2021 Silver Best B2B

Agency: Agency Inc

Client: Exel Composites

Campaign Name: For forward thinkers, by forward thinkers

Campaign Overview

Exel Composites is the world's biggest fibreglass composite brand - but it had spent 60 years under the radar.

Revamping the brand as a global materials leader, without losing unique personality and core values, was the task.

Strategy

As the world's largest composites brand, Exel Composites' fiberglass solutions are used in everything from trains to turbines.

But it presented itself as a humble engineering partner, and evolving that perception was crucial.

It was time to reposition Exel as a pioneering global player.

In a space dominated by traditional building materials (steel and plastics), composites comprised just 0.5% of the market.

One of the brief's key challenges was communicating composite manufacturing techniques to a largely uneducated audience.

Engineers are practical, hands-on people so the brand needed to demonstrate expertise and credibility at every level.

Agency Inc immersed itself in the innovation process, touring the production facility for a first-hand understanding of composite engineering.

Stakeholder workshops, qualitative calls with key customers and competitor analysis uncovered an undifferentiated market.

Meanwhile, in a space dominated by technical jargon, the campaign needed to make things more human.

Exel shared a key connection with potential customers: curiosity and a knack for solving complex problems.

A new brand identity, ‘For forward thinkers’, was born

Creativity

Many prospects didn't know what a composite solution was.

The rebrand had to educate them, offering engineers a more innovative way to build. In a space dominated by jargon, Forward Thinking was human-centred.

The scope extended across channels from hero videos and 3D-animation, to sales and event collateral.

The media mix challenge was not only communicating the new branding to an external audience; it also had to engage Exel's employees so they could communicate the positioning with confidence.

The original scope focused more on the internal task but as momentum grew, knowledge of the engineer audience was used to engage target prospects across a range of carefully selected channels

Results

There was a real appetite for Exel's brand of Forward Thinking:

• Year-on-year growth = 48.9%

• Revenue growth = 23.1% (2% target)

• Organic website traffic = 114% (10% target)

• Net marketing ROI = 22,195%

Growth, profit and traffic all exceeded expectations, proving there was real appetite in the materials space for forward-thinking innovation, communicated with clarity.

Supporting sales with guidance on how to 'walk the talk' triggered a fundamental shift in employee behaviour, too.

By approaching problems customer-first rather than product-first, Exel Composite's people could more effectively communicate the rebrand's human-centred approach, because they were living i

The Team

Agency Inc - Lauren Hall, Strategic Client Director - Matthew Morgan, Chief Executive - Nikki Guevarra, Strategy Partner - Jean-Paul Misso, Creative Partner

Exel Composites - Robert Glass, Head of Marketing