Background
Cisco and Datacraft have been growing their partnership over a number of years to offer their clients consolidated end-to-end communication and networking solutions. To promote their latest initiative for ‘service-led architectural solutions’ internally throughout the region, the two companies devised a highly creative internal campaign so their employees could fully understand the value of the partnership in a service-led, solution-oriented market environment.
Aim
The two companies aimed to penetrate the value of their service-led architectural solutions approach to the market by driving an increased internal awareness of the partnership.
They defined the following objectives:
1. Accelerate sales engagements in the area of Cisco architectural solutions and Datacraft Professional Services
2. Increase awareness both internally and externally of Cisco and Datacraft partnership in services engagements
3. Educate field staff of both Cisco and Datacraft on services values
Execution
The target audience comprised all major Cisco offices and all Datacraft offices in the Asia-Pacific region. To coincide with the Lunar New Year, the campaign centered on the creation of bespoke fortune cookies, each with a unique number and an instruction to visit a freshly-created microsite.
To tempt employees into participating, the fortune cookies were distributed in large cookie jars in office pantries and common areas. Once at the microsite, the visitors were invited to take part in a quiz for the chance to win one of 20 flipcams. The quiz questions focused on the scope of Cisco and Datacraft’s architectural solutions offering and how they had helped clients to date.
With so many Cisco and Datacraft offices throughout the region, logistically the campaign proved exceptionally challenging to coordinate. Careful planning was needed to ensure that the microsite was up and running and that every office had received its supply of fortune cookies in time before the launch on 12 January 2010. In all, 20,000 cookies were created – twenty of which had the winning lucky numbers – and distributed in 51 offices across 13 countries.
The idea for the campaign was born between Cisco and Datacraft with two Singapore-based creative agencies Band (marketing) and React (web) in charge of the actual execution. Banner ads on both Cisco and Datacraft’s websites and additional web content promoted the campaign.
Results
The response to the campaign was phenomenal as over 2,200 visitors checked in to take part in the quiz on the microsite.
The launch day saw over 1,000 visits alone – clocked by almost half the number of Datacraft employees in the region.
To date, there have been 4,500 quiz attempts from employees in both offices.
As the cookies each had their own unique number, it was easy to track uptake. In fact, they proved resoundingly successful as 90 per cent of web hits were driven by the offline campaign.
Feedback from employees was extremely positive with many commenting on the tastiness of the cookies and also the fun aspect of the game.
Furthermore, the campaign helped reinforce the messaging on the increased cooperation of the two companies in architectural solutions by driving traffic to the Case Study, Architectural Solutions and Services Synergy web pages.
The ‘find your fortune’ campaign was such a success that the two companies are now planning to roll out a second wave of activities to maintain the momentum.
Credits
Participating organisations: Cisco and Datacraft
Marketing agency: Band Pte Ltd (Singapore)
Web agency: React Pte Ltd (Singapore)
Cisco: Don Shelton, Jean Wong
Datacraft: Melvin Lim, Tng Szu Lin