Recognizing Marketing’s Finest
Here we present all of this year’s winning submissions, highlighting a different category each week.
SELLING TOOL /
Distributor $101M to $400M
United Electric Supply
Lug Selector
When customers offered feedback that they do not have easy access to manufacturers’ product numbers in the field—specifically for lugs—United Electric wanted to create a tool to help, and the idea of the Lug Selector was born.
The marketing team first identified 52 products to include on the Lug Selector based on purchase behavior and stock status. Also recognizing that the design needed to be small so it could be stored in a notebook, pocket, or console of a work vehicle, the team collaborated with a third-party resource to design the Lug Selector to meet these criteria and produce the tool in bulk.
Seven customer targets were identified based on current product sales and growth opportunity. Within those seven companies, approximately 150 contacts met the target role to include in the outreach. The sales team proactively had conversations with their contacts and shared the Lug Selector with them. Digital channels were tested by emailing all target contacts with a “Selecting Lugs Just Got Easier” message, driving them to a landing page with a form they could fill out to receive a Lug Selector. A few customers requested a Lug Selector via digital channels, so account reps hand delivered the Selector to anyone who filled out the form.
FROM THE JUDGES: “This is truly a sales tool that helps sell product,” said the judges. “United put strategic thought into this, doing the research to understand the unique and individual needs of customers. Sometimes the most elegant solution is the least complicated.”
Distributor $401M to $700M
Kirby Risk Electrical Supply
Connected Magazine
Connected magazine was developed and launched in February 2022 with the goal of increasing brand awareness, increasing sales of featured products and services, and generating leads for new projects or opportunities with existing or new customers.
Distributed to customers through both print and digital channels, the magazine is intended to be referenced beyond a specific date or time, thereby increasing its shelf life and feeding content across multiple marketing channels, including targeted emails, social media, blogs, and the web.
Editorial content is carefully planned for each issue to include important industry trends, news, and information about Kirby Risk and supplier-partner-focused products and solutions. It also directly supports the President’s Club program—the company’s key go-to-market sales program that offers participating supplier partners a defined marketing strategy with measurable advertising and sales growth.
FROM THE JUDGES: “The visuals are attention grabbing,” noted the judges. “Excellent branding—you know it’s coming from Kirby Risk. It’s well designed and balanced with a nice mix of
company information and customer-directed content.”
Distributor More Than $700M
Sonepar USA
Digital Job Center
Custom-built for its business, Sonepar’s Digital Job Center allows customers to stay up to date on every detail of every shipment 24/7 and release material as needed, saving Sonepar’s internal teams from having to carry the responsibility of providing shipment updates to customers.
In an effort to educate associates and customers on the use cases and benefits of the Digital Job Center, increase online registrations, encourage utilization of the tool, save time for project managers on customer communications, gain additional wallet share with existing customers, increase sales through digital channels, and grow overall commercial projects business, the marketing team created flyers, a battlecard, a playbook, and an email message from the digital leader to help sales associates better understand the tool and promote it to their customers.
For customers, a comprehensive landing page was created on Sonepar’s websites that included a video outlining features and answering customer questions. The landing page ends with a call to action to sign up for an online account. Promotional materials included print (poster and flyer) and digital (email, branch TV, web banner, cross-promotional email banner, outlook banner, and social media).
FROM THE JUDGES: “I love the problem/solution format,” noted the judges. “The Q&A and the step-by-step instructions are very customer friendly and responsive to customer needs and concerns and questions and problems.”
Supplier Less Than $250M
Intermatic
Product Launch Toolkit and Marketing Coordination
With multiple concurrent product launches and dozens of resources to keep track of, Intermatic’s marketing team enlisted the help of the IT department to create a permanent hub for sales/agent marketing toolkits via SharePoint. A link/pathway to the hub was placed inside the sales portal, a website the field team accesses daily.
The toolkits, organized by product, include everything from sell sheets and product images to technical data sheets and formatted ads.
When the hub was announced, abbreviated advertising and content calendars were shared to further align the marketing efforts internally. And because the hub is connected to SharePoint, the team is able to update/add resources as needed.
FROM THE JUDGES: “This is brilliant in terms of a whole library of materials,” said the judges, adding that “the company is standardizing the message, which has some training value too.”
Supplier Less Than $250M
Keystone Technologies
Downlight Sales Tool
To display its new line of downlights—which encompassed four product families and eight models total—Keystone designed a pair of rotatable display cases that could present all eight models, showing their aesthetics as well as installation method and access points for power and color selectability.
The downlights counter display had to fulfill a number of purposes: It had to serve as a means for territory managers to show the new product line and demonstrate the functionality of the downlights to lighting distributors, it had to be capable of serving as a countertop display at national and regional trade shows as well as distributor-specific manufacturer events, and it had to be compact and easy to set up.
FROM THE JUDGES: “This has ‘toy value’—it engages people,” said the judges. “The Keystone team showed that they really understand customers who want to feel the product in their hands.
Supplier More Than $250M
ABB Electrification
Mebane Customer Experience Center
When ABB completed the acquisition of GE Industrial Solutions, it invested $40 million to build a 200,000-square-foot expansion and upgrade machinery at its production facility in Mebane, N.C. With this investment, ABB designed the Mebane Customer Experience Center to serve as an immersive, customer-centric space that brings the end-to-end ABB story to life and offers an engaging and educational environment where customers and suppliers can see and feel ABB’s latest products and collaborate on new technology developments.
The journey takes visitors on a curated experience that includes an introductory area that presents the fundamental changes in today’s electrification space across a variety of industries/verticals, a space that showcases the risks of being left behind the curve and the rewards of excelling in this new era, a main equipment and demo area, and a central interactive area that brings all of the elements of the story together.
Promotional tactics included a webpage, digital landscape, and video.
FROM THE JUDGES: “This is truly amazing,” said the judges. “ABB really understands its customers and created a fantastic place for people to actually go and have an immersive experience.”
PRODUCT LAUNCH / – Honorable Mentions
OneSource Distributors
Pro Logistics Services
Nora Lighting
The Book
Panduit
AccelerMAX
Tagged with awards, Best of the Best, marketing