Case study
Thought leadership
in a changing
industry
Client
Orbia
Sector
B2B
Process
Content and PR campaign
Orbia, a global leader in specialty and innovative chemical products, is amongst the world’s largest producers and suppliers of refrigerant gases for applications such as air conditioning and supermarket refrigeration.
As the world moves towards a more sustainable future, the European Union has introduced quota-based regulations to ensure the refrigerant industry keeps in step with reducing carbon emissions. Under its Koura business group, Orbia – formerly known as Mexichem – has developed more environmentally friendly solutions to meet these targets.
Orbia needed to ensure its target market of HVACR (heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration) engineers – ranging from senior staff in large organisations such as supermarkets through to individual specialist contractors – were aware of its products and how these offered a solution to the complicated forthcoming regulation.
The strategy
Two key objectives were identified:
Establish a leadership position in helping the HVACR industry to navigate regulation that imposed quota restrictions on the type and volume of refrigerants that could be used.
Clearly promote the differentiating benefits of Orbia’s products and services in a highly competitive market place.
Orbia recognised the important role that offering customers technical assurance and support played in the HVACR industry. Providing industry thought leadership by focussing on helping its in-house experts communicate clear guidance to the market was an effective way to do this. This was backed with product promotion based on the differentiating benefits of Orbia’s offering.
Leading the way
The quality of messaging was key to the credibility, and therefore success, of the campaign.
Messaging was developed in partnership with Orbia’s own technical experts, customer-facing teams and customers themselves – ensuring communications would prove helpful to the industry and not be perceived as marketing “blurb”.
Orbia’s techno-commercial director was selected as the figurehead of the campaign to provide a consistent and recognisable brand advocate. A calendar of activity was put in place, including:
Hitting the target (audience)
Clear, authentic messaging is key to any successful communication campaign – but equal in importance is ensuring those messages are promoted properly to the intended audience. A target list of traditional and digital media was compiled, ensuring all key influencers across Europe were included. An influencer engagement plan was then put into place and actioned. This included arranging meetings with journalists and bloggers, promoting the opportunity for them to receive high quality content aligned with their editorial policies.
This led to coverage being achieved with all top tier influencers, including news, regular comment columns, in-depth features and presentations at key industry events.
The results
Orbia was the first company to sell its full annual quota under the EU regulation
It also grew its market share for more environmentally friendly products
Largest targeted trade media share of voice, against major competitors including Honeywell and DuPont
