It's a New Year with new opportunities but have we made the most of leveraging our existing products and services? Is there an opportunity to reach new markets?
Now, more than ever, major brands are focusing their efforts to bring existing products to new markets, often requiring a new approach and a different way of communicating. Our recent work with InterfaceFLOR illustrates this.
InterfaceFLOR is a worldwide leader in the manufacture of modular commercial flooring with the industry’s largest and most diverse range of carpet tiles, selling mainly to architects and interior designers.
They also support one of the industry’s most aggressive, responsible and successful sustainability programmes ever launched – their promise to eliminate waste by 2020.
Jill Burton, our Managing Director, recollects the project and how we approached the challenge.
So Jill, what were the particular challenges you faced?
The majority of InterfaceFLOR’s marketing communications targets their main customers – designers and architects – with messages focused on sustainability, design and product innovation.
These people understand design and InterfaceFLOR has a high profile reputation within their customer community.
However, the buyers in education were far more diverse. They could be teachers, department heads, consortia, governors or designers. Many of these buyers are not design savvy, don’t understand the benefits of carpet tiles, may not know InterfaceFLOR and have a lot of other things to think about at the same time.
How did you approach the challenge?
Well, we knew the audiences were different so we looked at their priorities and what language they would understand.
There were four key messages:
1. Carpet tiles are the most effective solution for Schools and Universities.
Education buyers were buying flooring – not necessarily carpet tiles. So we needed to prove to them that carpet tiles were the very best solution.
2. InterfaceFLOR has the very best product range available.
Education buyers needed help to choose the right products for their various environments. So we wanted to create a bespoke range for this market.
3. InterfaceFLOR is the authority on flooring for education.
InterfaceFLOR had extensive experience in providing really beneficial solutions for education. So we needed to make these into stories to prove their expertise in the market.
4. InterfaceFLOR flooring will improve the learning environment.
We wanted to talk to the audience in a plain understandable language but it was still important to excite the buyers with innovative design ideas and sustainable solutions, which were at the heart of the InterfaceFLOR proposition.
We developed the concept “InterfaceFLOR – Redefining Space for Education” extending the brand proposition into education so that the choice was less about flooring and more about the effective use of space to improve learning.
The sales toolkit is a designer’s portfolio with dedicated brochures for each area of learning: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. There is a product range sampler, a product folder and a range of case studies.
And what is the response so far?
The toolkit was launched in September 2010 and the response from the client’s sales people across Europe has been extremely positive.
Having a dedicated sales kit for a specific market means that the sales team have the best possible tools available to them, they can give a consistent, well thought through sales pitch and they feel motivated to get results with the best tools available to them.
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Midas is a consultancy driven to help you connect with your audience through effective branding and communications.
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