FMBE Awards 2023: Evolving Brand Relationship (Field Marketing)

GOLD REL Field Marketing – Weetabix

The premise behind this special award category might have been written for Weetabix, the most consistently successful brand at FMBE since 2019 and they duly won with many reminders of their past achievements alongside the latest update for the past year – an update that had already proved strong enough to carry off the Field Sales Team of the Year Gold prize.

The team was able to show contractual growth, reappointment and multiple awards for recognition as a leading supplier from Weetabix. The team hits grocery, wholesale and convenience.

Sales across time also showed the progress made alongside the evolving uptick in responsibility.

FY22 (Oct 21 – Sept 22) delivered 28% uplift at £6.65m v FY19 (Oct 18 – Sept 19) at £5.47m.  FY23 (Oct 22 – Sept 23) continuing the trajectory already delivering £6.1m with projected Y on Y growth of 10% to £7.3m.

This detailed entry with excellent appendices supporting the main entry document was endorsed top down by Weetabix.

Sally Abbott – Managing Director Weetabix stated: “REL have become an ever more important part of our business, ensuring we maximize the effectiveness of our presence in store. They care about and act like our Brands are their own, with a long-term approach and a win-win philosophy that helps them gain more traction in store.  A highly valued and seamless partner within the Weetabix One Team. 

SILVER Cosine – BT Sport/ TNT Sports

Tenacity, imagination and sales determination has made Cosine the consistent factor across 10 years of fluctuating opportunities in which brand, product and service has moved and adapted. The team started in 2012 with the recruitment of 45 salespeople to promote the BT proposition to 26,000 independent pubs identified as sales opportunities by the agency.

The entry charted the challenges along the way, focusing on recent years, before showing why, when the rebrand to TNT came about, Cosine and their active team, were vital enablers.

An excellent appendix to the main entry evidenced that here is a team with an impressive upwards trajectory in terms of sales per day as well as quoting one of the most comprehensive and convincing testimonials from Abi Browne, senior commercial manager, TNT Sports:

“The long-standing partnership between Cosine and TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport) is absolutely integral to the running of the Commercial Premises business, having gone from strength to strength for a decade. With both a sales and support function in place, the team work tirelessly to drive the market share forward and provide an exceptional customer service for TNT Sports customers… The sales team have improved on their performance YoY since the team launched, demonstrating an ambitious, ‘can do’ attitude. The foundation to this success is the extensive data analysis conduct by the account management team around performance and the market climate, with the wider sales function then using this to exercise a rigorous and creative approach towards driving market growth. The ambition for growth and collaborative attitudes of the team haven’t wavered over time, and the team remain forward-focused in their mindset as we progress into a new era as TNT Sports. 

 Aligned to this brand change, the newest piece of work Cosine have helped with has been to support the business’s rebrand efforts, which utilised some of the regular support team agents; through the summer of 2023 BT Sport has become TNT Sports, and the Cosine team have supported a branding swap out over an eight-week period alongside the start of the new sporting season. A 65x person strong team delivered an in-person visit to 17,000 venues across UK&NI. Having placed BT Sport branding into these venues across several years, the task of changing this for new branding was integral in landing the TNT Sports brand into the market and ensuring a smooth transition, so Cosine’s efforts underpinned the success of this. This has been an enormous task, both logistically and also from a people perspective, whereby recruiting the right individuals to act as brand ambassadors has been key. The customer feedback from this programme is fantastic, with direct named references from customers about the Cosine agents that came to visit. Through the exceptional service that Cosine have provided, TNT Sports has launched into the hospitality market and solidified our customer relationships for long-term business success. 

 Finally, prior to the rebrand the hospitality industry has faced a wide array of challenges over the past three years, including Covid and soaring energy costs, and the Cosine team has remained resilient and accepting of the facing these challenges at all points. They’ve worked as a strategic partner alongside the ever-changing business requirements that stemmed from these headwinds, which their constant input of on-the-ground market insight largely informed/informs, and proactively collaborate with the TNT Sports team to achieve top results and support hospitality customers to maximise their return on a TNT Sports subscription. One example of this is their input into the marketing materials that TNT Sports produces for customers, which directly feedback from customer requests made in field sales calls and support squad visits. Their feedback continues to strengthen our market offering, and because of this I know that our Cosine colleagues are widely recognised internally as an extension of our core TNT team.” 

 BRONZE Tactical Solutions – Mars Wrigley Confectionery

The growth of the relationship between brand and agency has been ongoing since some small pieces of tactical work in 2018.

This entry impressed on many levels, showing how great the trust is between agency and brand.

As with the gold and silver winners the summary of the success story was delivered by testimonial, in this case a video testimonial from Claire Toyne, Agency and Strategy Field Sales Head for the brand who praised Tactical Solutions for regularly using data and insight to push back against the brand’s strategy to bring about valuable changes. Toyne said that the relationship is bolstered by ‘how they review and criticise what we do”, and that this had been especially beneficial in overcoming the sales landscape challenges of Covid.

Comprehensive (confidential) data on Availability and ROI showed the value of this deep trust and responsibility.