People Power Campaign
As the UK’s leading independent standard-setting body, warranty and insurance provider for new homes, NHBC works with the house-building industry to raise the standards of new homes and to provide consumer protection for homebuyers.
The NHBC Builder Satisfaction Survey, which monitors changes in builder expectations and overall satisfaction with our services, revealed in 2013 that it is the people behind our business that our customers are most likely to recommend. Our professionalism, helpfulness, technical knowledge and support services are particularly important to our customers, so our Marketing Strategy Group sat down to discuss ways in which we could celebrate our staff and the successes they bring to our brand.
The campaign was created with a number of core objectives in mind, primarily focused around raising the profile of our staff and services and demonstrating the value our customers feel we offer them. We aimed to increase our net promoter score, strengthen our reputation as the leading technical authority for new homes, maintain our 80% share in the new homes warranty market and demonstrate the value we place on our people’s contribution to our business successes. As a large proportion of our technical staff is field-based, we were keen to raise their profile as valued members of the business, celebrating their contributions not just to NHBC but to their own hobbies and interests. The rationale was that experienced, committed and professional people are key to the NHBC value offer, and presenting them in a more personal and humanising light proved to be a great way of spreading that message. By June 2013, only a few months after the campaign’s inception, ‘People Power’ was launched.
The creative concept of People Power, and the first two phases of the campaign, were developed in conjunction with marketing agency Ledger Bennett. Subsequent phases were then delivered by our own marketing design and production team. The creative, organisation and direction of all photo-shoots, copywriting and artworking/post-production tasks were carried out in-house. Each individual featured in the ‘People Power’ campaign was drawn from a list of 80 volunteers in field-based roles who had expressed interest in championing the brand and the ways in which their hobbies improved their professional skillset. A series of videos with the chosen staff were storyboarded, scripted and filmed on location, and can be found hosted on NHBC’s corporate website and YouTube channel. We were extremely pleased with the result, having raised the profile of these individuals and the roles they perform both internally and externally.
The campaign began predominantly in trade advertising spaces, with full-page adverts being placed in key publications read by our target audience. We also established dedicated web pages on our corporate website and intranet that showcased the interviews and videos featuring the ‘People Power’ participants. Printed flyers and banner stands accompanied NHBC to events across the country, and flags and posters were placed around the head office site in Milton Keynes. The campaign, first launched in mid-2013, is currently in its fourth phase.
In Spring 2014, almost a year after the first ‘People Power’ advert went to print, an independent analysis, involving 400 telephone conversations with individuals in the target audience, was conducted to assess the impact of the campaign and whether it served the objectives set out in the creative brief. We found that the campaign was a resounding success, with almost 20% of managers, directors and sales staff within the industry having seen and understood the campaign. Much of the surveyed audience described the campaign as unique within the industry, with phrases such as ‘personal’, ‘human’, ‘opening up’ and ‘diversity’ making a common appearance in their descriptions.
As our only campaign in the measurement period, ‘People Power’ contributed to a 7% increase in our net promoter score and the maintenance of our 80% market share. Internally, ‘People Power’ has been received enthusiastically across the business and provided a unique and well-earned opportunity for our non-marketing staff to contribute to an advertising campaign.
We were delighted to hear we had been shortlisted for the Construction Marketing Awards ‘Best use of Advertising’ category – being declared final winner was an even greater accolade for the individuals involved in sharing their stories and bringing the People Power campaign to life. We extend our many thanks for the event organisers, fellow nominees and winners, and wish them the best of luck in the New Year.
