R&B@OTC: Along with 78,000 Other People, We Came to See and Be Seen.

We forget. We all forget – and fast, too. When I wrote here about the 2008 Offshore Technology Conference, oil was $128/barrel. Today, after the close of this year’s OTC, the price is $97.30 – down from a high of $113 a month ago. In the middle, there have been ups and downs, spills and chills and drilling moratoria. Plus constant predictions of “the end of civilization as we know it” in terms of a bleaker, far more expensive energy future.

So why, in the face of so much negativism and angst, did more than 78,000 of us go to OTC 2011, generating another record-busting year? One reason is our recognition (at least as far as I can tell) that oil and gas aren’t the end of us; but rather, they’re Western civilization’s guarantor.

That’s a big word but no less true. Hydrocarbons not only fuel our present lives, they assure the quality and durability of what we have achieved financially and culturally.

This is not to say our industry doesn’t have its tin ears and big mouths. Transocean’s boneheaded safety bonus announcements a month ago are just one example of how to make an entire business segment look real bad.

OTC is energy – the thrilling buzz of making things happen, of participating. It only took me and Brian Bearden sitting together in the PSR Group booth for five minutes, getting this caricature drawn, to also draw a cheerful crowd of lookers…and sitting ducks for the PSR people working the booth. (Thanks and you’re welcome to the PSR gang!)

George Foster of Foster Marketing answered me this: “What’s the marketing value of exhibiting at the Offshore Technology Conference?”

Trade shows are the last bastion of building personal relationships in this digital age. The opportunity to reacquaint with clients and prospects from all over the world at OTC is  phenomenal. Not only the relationship-building, but to know that making one sale pays for the show makes OTC well worth the expense.

I have pushed the same query to other colleagues, veterans of working in or visiting clients at this year’s OTC. When I get more answers, I’ll post them and let you know. Meanwhile, newly headlined Barrett-Wehlmann-Proctor principal Jim Proctor splits being seen five ways:

From the optimist’s perspective, it’s keeping your brand relevant in the context of the global industry’s biggest event of the year.

From the pessimist’s point of view, it’s not being conspicuous by your absence.

For the salesperson: “I can see 40 customers in a day, not get on a plane and it only costs $1.7 million.”

For the marketer, it’s accumulating those pesky exhibitor points and improving location – year after year.

And from the CFO’s perspective: “What else are we going to do with all these profits?”

Thank you to Tuesday’s wingman Bearden, principal of web design consultancy Upstream Marketing. Thanks to Signalwrite clients here and abroad, and to everyone who made a great OTC 2011 possible…nothing cartoonish about any of ‘em but great colleagues all.

Bowling the Brand: CORROSION 2011 a Just-Right Re-Launching Pad for MATCOR.

Say you held a rebranding and everybody came? Week before last, MATCOR President and CEO Jeff Stello brought his whole gang to the NACE exposition in Houston.

To name just a few, Eileen Jacob and John Rothermel, Ted Huck and Carlos Fuentes came down from Doylestown-Pee-Ay, maybe the first time they’d been warm all winter. Helen Morgan came over from Mobile. Brian Biek and Rebecca Harding were at the convention center from the Houston office – and Trevor Eade, the company’s new Director of Marketing and Communications.

They brought the new MATCOR brand with them.

One of the marketing gamebook’s best plays is using a big tradeshow to create extra thrills about a client’s brand – past posts have highlighted Baker Hughes and Wood Group promos, for example.

Even though MATCOR has been creating cathodic protection products for more than 35 years, it has been readying itself for a bigger role, a leap into the comprehensive design and engineering of cathodic protection and corrosion prevention systems and the supporting services that are important today for a global company, with clients worldwide.

“Everybody at NACE” saw the new MATCOR…the total rebranded look. Being close to the company’s rebranding program reminds me that MATCOR is in the business of systemic cathodic protection and that frequently involves galvanic anodes.

In MATCOR’s case, “galvanic” means more than a direct current of electricity.

So, certainly, there was brand-new from top to bottom, from dramatic logo to purple color scheme to QR codes to bowling night. There was new literature, new (and memorable) handouts, a new corporate theme, a new client support program, a new Web 2.0 site.

The entire MATCOR team seemed to be powering some electric effect, as in intensely exciting. The week-long company presence was vivid and memorable and filled with personally powered interactions.

Stello clearly enjoyed the new excitement…but I don’t think he was distracted by it. He told me, “At the end of the day, we still have to execute, we still have to get the job done for every client on time and on budget.”

No matter how fast the company grows, keeping everybody’s eyes on the integrity part is still the secret to a 300 game.

MATCOR is a great Signalwrite client. Thanks to Jeff Stello and Trevor Eade for inviting me to participate in the adventure. All photos courtesy of Studio Holloman.

The Client

Grant Johnston, Wood Group Gas Turbine Services, at WINDPOWER 2008.

Wind Power

Marketing and advertising folks presume it is self-evident that marketing is essential to organic growth. That’s not a universal truth, or even a revealed one, as far as many engineering and sales professionals are concerned. But if it’s true, some people at Wood Group Gas Turbine Services are getting it right, IMO.

I did attend WINDPOWER 2008 last week to visit what is now Renewable Energy Services – a new business unit for client GTS. This part of the global energy services company maintains and repairs all types of turbines and generators, from aviation engines (smaller) to heavy industrial units (much, much larger). And effective power generation from the wind depends on…turbines and generators. So Renewable Energy Resources is taking its extensive MRO experience into the wind energy sector.

