

in confirmed investment within 6 weeks

July 8, 2021 Alexandra Jefferies

Transforming underperformance by embedding an agile marketing model

Agile marketing transformation programme

Challenge

Softwire are a well established and innovative software engineering firm. With ambitious growth plans the leadership team wanted to understand how marketing could contribute best to supporting their business goals.

Softwire are traditional in their structure, with a business development sales team and dedicated marketing team focused on events, online and communication outreach. The leadership team wanted to understand the maturity of the marketing function and how they could best invest to create a marketing team that could adapt and move at pace to meet market change and scale as the business grew. They wanted to create a consistent approach to lead generation, try new tactics and use agile ways of working to get better results, help the in-house gain new experience and develop a culture of curiosity and continual improvement.

Method

Bright ran a marketing diagnostic to assess and understanding Softwire’s marketing performance, results and capabilities. Working in conjunction with the in-house team to gather data, understand current marketing effectiveness and dig into the operational and martech barriers they faced. Whilst understanding the state of Softwire’s key markets, the competitive landscape and exploring perception of the Softwire brand through perception interviews with key contacts in clients, prospect accounts and channel partners.

Bright ran a number of workshops with senior stakeholders internally at Softwire to further understand key stakeholder experience of working with the marketing team, strengths and weaknesses and what marketing support would be best deployed to support business goals in future.

The diagnostic findings were synthesised and pulled into a strategic marketing plan, a roadmap for executing the plan along with recommendations for quick wins, medium and long term projects to transform the way marketing worked and the anticipated benefits to Softwire.

This was quickly translated into a marketing transformation programme with work streams that focused on transforming lead generation campaigning, data and targeting, content strategy, martech and lead management over a 4-6 month period.

Working with Bright to move towards an agile marketing model made total sense for Softwire. We benefit from being more adaptable, confident in our data driven decision making and have the ability to quickly improve areas of underperformance whilst the team remain focused on the activities that deliver against our business goals.
Andy Smart, Director

Transformation at pace

Rapidly evaluated and understood areas of strength and weakness within the Softwire marketing operation. Created a strategic approach and plan for rapidly transforming the marketing team by establishing KPI, fostered curiosity and embedding new ways of working.

Embarked on a 4 month transformation programme to work alongside the in-house team to transfer skills through learning whilst doing, embed agile ways of thinking and working whilst optimising the use of tools to improve marketing effectiveness, elevate the Softwire brand and build sales pipeline.

Broke down internal silos and created a cross functional agile marketing hub model bringing together the right people and skills to drive campaign success. Demonstrated results and drove continual improvement through data, insight, clear reporting and risk and issue management.

Data driven approach so that marketing contribution is clearly understood and how agile ways of working help them adapt and pivot to market change at pace, especially important post Covid. Regular updates to the leadership team helped them understand how best to invest and champion the new marketing approach.

June 3, 2020 Zoe Merchant

Driving results through strategic brand evolution: CCi’s brand refresh

The client

The challenge

The rebranding process

The solution

Beginning the journey

The brand refresh

The brand strategy

The brand design

The website relaunch

The results

Improved audience engagement: website dwell time increased by 17%

Longer time on site: Decreased bounce rate by 4%

35% increase in C-suite LinkedIn page engagement

Over 50 assets rebranded or created to support the new identity.

Find out more about how to inject more agility into your team with our agile marketing training

Embracing marketing agility: ADP’s strategic leap forward with Bright

The client

The challenge

The solution

Leadership engagement

Activation and support

The results

Team insights

Leadership perspective

Summary

Find out more about how to inject more agility into your team with our agile marketing training

Agile marketing training drives 123% revenue increase for Informa Pharma showcase event

Discover how Informa Markets EMEA undertook a significant agile marketing training programme to upskill their marketing teams spanning 529 hours and 57 marketers with the help of Bright’s certified agile marketing trainers.

The client

The challenge

The solution

The results

Find out more about how to inject more agility into your team with our agile marketing training

5,500 employees trained in a single day – the benefits of an agile approach

The challenge

The solution

The results

Summary

Learn how Bright can help your organisation accelerate your marketing transformation.

100 days to implement Agile Marketing foundations within Informa PLC’s Pharma Marketing division

The challenge

The first phase

The results

Learn how Bright can help your organisation accelerate your marketing transformation.

Agile experimentation & audience development: Bright’s campaign strategy delivers impressive results for a publishing company

The Challenge

The Solution

The Result

An agile marketing approach to SaaS success for Reward Gateway

Challenge

The Solution

The Result

It’s About Time | Positioning and re-brand for London City Airport

Advertising campaign

Challenge

The Solution

Securing pipeline and over £125,000 in investment

The challenge

Method

Results

£125,000

in confirmed investment within 6 weeks

Agile marketing transformation programme

Challenge

Method

Transformation at pace