Celebrate the industry’s best marketing campaigns

The event includes awards for direct marketing, advertising, PR, event, website, launch, agency and internal team, among others. The deadline for entries is 24 July. More information at www.cnplus.co.uk/bema

Last year concrete supplier Cemex won in an impressive five categories. These included Best Campaign over £25k and Best Product Launch for its Evolution self-compacting concrete and Best Marketing Campaign to encourage CSR for its sustainability work. It also won in the internal communications category for its ‘Think Fibres’ campaign to encourage more sales of fibre-reinforced concrete and marketing insight and planning for its overall strategy.

Its success was down to a relatively new marketing director, Marcus Halvang, and his team. His strategy was to focus clearly on measurable return on investment.

“We have a very structured approach to each project. We start with research and build on that. We prioritise the most important target and work out what the specific needs are for each stakeholder,” Mr Halvang says.

He also says a vital part of his team’s success was to remove words such as ‘strategy’, ‘branding’ and even ‘marketing’ when speaking to colleagues. “It is about translating it into a language that people can understand,” says Mr Halvang. There is also a firm focus on raising the profile and role of marketing in the company – but in a straightforward manner. 

“Talk instead about where revenue is coming from and where it can be increased… ‘Value’ is a great word to use in the boardroom, for example in talking about how the company can sustain value through acquisition and retention of customers,” he says.

Mr Halvang also says it’s important to look at what data you already have “There is often a lot of customer-related data in every company but it is often underused. It should be converted into insights… Marketers should also present insights like a management consultant would, by using data to back up those insights so they can say: ‘We know that…’ rather than: ‘We think’.”

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