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What do you call a boxer who gets beat up in a fight? A sore loser. (Alright, alright, it’s a clean joke.)
What do you call a creative idea whose marketing team uses it to build awareness and business in a striking new way? A winner – in this case, a Crystal Award winner.
Or you can call it the “Boxing Glove” box: the Baker Hughes LeakGuardTM Hydrocarbon Leak Detection and Mitigation Services package that started life as a direct mail idea and toted up even bigger results as a maverick marketing tool for tradeshow use. The winnah and new champeen of Crystal Awards Category 77: “Maverick Marketing.”
Finding and fixing the hydrocarbon leaks in refinery heat exchangers is a huge problem. They cost a huge amount of money. To fight this expensive trouble, Baker Petrolite created the branded LeakGuard program to deliver three big benefits: early leak detection; rapid ID of the leak source; and emergency mitigation of microbial growth. In other words, “Find Them Fast. Fix Them Fast.”
Brenda Bramhill, then-water treatment marketing manager, envisioned an offbeat marketing drive to surprise National Petrochemical and Refining Association (NPRA) attendees in Dallas. ‘Cause for the first time, NPRA would let sponsors purchase table-top display areas that could be operated during lunch and reception times. Petrolite had a whopping six hours over two days to get its message out – to create LeakGuard awareness and memorability.
Nobody can resist a big box. This big box has a boxing ring on the outside. It has a bright red Everlast™ boxing glove with the LeakGuard brand name, plus the tag line “Find Them Fast. Fight Them Fast,” on the inside. Plus it’s got your sell-them-don’t-just-tell-them program collateral (all theme-matching, thank you) and a call-to-action.
According to Bramhill, the Petrolite team handed out enough boxing glove boxes in the six hours time period so that “…people were lined up to get an opportunity to see what the excitement was all about, to experience the buzz for themselves.”
The Boxing Glove giveaway generated that buzz. When customers realized the symbolic nature of the glove and their problems with hydrocarbon leaks, they said this giveaway item was one of the most creative they’d ever seen. And Petrolite beat its going-in qualified lead goal by 100%.
Baker Petrolite Downstream Marketing Manager Scott Bieber emailed, “Thanks to Brenda and her team for bringing their ‘A game’ to the creation of this successful Baker Hughes promotional program!” The team included graphic artists Beth Ann Prete and Lucia Clark. Susan Bourgain and Haley Zerwas assisted with the direct mail part of the campaign. And Bieber was kind enough to mention my name too. I sure am proud to have had a part in this award-winner.
Look, more than 200 finalists brought their best to the 2010 AMA Houston Crystal Awards. There were more than 60 winners. The one I helped work on and bring to market – that’s the one I’m writing about. Thanks, Baker Petrolite and way to go. This one’s a knockout.
I just got back from the Permian Basin and the joint is jumpin’. Barbara and I traveled up to Denver on US 87 through Amarillo and back to Houston through eastern New Mexico to Fort Stockton, then I-10 homeward. I don’t think we drove from one horizon to another without seeing at least one workover under way, sometimes more. Probably isn’t a single truck-mounted rig or vac truck west of the Mississippi that’s available for new work.
At yesterday’s close, oil is $127 a barrel and gas is $11.70/MMBtu. Activity is up everywhere, from the Permian Basin of west Texas to the Barnett Shale of north central Texas and eastern New Mexico as well as in the dusty Panhandle and the Anadarko Basin of western Oklahoma. With so much money on the table, you’re looking at recompletions, infill drilling, installation of secondary recovery projects – and everything else that’ll squeeze more oil and gas out of existing reservoirs.
For energy-related brand-watchers, it’s a boom time. It’s no surprise to see the “bigs” like Schlumberger, Halliburton and Baker Hughes.
But, e.g., I ran into a long-time colleague at OTC: Donna Smith is now Director of Communications for Stallion® Oilfield Services. Having thereby raised my consciousness – and thanks to her efforts for the company – I must have spotted every orange-and-black Stallion logo-ed vehicle and field office from Centerville (outbound) to Ozona (inbound). Key® Energy Services is out there in strength. There are hundreds more contractors and subs out in the field right now and you can play a sort of drive-by brand bingo on the roads out west.
Reading the papers, you’ll recognize that everyone is unhappy with the cost of oil or – more critically – the price of a gallon of gas at the corner station. I’d ask you, as marketers, to think about our “situation” from several, quite different angles.
First, the economic impact of oil and gas prices is creating opportunities for companies (and their employees) nationwide. That’s an economic good…as well as a particularly fine time for strongly branded firms with long-established customer relationships.
Second, this in an excellent period in which you should be building on and communicating the positives of your energy business brand. Let your stakeholders know if you are, in fact, doing well – and why. You’ll be creating a foundation of good brand impressions for the down cycle if and when it comes.
Third – and this is a personal note – maybe once time soon some oil company executive will stand up and ask Dianne Feinstein, “Just what, Senator, is your problem with the concept of profit?”
That’s enough for one weekend. All the best for a great June!
