HP
When I walked in, Gyro was sending postcards to a handful of local printers. When I left two years later, the account was feeding all parts of Gyro’s global network. Initially, progress was slow; customers were at completely different stages of development, clients were spread across the world, and anything vaguely creative was treated with suspicion.
Trust developed through a solid understanding of the complex landscape of the account, thorough testing and sheer hard creative labour. And, crucially, by improving the ability to identify opportunities before clients started seeing problems. This was challenged by the fact each piece had to be translated into 27 languages.
The creative quality rose, as did profitability, to over 40%. Billings soon multiplied, and the trajectory was set. All we needed was to stay nimble, keep up the momentum, and our seat at the global HP table was secure.
Challenge: Traditional litho printers don’t know the benefits of moving their shorter runs to digital.
Insight: Because our prospects can’t realise a profit on short runs, they turn work away.
Solution: Show exactly how much could be made on rejected quote requests if they had an HP Indigo Press.
Challenge: To get businesses to upgrade to a new HP printer by offering a trade-in promotion on their old printer.
Insight: Printers, no matter how good they are, age. As with all things that age, even printers slow down and become unreliable.
Solution: What happens to your old printer when you replace it? We decided to set up the HP Lodge, a retirement home for old printers.
Challenge: As a continuation of ‘The Digital Proof’, we needed to further sell the financial benefits of digital printing.
Insight: Printers deal with numbers, costing potential jobs in terms of profit and loss at a glance.
Solution: We demonstrated the profit margins that are possible by showing the exact value of each piece of the pack. I simply put the money in their hands.
Challenge: How can we help businesses upgrade to a new printer when they don’t know what they’re looking for?
Insight: A printer can been seen as just a tool. Most people don’t know if they have the right one for their needs.
Solution: We decided to act as ‘Matchmakers’ for businesses and printers by sending out a dating pack to help people find their perfect match.
Challenge: The benefits of Digital printing have been around for some time, however many “analogue” printers still haven’t grasped them.
Insight: These guys know quite a lot about digital printing, but remain stubbornly unconvinced the time is right to invest in a digital press.
Solution: We deliver the proof straight into their hands by using the print run of the mailer itself as evidence. A web application then allows for a much more detailed interrogation of the numbers, specific to different needs.
Challenge: To promote HP Care Pack services to protect and cover your printer.
Insight: In today’s business climate, downtime in your printing and imaging fleet can mean a scary loss in productivity and revenue.
Solution: Tricky one this – we needed to reinforce that HP printers won’t breakdown, while selling a product in case they did. We decided to take printer problems to
the absolute hyperbole, and beyond, but first we had to get past the actuaries.