Prism Design created a booth and handout materials specifically for this new unit, and for this trade show. I’m glad to have participated in it all – particularly since this was another opportunity to adapt the KEEP ON TURNING brand I helped GTS create and maintain over the past two years.

It has also meant that the company can market its brand (as well as its services) much more strongly to an up-and-coming industry sector, like wind energy.

Now, recall what we said here about brand consistency? It’s a good idea (and a good return on investment) to build on elements that are already in the client’s brand vocabulary.

The branding challenges for GTS at WINDPOWER 2008 were graphic – all wind turbine pictures look the same. Susan Reeves, Terry Teutsch and Stacy Allen turned what could have been an ordinary photo into a landscape artfully fitted to the 20-foot-long booth space.

Take a close look at the top photo – a lot of art went into that horizon line. It stretches from one end of the booth to the other and reinforces the KEEP ON TURNING line beautifully.

By using the GTS brand elements in the handout materials, and ensuring that everyone who staffed the booth was fitted out with the distinctive Wood Group “gold” long-sleeve shirt, this new Renewable Energy Services group accomplished two marketing goals.

First, it picked up a bit of a…tailwind…from the Offshore Technology Conference, where Wood Group had a strong presence. Second, it introduced its targeted services to the wind energy market in a targeted – and branded – way. Think of this, then, as brand power.

The real compliment goes to the client, for recognizing what needed to happen at WINDPOWER 2008.

PS: Susan suggested I label this post “Show Turn Two” because it’s a look at another Wood Group Gas Turbine Services booth effect. Cute headline fer shure. But Signalwriter headlines are two words long and I try to stay consistent – even if I don’t always achieve the ideal.

Mighty Wind

Using the major US political parties as examples (good or bad), the “energy industry” is a big tent. We no sooner put OTC.08 behind us than Houston throws the WINDPOWER 2008 conference and exhibition, 1-4 June.

WINDPOWER 2008 includes 300 speakers, 150 poster presentations and more than 50 sessions on leading wind energy topics. The exhibition will be an “impressive display from over 750 of the leading companies from all facets of the wind energy industry.” The list of exhibitors demonstrates what I mean.

There’s widespread disdain for ethanol and its subsidies (see some of that attitude here). But the general sense is that wind power is the fastest growing alternative energy segment available to us. The US Energy Department, in cooperation with “industry,” suggests that wind energy could generate 20% of US electricity by 2030 – a jump from about 1% today.

Even among traditional players in the hydrocarbon biz, there’s horsepower behind wind power. BP and GE are a couple of WINDPOWER 2008’s “Tera-Watt Sponsors,” though Sam Hopkins of Energy & Capital newsletter fame said recently Shell has pulled out of one offshore wind farm project. Still, I hope you won’t tell me you’ve missed the print campaigns from companies like Suzlon in The Economist, or GE’s imaginative wind turbine commercials. (And really, DON’T tell me you missed the GE “Vikings” TV spot.)

Even the last “briefing breakfast” of OTC that I attended, thanks to the UK Trade & Investment team, offered a good look at the potentiality of wind power as a supplemental resource – though speakers kept trying to sneak in hydro-dynamic power, it’s an offshore conference after all. Still, if you can engineer and maintain a monster FPSO offshore Nigeria, you can sure do the same for a wind farm offshore Connecticut or Denmark (like today’s post photo).

The event offers more opportunities for marketers. There are beaucoup large and small players who are in wind energy for good, solid business reasons as well as the chance to participate in greener initiatives. And if the Feds are right, we’re looking at 75,000 new and bigger wind turbines, a hell of an infrastructure jump. That’s a lot of “green collar” jobs added to our economy.

WINDPOWER 2008 won’t be as gimongous as OTC but I don’t want to miss it. Its projections mean not only more advertising – from retail (as described here, e.g.) to business-to-business.

It means more marketing: Giving customers solid “reasons to buy,” not just hot air.

Show Turn

To keep building the brand, keep your brand look consistent: thus sayeth the rule. So when you want something different in the way of a tradeshow handout, you build on elements that already exist in a client’s brand look and architecture.

Wood Group Gas Turbine Services has just such a new brand look, recently instituted under the guidance of its managers.

Prism Design and I share the concept creation and execution honors. It began with a new theme line, KEEP ON TURNING, and has continued with a clean, crisp design, four colored versions of the planet Earth, and the use of “global” photographs which portray the worldwide extent of Gas Turbine Services’ business.

The new print look is consistent with the overall Wood Group branding strategy while reinforcing customer benefits in a marketscape that spans so broad a category as “rotating equipment.” That’s turbines for the less well informed. On the Prism side, design honors go to Susan Reeves, Terry Teutsch, Stacy Allen and Miss Anne Stovall. It is applied initially to a new brochure, datasheets and advertising.

Our clients then challenged us to come up with something different in the way of a handout, a theoretically simplified version of the larger suite of materials. Along the way, Teutsch (Prism’s design director) came up with…well, a turn on the brand’s KEEP ON TURNING foundation: the idea we call “Paper Globe.”

Forgive my enthusiasm – it’s turned out very well indeed. The three-dimensionalized realization (whew!) of the brand concept is specially printed and die-cut so it fits into an engineer’s shirt pocket. It perfectly mirrors the Gas Turbine Services brand look, delivers critical information in an unforgettable fashion, and serves as a display piece as well.

The design and the execution are the results of a lot of tradeshow experience: an exhibition piece should transcend the informational and achieve the memorable. In addition to “continuing the campaign,” Wood Group Gas Turbine Services’ Paper Globe is more than a show turn – it’s a show stopper (if I say so myself).

Thanks to Wood Group Gas Turbine Services for
the opportunity to produce such outstanding work.