Best Brand Campaign, The Drum Awards B2B
Challenge
Rivulis is the second largest manufacturer of drip irrigation in the world, with sixteen factories and sales in almost every country. To the farmers who actually use the product, the brand did not exist.
It was six years old, assembled out of mergers and an ownership change, and it sits in a category that does not do branding. Every piece of marketing in the sector, theirs and every competitor’s, was product or technical. Most of what they manufacture is black tube.
The question was how to build a brand for a company that makes something nobody can brand, in an industry that has never tried, for an audience with no patience for hype.
Rivulis is the second largest manufacturer of drip irrigation in the world, with sixteen factories and sales in almost every country. To the farmers who actually use the product, the brand did not exist.
It was six years old, assembled out of mergers and an ownership change, and it sits in a category that does not do branding. Every piece of marketing in the sector, theirs and every competitor’s, was product or technical. Most of what they manufacture is black tube.
The question was how to build a brand for a company that makes something nobody can brand, in an industry that has never tried, for an audience with no patience for hype.
Goal
Build awareness and equity with farmers directly. Not with distributors, not with the trade.
The work had to carry an identity rather than a name. Proud of the product but humble about it. Close enough to farmers to know what the job costs them. Authentic, because farmers do not go for hype. Aspirational, with light humour, and solidarity above everything.
No call to action anywhere. This was a brand campaign and it was measured as one.
Build awareness and equity with farmers directly. Not with distributors, not with the trade.
The work had to carry an identity rather than a name. Proud of the product but humble about it. Close enough to farmers to know what the job costs them. Authentic, because farmers do not go for hype. Aspirational, with light humour, and solidarity above everything.
No call to action anywhere. This was a brand campaign and it was measured as one.
Result
Best Brand Campaign, The Drum Awards B2B
Farmers around the world started sending photographs of themselves with a hand raised. Nobody asked them to. There was no call to action, no hashtag, no prompt of any kind.
Those photographs became a second film, cut from the audience’s own material and put back in front of the people who had watched the first one. An audience with a visible membership.
- 4,958,433 views of a 2:26 film. Facebook 4,490,073, YouTube 264,804, LinkedIn 203,556
- 47% view-through on LinkedIn, 43% on YouTube, on a film most people said was too long to work
- Around 70,000 reactions, shares and comments
- 3,643,835 reach and 19,302,915 impressions on Facebook alone
- Montage film: 1,584,610 reach, 3,159,594 impressions, 128,702 through plays, 13,937 reactions, 1,345 shares
Best Brand Campaign, The Drum Awards B2B
