How Mower rebranded around a strategy of ‘making fierce friends’
Mower won at The Drum Awards for B2B 2022 in the Best B2B Agency Promotion awards for its rebrand campaign. Here's how its big swing caught the judges’ eye.
The Mower rebrand proves that it pays to focus on shared humanity, even (or especially) in B2B
In the B2B world, differentiation is everything. Whether that’s in terms of the products and services on offer or something more fundamental, the need to stand out among the crowd is paramount.
Advertisement
The brief
In the wake of the pandemic, many of the threads of everyday human connection were severed. As people shook the rust off their socializing and communications efforts, there was a danger that we would not return to the level of intensity around human connections that we once enjoyed in the marketing world.
As a result, Mower’s challenge was to differentiate itself as an agency uniquely positioned to harness the superior strength of emotional connections and to help clients understand that this lack of humanity could be standing in the way of their business goals. Additionally, the team at Mower wanted to wean the industry off a disproportionate dependence on analytics alone.
Advertisement
The idea
The team at Mower believes that for brands to be relevant in today’s world, those human relationships matter. As a result, it doubled down on a strategy it calls Brand as Friend in order to make that connection its key point of differentiation. To do that, it completely redesigned its website, filling it with conversational language, light-hearted jokes, and non-biased wisdom such as you'd get from a close companion. It also re-wrote 100+ case studies to sound more like prospective clients were sitting down with someone over coffee.
More than that, it also designed an emotive brand anthem kicking off an integrated program of programmatic ABM, extensive PR and Public Speaking, and a social strategy highlighting its employees, insights, work, and community efforts.
The results
On mower.com, engagement from visitors improved dramatically with a 50% increase in average session duration and 14% decrease in bounce rate YOY. the previous year).
On the business front, Mower added 50+ new accounts, including several substantial wins such as Northwest Bank, International Truck, LG Electronics, Avangrid and 84.51 (Kroger). Perhaps most importantly of all existing client retention improved 11% year-on-year, with net income being the strongest in the last seven years. It goes to show that, in B2B as in life, it pays to focus on shared humanity and empathy.
This campaign was a winner at The Drum B2B Awards 2022. The full list of winners can be found here.
The Drum Awards for Marketing are currently open for entry. Find out how you can enter now.