Brief
Retained since July 2019, Bristan is the UK’s biggest tap and shower brand. As part of our brief, we were tasked with driving proactive brand awareness amongst one its key target audiences: the merchant sector. While Bristan already had an established customer base within the merchant sector, our aim was to position the brand as a market leader within the industry and engage existing and new customers with virtual events.
Action
To achieve this, we developed a strategy rooted in thought leadership that would place Bristan at the centre of the conversation, engage key stakeholders and generate positive third-party advocacy.
In the midst of the pandemic, traditional networking opportunities were prohibited, and our customers were communicating that they missed opportunities to connect and work together. Now more than ever, there was a demand to bring leading industry stakeholders together. So, we set about planning the industry’s first virtual round table event, focused on discussing hot topics and ongoing issues within the merchant industry. To raise the profile of the event, we utilised our connections, securing leading industry title Builders’ Merchant News (BMN) as media partners and Builders Merchant Federation (BMF) Chief Executive John Newcomb as our special guest.
We kickstarted the activity by devising a targeted guestlist of leading industry figures to join Bristan’s Vice President of Sales, Ian Hansell, and Trade Sales Director, Gareth Griffiths at the event. Through our connections we secured industry professionals from merchant and supplier management positions, Robin Beal, Founder and Chairman of The IPG and Andrew Harrison, CEO of Travis Perkins Plumbing & Heating division.
We then set about creating supporting content to promote our event, including Bristan social media posts, blogs and e-newsletters to our merchant customers. Leading up to, as well as on the day of the event, we provided event management, ensuring all delegates were properly briefed and that the virtual event ran smoothly and remained on schedule. We live tweeted the event on Twitter, sharing key insights and quotes, and interacting with BMN, who were also live tweeting.
We also reached out to all roundtable guests encouraging them to engage with us on social media in the run up to, during and post event, further extending Bristan’s reach to external audiences.
Result
The virtual round table event itself was a huge success. With a host of leading industry professionals, the debate provided real and thought-provoking insight on how the merchant sector has coped with the pandemic and how everyone can work together towards a positive future.
Through our partnership with industry leading media partner, BMN:
- We appeared three times in the BMN’s monthly e-newsletter to their database of 12,000 merchant customers
- Secured a digital article with video of the event
- Featured in a three-page spread in BMN’s print magazine reaching a further 8,390 potential customers
- Reached a further 12,800 potential customers through BMN’s regular tweets about the event
- We achieved a 5.66% engagement rate on LinkedIn as a result of the event, over twice the industry average, with one of our event-themed social media posts achieving a 7.54% engagement rate
- A 7% MOM increase in website traffic
If you’d like to read about our own about virtual events click here.
