FMBE Awards 2023: Special Award: Evolving Brand Relationship (Brand Experience)
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GOLD Fizz Experience – Costco
Entrants can look back as far as you like to the origins of your relationship, but the focus of the paper should focus on landmark or highlights 2019-2023.
This year’s special award was one that meant a lot to FMBE. It is our belief that our awards process has been a positive catalyst as longer term strategic relationships have prospered. There has been no bigger challenge to consistency than Covid. To win this award entrants would have to show that their agency-client relationship was prospering before Covid and has strengthened since.
In the case of Fizz and Costco a relationship now dating back 30 years is truly seamless and it was clear that recent years had seen the relationship escalate after the businesses emerged through Covid together.
The entry evidenced how strides taken by Fizz, including ISO certification, have led to greater levels of responsibility in a relationship that was presented to our judges in a data confidential paper.
SILVER Circle – Costa
Since starting out from small beginnings in 2018 together, Circle and Costa have become one of the most prolific and successful partnerships in experiential marketing.
The pairing didn’t just survive Covid they thrived against the challenges. They were big winners at FMBE 2020 and the most nominated agency/brand team in brand experience this year.
Circle has helped Costa become an experience led brand.
In the entry, Charlie Harper, Brand Manager- Experiential, Costa Coffee commented: “It’s been an exciting journey working with Circle the past few years as we’ve developed and evolved our experiential channel at Costa. The Circle team are nothing short of heroes. Costa is a very complex business to bring to life in the field, whether figuring out how to get a Costa Express machine up and running in the middle of a festival site or working with our digital team to integrate physical free coffee QR codes into our loyalty app – every brief brings with it something new to work on. In our third live year working together, we’ve collectively met these challenges head on. Whether developing giant gaming units to bring our Costa Club gamification to life, curating bespoke line-ups for our diverse sponsorships or keeping our Costa Express iced machines running in 32-degree heat, we delivered some incredible consumer experiences in 2022. And of course, we as clients love to drop these complex and high-profile briefs for multiple platforms, with very little lead time. It’s a testament to the team that every Costa Coffee brief has been delivered, perfectly and on time, every time.”
BRONZE Meshh – Sky
This team had already won our Instore gold award. In keeping with many of the successful winners in this category, testimonial was used to show that the significance of Meshh’s support is fully appreciated and valued by Sky.
Matt Price, Retail Indirect and Commercial Partnerships Director at Sky: “In 2019, we aimed to gain insights into the effectiveness of our live event and experiential activations. Our goal was to understand how our marketing campaigns influenced consumer behaviour and develop a benchmarking and ROI system to demonstrate to our internal stakeholders. Meshh’s technology offered a lot of potential in that regard.
During the initial stages of our partnership with Meshh, its sensors were utilised in various activations and events. This included modular stands at exhibitions and pop-up activations at shopping centres throughout England. The Meshh sensors were also used to measure engagement at a promotional roadshow that has now become known as the ‘Sky Truck Tour’, which is still an active part of our marketing.
Seeing the potential of spatial analytics at pop-up retail events, we were eager to see how the technology could be used in a wider context to support our commercial team.
Starting with a proof of concept in 2021, Meshh was gradually deployed across our stores to measure in-store partnerships and evaluate store performance. Throughout that time, they continued to go above and beyond to improve the quality of outputs by building a bespoke reporting tool specifically for our needs.
During the second Covid19 induced lockdown, we made use of the time to plan how we would implement the trial and what shape it would take on the ground. The downtime also afforded us the opportunity for the Meshh team to install the sensors in the stores whilst they were closed. This meant that as soon as the stores could reopen, everything was in place, and both the Sky and Meshh teams were ready and good to go.
Our partnership with Meshh has been game-changing. The bespoke reporting tool it created has been incredibly versatile and informative for us. It has helped us better understand how Sky’s assets and locations relate to each other and how this impacts footfall in our stores. Additionally, these insights have been invaluable in understanding the impact of experiential marketing campaigns on the footfall in Sky’s retail, for example, the 2022 Sky Truck tour.
Through the insights Meshh has provided, we have been able to,
- Form an improved understanding of factors that may affect customer/visitor experiences.
- Enhance the efficiency of marketing campaigns that attract customers to stores, by using the insights gained from previous campaigns.
- Optimise staff scheduling and store opening times to improve the path to purchase.
- Prove ROI of commercial partnerships to internal stakeholders.
After such positive results and consistent quality from the Meshh team, signing a multi-year contract across the Sky estate has been an easy decision. With this expansion, we are eager to continue optimising store operations and marketing campaigns with the data Meshh provides.
We’re excited to see how our partnership will continue to develop! In recent years, Sky has greatly benefited from using Meshh’s technology. Which I believe is due to the strong partnership we have built. As we have continued to grow and venture into new spaces, Meshh has grown with us. They have continually shown a readiness to adapt to ensure we have the insights needed to make impactful decisions.”
