B2B • manufacturing, whitepaper
wienerberger
Overcoming the cost of compliance
MISSION:
We were tasked by wienerberger to deliver a B2B PR campaign that would help shift perception among architects, and reframe their belief that manufacturers are a commodity supplier. Instead, we wanted to establish the brand as a premium provider of high quality building products, and a trusted industry partner.
By designing a thought-provoking whitepaper campaign, we set out to establish wienerberger as an authoritative voice on key industry issues affecting this target customer. Our mission was to uncover the real-world cost of compliance amid an evolving regulatory landscape, to authentically demonstrate how wienerberger was supporting architects to overcome their day-to-day challenges.
PR Approach:
Working with a third-party research company, who specialised in the built environment, we delivered a survey that was supported by in-depth interviews with independent industry experts, to deepen our understanding of the financial, professional, creative and reputational concerns around compliance.
This research uncovered a number of headline statistics, including how architects now spend on average an additional four hours each week verifying product information - costing UK practices around £16,700 per employee annually - while more than half of those surveyed said they don’t fully trust manufacturers’ technical data.
In response to these findings, we developed a whitepaper on behalf of wienerberger, calling for greater transparency of product information, and industry-wide adoption of independent product assessments, to help ease the burden of compliance for architects. This created a natural opportunity to promote the manufacturer’s products and services, which were designed to improve efficiencies and overcome the challenges raised.
We worked in close partnership with wienerberger’s in-house marketing team to manage the production, delivery and launch of the paper over a six-month period - including conducting in-depth interviews with practitioners, sourcing expert commentary, managing third-party partners and providing full copywriting and press office support.
Results:
Since its release, the whitepaper has had over 1,300 downloads to date - exceeding the client’s KPI by 425% - and has generated 70% high quality sales leads from the target demographic.
The paper also garnered interest from trade media, and was featured in top tier titles including RIBA Journal, Building Design, Specification Online and Architects’ Datafile with a combined circulation of more than 290,ooo readers.
Following the success of the campaign, the whitepaper continues to provide us with rich evergreen content, and we have been briefed to roll out additional PR activity to highlight the challenges faced by architects today - further cementing wienerberger’s position as a trusted and authoritative voice at the forefront of this important industry conversation.
