Feature: B2B marketing: Yell.com B2B campaign is ‘knock-out success’

Media planners are a difficult audience to win over, but Yell.com, the online business search and advertising site, overcame their scepticism through a creative communications campaign. The Brawl in the Hall, created by Chemistry Communications, went on to position the website’s ad offering front of mind – and to win the Grand Prix and the title of best business-to-business campaign at last month’s ISP Awards.

Yell.com built its brand on advertising proposition that was relevant to small, locally based businesses. Historically, it had not targeted high-spending national advertisers because its portfolio had not previously included pay per click, which is the model of choice for these advertisers and their agencies.

The combined spend of media agencies recommending pay per click and online display advertising was more than £200 million in 2005, with 80 agencies responsible for 80 per cent of this spend. But, of this amount, less than £600,000 was being spent with Yell.com.

Therefore, Yell.com introduced two new products: pay per click and banners, bought on a cost per thousand, both with a national reach that would appeal to advertisers. The next step was to raise awareness of the new media opportunities among planners at the top 50 online media agencies who are responsible for planning 80 per cent of the online spend. The objective was to prepare the way for more in-depth one-on-one contact with Yell.com sales people and ultimately get Yell.com onto agency media plans.

Chemistry identified its target audience as being “savvy, sharp, smart, confident and utterly competitive” and “hedonistic with a youthful outlook on life”. They are typically sceptical of grand claims by media and require hard evidence to be persuaded that new untested opportunities will work. Research showed that that audience associated Yell.com too much with Yellow Pages with its relevance to regional smaller businesses.

The agency came up with The Brawl in the Hall, using a boxing theme to reflect the insight that Yell.com has a high conversion, or “hit”, rate compared to other search engines – 53 per cent of those who contact an advertiser through Yell.com go on to make a purchase. This turned into the “search for media’s biggest hitter”.

The campaign was launched with direct mail to key media planners across London, consisting of boxing gloves and a punchbag, ensuring that the message was being communicated offline. Follow-up emails drove traffic to a campaign website, where planners could access a media toolkit and register for the centrepiece event, the Brawl in the Hall party. This event also gave Yell.com permission to build relationships and seed product messages through the pre- and post-party communications, which included the use of social networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook.

The party, which was organised with events company Ball Associates, was held at top London club Pacha, where the planners nominated themselves to “fight” other agency champions in a virtual boxing context using Nintendo Wiis for the title of “media’s biggest hitter”. A major draw for the event was the attendance of former heavyweight champion of the world, Nigel Benn. As well as the £1,000 prize and the prestige, the winner could challenge Benn to two rounds on the Wii (with the world champion boxer achieving knock-out in the second round).

Attendance at the event was above target, and the responses to the communications, measured in click-through rates and open rates, were higher than average for B2B communications.

Steve Armstrong, account director at Chemistry, who headed the campaign with creative director Mike Cavers, said: “The Brawl in the Hall was a knockout success. We smashed the client’s targets and, in doing so, trumped every B2B benchmark going.

“The campaign was totally single-minded in its objective and every element was strong, from the development of rich insights and fantastic targeting to insightful, integrated communications. “We took a brand that had no heritage of marketing to media planners – an audience who were highly sceptical about their claims – and created a total reappraisal of the Yell.com brand.

“All this meant that not only did our audience engage with the brand via our communications, they experienced it first hand via the event, which was crucial to the success. It’s this perfect storm of engagement and experience that sets the campaign apart and has turned it into the smash hit that it is.”

The campaign also won the title of best use of on- and offline media at the ISP Awards. As with all the Gold award winners, The Brawl in the Hall is now due to be entered in the IMC European Awards and the international Globes awards.

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