Insight
Dell wasn’t trusted in Germany. It needed to form a better, special relationship with it decision makers.
For many consumers, Dell is simply a maker of great value laptops and desktop computers. However, half its business revenue comes from providing IT infrastructure products such as servers and related expertise to corporate IT departments.
But those IT Decision Makers (ITDMs) do not behave like consumers:
• Their decision-making process is much, much longer.
• Brands have to work extra hard to earn their trust. After all, this isn’t just their money, it’s the company’s cash, and bad decisions cost jobs.
The bottom line is that the key budget holder is highly risk averse, brand loyal and reluctant to change.
Mediacom research indicated that Dell was not seen as relevant or trusted, particularly among the country’s key medium-sized businesses. The brand wasn’t even on the consideration list for the vast majority of ITDMs, lagging behind HP and IBM. Consideration levels were stuck at 27%, just above half the level of its key competitors, which both scored 52%.
The main problem was that Dell hadn’t ever spoken to this key B2B audience. The lack of dialogue had allowed prejudice to grow and Dell was widely seen as an American company that did not understand the German market.
Mediacom needed to get Dell talking to Germany’s IT geeks, a highly savvy, niche and difficult to reach audience. Due to the long decision-making process, it didn’t expect the campaign to convert to sales immediately but without that conversation, Dell wouldn’t even be considered.
Strategy
The strategy was to win the hearts of the IT administrators to win the contracts from the IT decision-makers.
Dell spent hours talking and listening to IT Decision Makers and discovered that they weren’t actually the key target market!
The agency’s startling insight was that most ITDMs don’t actually know that much about IT. IT is just one more thing to buy, alongside company cars and managing the facilities. It discovered that ITDMs relied on an informal network of colleagues to advise them. The critical link in the chain was Dell’s reputation among IT Administrators, the savvy people who maintain IT infrastructure every day.
Understanding IT Administrators meant entering a slightly odd world of error messages, tricky software updates, but most of all, the hideous challenge of dealing with people who don’t work in IT. If IT Administrators were to relate to Dell, it had to embrace the Administrators’ view of the world and realise that they were all too often surrounded, exasperated and frustrated by computer illiterates.
Demonstrating that Dell understood their collective pain would enable Mediacom to build a better relationship and start to put Dell on their decision journey.
To make Dell part of their unique world, Mediacom would create somewhere for them to let off steam. The message was “Life was Tough Enough, Take IT easy”. It would let them talk to other IT Administrators in a way that only fellow IT geeks would understand.
Rather than talk to them about servers or back end infrastructure, it would provide targeted entertainment. It would make them laugh (mostly at all the people who knew nothing about IT… their colleagues) and make it easy for them to share their stories.
Dell would be the heartbeat of a new B2B community where IT Administrators could tell each other how they felt about the rest of the office.
Execution
You know how much you like to moan about the IT department? That’s exactly how much they like to moan about you. So Dell let them!
Mediacom created a 16-webisode sitcom, telling the day-to-day stories and struggles that only the target could truly understand. It promoted the sitcom via Germany’s biggest IT websites as well as via tightly targeted Facebook video ads and blogger outreach.
All of the messages drove the target to Dell’s new Tumblr page where IT Administrators could create memes and contribute their stories of the “Dumbest Assumable User” in their companies, and use a bespoke DAU generator to turn their stories into gifs that could be shared.
Integrated with Facebook and Twitter, the highly visual site was a magnet for the funniest experiences the IT Administrators could provide, ranging from users that couldn’t type their password in to those who didn’t know that home WiFi wouldn’t work outside the home (duh!).
It offered unique merchandise such as mugs and buzzers featuring the worst DAU stories to IT Administrators who gave their contact details in return – allowing Dell to generate meaningful leads.
Finally the agency linked the Tumblr site to Dell’s business website where it ran interviews with IT Administrators talking about the challenges they faced in their daily lives. It didn’t totally forget IT Decision Makers; it let them peek behind the IT door via carefully targeted print and outdoor designed to reach them on business trips. QR codes encouraged them to connect with the content.
Results
The unorthodox sitcom approach created a 213,000-strong community and secured thousands of targeted leads.
In just four months Dell grew a community of more than 213,000 IT people, with 20% of them returning regularly.
The sitcom was a massive success with more than 1.5m video views, half of them earned. Content from rival brands such as HP have earned just a few hundred views.
The first episode was the most successful Facebook post in the IT category ever. In one week we generated more than 120,000 organic views, 3,000 shares and more than 1,000 comments.
More than 650 DAU-experiences and over 220 memes have been created, while earned media was valued at 32% of the total budget. In fact, it boosted regular buzz about Dell B2B by 1,288%, and 76% comments are positive compared to an industry benchmark of just 10%.
The merchandise became a must-have for IT Administrators, generating more than 15,000 qualified business leads, saving the client more than 50% on the normal cost per lead and beating the target by 25%.
This campaign put Dell back into the IT conversation and made it a real contender the next time the audience considers a new hardware purchase.