Belling (Part of Glen Dimplex Home Appliances)

The Client

Belling has been manufacturing and distributing domestic appliances in Britain for more than a century and is widely credited with kick-starting the mass market range cooking sector in the 1990s.  It sells its products via a network of independent and multiple retailers.

The brief

After a period of low NPD and investment the brand was keen to reclaim its market share. Belling asked The Right Agency to:

  • Deliver a fully integrated campaign to raise the profile of Belling ahead of peak ‘Range’ season
  • Launch Belling’s two new range cooker collections
  • Highlight Belling’s Made in Britain credentials and UK investment
  • Support Belling’s sales channels by driving interest via trade media and marketing activity

Kitchen roomset

What we did

This campaign had two key audiences – journalists who needed to be re-engaged with the Belling brand and the retailers Belling needed to stock its products.  As a result, we felt we needed a multi-layered campaign capable of delivering our key messages across different platforms.

We reviewed two years of range cooker coverage in trade media and found it was centred on product features rather than market forces and that post-Brexit uncertainty over UK manufacturing was creating retailer concern about rising prices and lowering of quality.

We planned an integrated, sustained six-month B2B campaign which included media relations, video content, a research report, an event, online and print advertising, social media activity, e-marketing, infographics and point-of-sale materials.

To create content unique to Belling that could be shared across multiple platforms, we conducted a survey of 2,000 range cooker owners to establish the sector’s new demographic and discover more about their motivations, the findings of which shaped a retailer engagement programme. Using this research, we created The Range Generation report which captured headlines by revealing a huge swing away from the traditionally older, affluent range cooker owners and the creation of ‘typologies’ to reveal the new range customer demographics. To drive visits to the Belling website, the report was ‘teased’ in the media and then made available via the Belling website, social media channels and via a key media title.  The downloads enabled data capture for email marketing.

To support the sales funnel, an integrated trade advertising and e-marketing campaign worked together with PR activity to support a retailer cashback campaign. This included newsletter insertions, e-shots and banner advertising in key titles ERT and KBBReview.

Results

The campaign achieved 57 pieces of print and online coverage across ten key media outlets (November-May 2017).  The insight delivered by The Range Generation report, made Belling the ‘go to’ brand for comment during peak season.  Belling achieved a share-of-voice 27% higher than its rival brands during peak sales season.  The Range Generation report was viewed more than 600 times via the partnership with Taylist media and delivered 91 new retailer leads.  The campaign also delivered 102 cashback redemptions in just three weeks, representing a sales value of more than £100k.

“The Right Agency is a genuine extension of our marketing department. They’ve worked hard to make sure they know our company and brands inside out and they’ve made it their business to understand our industry and marketplace. They ‘get’ our customers and they demonstrate this by devising clever campaigns that engage the retailers we need to reach. The team is talented, dedicated and make me feel well supported.”