The Challenge

To be truly effective, any PR campaign needs to focus on changing behaviour in the client’s target marketplace. For OKI, the desired change is for existing customers to purchase more solutions and for those businesses that do not currently buy from OKI to become customers.

To drive behaviour change, the campaign first needs to change perceptions. Organisations need to think differently about OKI in order to feel compelled to buy from them. And to change perceptions, Whiteoaks needs to consistently communicate relevant messages in a sustained and creative way.

To communicate effectively with target audiences and to achieve desired changes in perception and ultimately behaviour, this overarching strategy needs to be supported by tactics that are not only meaningful and relevant but that can also be accurately measured. 

The Response                

To achieve this, Whiteoaks implemented an ongoing process of Perception Change Analysis to track the impact of PR (plus other marketing disciplines) among OKI’s target audiences.

The first stage of the plan was key in providing the building blocks for the rest of the programme. This initial phase had three objectives: to assess the intended behaviours of OKI’s target audience, to pinpoint their views on printing solutions, and to gauge how effectively OKI’s key messages were resonating in the marketplace.

Perceptions were benchmarked via an independent telemarketing agency, using a questionnaire created by Whiteoaks. To meet its target of 50 responses, the agency carried out 250 calls to the OKI customer/prospect database. Whiteoaks then analysed the results and prepared a report on the findings. This included an analysis of user perceptions, an assessment of how well each of the OKI messages were penetrating in the marketplace and a recommendation of actions for OKI to take in response.  

The process will be repeated on a six-monthly basis with results reported and tracked against the benchmark via the same telemarketing agency and the appropriate changes taken, if required, to the marketing and PR programmes.

The Result

OKI has already started to reap the rewards from the programme. The research demonstrated that OKI’s messages on enabling businesses to increase bottom line profits and reduce costs were having significant traction in the marketplace. The report, however, identified that one key OKI message was failing to resonate and highlighted how the company could bring its positioning more closely into line with market perceptions.

It revealed, for example, that one key area of future focus should be to educate the market on the importance of picking the right printer for their particular business needs and concentrating on overall total cost of ownership rather than the simple but often misleading purchase cost metric.  

Whiteoaks can help OKI play a key role in this process by developing opinion articles, thought leadership pieces and other collateral to align with this focus.  And critically, the ongoing research process will help benchmark these targeted goals as Whiteoaks tracks how the market perception of OKI as a vendor of business printing solutions evolves over time.