BASF IT Services have key strengths in the provision of successful IT solutions for the Process Industry, managed infrastructure services and business process outsourcing. This expertise is based on years of experience in providing solutions to the world’s leading chemical company, BASF. Today, BASF IT Services operates one of the world’s largest networks and around 1,000 servers for some 50,000 users in more than 250 locations in Europe.

Proposition Development
Anderson Baillie was approached by BASF IT Services early in 2003 to manage the marketing requirements for their launch into the European Process Industry market space. At this point they were unclear of their market differential and what their proposition was into the Process Industry.

Anderson Baillie initially undertook a series of consultancy workshops in order to ensure the accuracy of the go-to market strategy and then commissioned independent research by Benchmark Research into the top 100 European process organisations to identify the key factors affecting the industry. This then led to the development of the BASF IT Services core proposition from which all selling and marketing messages would then be developed. Each of the target business sectors had to be considered, the proposition and marketing strategy refined. Each of the targets required further investigation through workshops and research to identify key ‘issues and solutions’ from this the campaign and key account planning strategy was developed.

This proposition was not to stay in the realms of marketing messages; it had to go forward and be adopted in sales engagement approaches, solution selling and consultancy contacts. Above all they need to sound ‘fresh’ in the world of software integration.

Anderson Baillie developed;

• Go to market strategy
• Sales engagement strategy
• Generation of key market positioning statements
• Specialised campaign market research conducted
• Integrated campaign utilising both on and off-line communications.

Integrated Marketing
The integrated campaign focussed on driving BASF IT Services target customers to register and download critical results from a market research study which formed the basis of the lead generation programme. The web portal that contained this information introduced the BASF IT Services revised brand and new core market offering – The Asset Centric Solution that had been identified through the previous workshops. Both on and off-line mediums were utilised in order to ensure maximum awareness of the new brand, target contacts at a senior management level were then also communicated with via a bespoke direct mail campaign and intelligent telemarketing follow up – the weight of the compelling argument being founded on the core message, its refinement by sector and more importantly, its translation by the issues of the given contact. This meant that the message had real meaning to their problems not simple marketing hype.

Going forward
Anderson Baillie continue to develop issue based marketing programmes, focussed around the different audience groups within the Process Industry. This ensures that BASF are talking about specific business issues relevant to the individuals within their target audience group.

Anderson Baillie was awarded the business because of the breadth of the capability, from strategic conception as well as direction and creativity, through to planning and their ability to manage the whole project through to timely execution and evaluation.

Paul Terry, Strategic Marketing Manager at BASF IT Services commented,

“Anderson Baillie’s strong strategic base meant that we were confident they could help us generate successful campaign messaging for the launch. Coupled with their project management skills ensuring that the launch was delivered to the market on time and within budget, they have generated some excellent leads”.