Helping a B2B tech disruptor take on IBM

The challenge we helped to solve:

Shake up the IBM software support market, and make third party IBM support experts, Origina, famous for their unique and disruptive offering

What we delivered:

Series of humorous and cut-through brand building videos highlighting Origina’s USPs, campaign landing page and complementary suite of content

The difference we made:

“We have already doubled our traffic to the site, and tripled our returning visitors to the site.” - Sinead Geraghty, Marketing Director, Origina

The brief

A B2B example of David vs Goliath challenge

Many companies around the world run on IBM software. When it comes to software support, many CIOs and SAMs (Software Asset Managers) of these companies also choose IBM by default. It’s seen as the safe option. IBM built the systems therefore IBM should service them. It just makes sense to personas who are typically risk-averse by nature. This is the ‘David vs Goliath’ challenge facing Origina, the world's leading, independent, third party IBM software support specialists. Origina have an amazing business model, with many unique and strong USPs. Most of all, they offer the market a choice. This wasn’t just a brand awareness problem. Awareness of the third party market option (with Origina as the only credible players) was also a problem. The challenge was to disrupt the market, get Origina’s message heard, and introduce more personality into their brand. And do it all on a limited budget.

The solution - Creative strategy

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM

We needed to highlight just how manipulative the IBM monopoly stranglehold of the software support market was, so we created a series of 6 humorous campaign videos. Each video demonstrates an Origina USP message.

Cost savings averaging 60%
Flexible contracts (compared to 3-5 year long fixed contracts)
Quicker access to experienced and dedicated engineers
No forced upgrades to new versions
Lifetime support for legacy applications
Clear and transparent contracts (compared to complex IBM legalese)

There are so many compelling reasons to move your IBM software support to Origina. Indeed upon listing the USPs and reading them back aloud, the creative team in Squaredot started laughing - such was one-sided nature to this argument. It sounded too good to be true, but true it most certainly was. This proved a eureka moment as we realised that we would have to tell a farce simply to tell the truth. And so the creative strategy and social media-friendly tone and personality was locked down.

The solution - Target persona research

Shaking up a risk averse audience

CIOs and SAMs (Software Asset Managers) are the primary audience. Risk-averse by nature, we wanted to highlight uncomfortable gaps in their due diligence (if they hadn’t researched the third party market) by striking a cord where it hurts - the fear of failure. It was important for our targets to understand that their colleagues & bosses could also be watching too. Nothing ramps up the ‘fear’ more than heat from just over your shoulder in a modern open plan office. As a result, we wanted to broaden the appeal - “Know anyone in IT? Pass this on and tell them #DontBeThatGuy”. So we used a universally understood analogy to communicate Origina’s brand values, simplified the messaging so anybody would get it without any hard thinking, and injected humour to encourage engagement and social sharing.

Origina_web_Campaign-assets_08

The solution - Campaign assets

#DontBeThatGuy

The primary goal of the campaign is to build brand awareness through an engaging social media video series. While B2B content typically has a dry, serious and dull reputation lacking emotion, we wanted to go in the opposite direction to stand out, using a lighter touch and a sense of humour. While the video series was set in Ireland to reflect Origina’s roots, they have an international reach so it was important to use an American voiceover, the home of IBM, as the voice of reason. We housed all videos in a landing page, which also made blogs, articles, guides, case studies, savings enquiries and other value-added content assets available to the target audience.

The results

Helping Origina get famous

The video series proved popular on social channels from the moment we launched the first video in the series in April 2019. Promoted over the summer months with a media budget of under €20k, there were over 500,000 full length video views on social channels leading to a spike of website visits. The power of brand building campaigns is the long term effect and site visits have continued to rise with an over 300% increase in returning visitors. The campaign was also a Best B2B Campaign finalist in the 2019 Spider Awards.

“We wanted a brand building campaign that would put us on the map, give the brand a warm personality, and get people talking about us. This campaign has achieved this and more. We have had an increase in conversations from events, people are asking us more educated questions, they are warmer leads! We have already doubled our overall traffic and tripled our returning visitors to the site.”

Sinead Geraghty

Marketing Director, Origina