Micro Focus won – and won big – at two marketing awards ceremonies last week.
The annual B2B awards in London were themed ‘Are you a B2B Rockstar?’ and Micro Focus responded with a chart-topping campaign.
The B2B Awards salute the world’s best design, advertising, graphic design and marketing and other headline acts included Oracle, Vodafone and Tata Communications.
Comedian Josh Widdicombe compered a fun evening, but winning awards in fields as competitive as these is no laughing matter. So we were pleased – and very proud – to prove our rock star credentials by blowing our competitors off stage in the headline category.
Anyone visiting our Newbury HQ can’t fail to spot Kiruba the Asian elephant performing her party trick in the atrium and if she threw her weight behind our efforts to win a prize it worked, ‘cause we nailed the big one….
… drum roll …
That’s right, folks – our mainframe solution ‘elephant’ campaign (scooped Grand Prix 2013 Award for ‘Best B2B Marketing Campaign of the Year’, ‘Best Use of Creative’ and was runner-up for ‘Best Product Launch’. As Kiruba herself would say – that’s quite a pile.
The campaign, developed by partner creative agency True, used a ‘balletic elephant’ as an easily-understood metaphor to illustrate how Micro Focus solutions can introduce new agility to the mainframe, an IT resource widely regarded as old and inflexible.
Kate ‘rock chick’ Nichols, Global Marketing Manager for the Mainframe solution at the time of the launch, said “The ‘elephant’ campaign added great visual impact to the launch. The creative and messaging provided exactly the right integrated approach and it successfully re-established brand awareness globally while driving the all-important sales pipeline.” It also kicked ass, she didn’t say.
And for an encore…
Meanwhile, over at the Inspire 2013 awards being held the same evening in Basingstoke, Purple – another Micro Focus marketing partner agency – were also winning ‘Marketing Campaign of the Year’ award. This time it was for the Borland ‘Silk Performer Door Opener’, known internally as the helicopter campaign, which has already identified and booked many sales opportunities.
As Borland marketing programs manager Christina Langan said, “Global campaigns are never easy to execute but the proposition was strong enough to generate plenty of pipeline and major ROI. We were pleased with the enthusiasm with which Micro Focus offices around the world got behind this high-flying campaign”.
So it’s high-fives all round to our agency partners, but respect is also due to the marketing program managers who kept all that out-there creativity completely aligned with the channels our customers use and the messages they want to hear. Because as any tour manager will tell you, keeping the talent in order, on stage – and away from the rider – at the right time is never easy, so Kate Nichols and Christina Langan deserve the big (metaphorical) bouquets we’re giving them here.
Thank you Newbury – you’ve been a wonderful audience….
