We may not have the jet-set, champagne-fuelled ceremonies of the B2C ad world, but our 2009 B2B MarComm Awards are just as exciting, if somewhat lower scale.
MLC Members can access the links in this post, including our showcase of all 50 entries to see the high quality of work and get ideas for your own campaigns. Despite the consistently high standard across campaigns, we had to select a few that stood out from the rest.
We are pleased to announce 8 finalists that excelled in terms of campaign focus, target understanding, message relevance, and channel impact:
2009 MLC B2B Marcomm Awards Finalists
- Alcatel-Lucent | Hotel Experience
- Motorola | Two-Way Radio Lead Generation Campaign
- National Instruments | Energizing Engineers at NI Week
- Qwest Communications | Voice of the Customer
- Telecom NZ | No One Will Know You Are Gone
- Telstra | Enterprise & Government Productivity
- TELUS | Who Knew
- Thomson Reuters | ProLaw Office
Overall, we were impressed by the level of innovation, customer insight, and online/offline integration on show. From inflatable dolls and an email that appears to be your own out-of-office notification to a video library of customer testimonials, these B2B campaigns are as fun and original as the best CPG campaigns. And like consumer-focused campaigns, the best B2B campaigns also build on deep insights about customers’ personal motivations or aspirations, such as creatives’ dream of working from the beach or engineers’ desire for their peers’ respect.
We were also struck by how fully these campaigns have integrated digital media into the touchpoint mix. Motorola, for instance, uses webinars, live chats, and internet ads alongside traditional channels, while TELUS has pioneered the first Canadian B2B use of SMS marketing, and National Instruments has great success with social media at practically no cost. The best campaigns also capitalize on cross-channel synergies: Alcatel’s virtual hotel tour livens up its Website, trade shows, and sales visits, while quotes/video clips from Qwest’s customer references feed a range of communications.
What’s more, these campaigns excel in commercial teaching and arming advocates within the client organization. We see a shift in focus from product features to customers’ goals (enabling far greater relevance), even when many campaigns focus on similar generic goals – cost reduction, efficiency, productivity. Also impressive, is the number of campaigns that engage customers by teaching them how to achieve their goals. For example, Qwest’s customer interviews provide tips on how to overcome common business challenges (as well as why to use Qwest’s products), while Telstra’s productivity indicator enables customers to measure ICT-enabled cost savings. Finally, several campaigns (including Thomson Reuters’ ProLaw Office) enable consensus-based purchase decisions by targeting a range of influencers within each client organization and arming advocates with multiple arguments for purchase.
To learn more from these campaigns, tune into our 2009 B2B MarComm Awards Finalists webinar on December 15th at 11:00 AM EST.
No related posts.
Commenting Guidelines
We hope conversations will be energetic, constructive, and provocative. All posts will be reviewed by our editors and may be edited for clarity, length, and relevance.
We ask that you adhere to the following guidelines.
1. No selling of products or services.
2. No ad hominem attacks. These are conversations in which we debate ideas. Criticize ideas, not the people behind them.