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Using
thought leadership in brand building
WIBTA
award – Wharton Infosys Business Transformation
Award for organizations transforming their
business using technology
Brand
Building
is not all about spending big bucks and splashing
huge advertisements across leading publications.
It is all about carefully strategizing and
planning an organization’s image and weaving
together a messaging strategy that will sustain
this image over time. It has been said that
Infosys owes a huge chunk of its phenomenal growth
to its savvy brand building. It is only
appropriate that we feature a highly successful
recent marketing initiative of Infosys as a Best
Practice.
In
this issue, we have covered how Infosys furthered
its image as a thought leader in the global IT
industry through instituting the WIBTA award in
partnership with the William and
Phyllis
Mack
Center
for Technological Innovation at the
Wharton
School
of the
University
of
Pennsylvania
.
How
is WIBTA integrated into Infosys’ brand building
strategy?
Infosys, over the last few years,
has been positioning itself as a business
technology company that can help its clients to
use IT strategically to gain business leverage. In
consonance with this theme, Infosys came up with
the idea of instituting an award to recognize
global corporations that have transformed their
businesses using technology as a lever.
Some
of the objectives of this exercise were to promote
awareness of the concept of “Transformation of
Business using Technology”, recognize innovation
and have a focused communication to the target
audience. It also created a reason to open a
dialog with Fortune 1000 companies, at whom the
award was targeted.
The mechanism greatly increased the reach
of Infosys to Fortune 1000 companies, while
keeping costs under check. Moreover, the aim was
to create long term relationships with these
companies and enhance their awareness of Infosys
rather than look for immediate business
opportunities.
Rather
than do this on its own, Infosys opted to partner
with
Wharton
School
in order to leverage the strength of the Wharton
brand - in particular, the
Mack
Center
and Infosys
shared common views and
beliefs and a synergy was possible. The
partnership also allows Infosys to participate
in relevant workshops and learning programs of the
Mack Center, generate thought leadership papers
and of course, with raising the level of awareness
of Infosys among Wharton graduates.
About
the award
There were three categories of
awards, one for the organization that had
transformed the enterprise using technology, one
for an initiative undertaken by a specific
department or region in an organization and one
for the individual who acted as a catalyst for the
change within an organization. The selection
process was very open in nature, all organizations
with revenue greater than $1 billion were eligible
for the award, regardless of who was their IT
consultant. To make the process as transparent as
possible, there was a jury that selected companies
to receive the award. Using business leaders from
organizations such as UPS, ANZ group helped lend
credibility to the award, and brought in an
industry perspective to the evaluation process.
How
did they create awareness about the award?
The Marketing Department was convinced
that mass media was not the route to choose.
Instead, they developed a portfolio of other
methods including e-Direct Mailers to Fortune 1000
companies, Online advertisements in select sites,
Advertisements in focused print publications like
CIO, InformationWeek etc., and targeted the
relevant audience through these methods. They
followed this up with telephone conversations
which helped establish a channel for communication
between the companies. According to Jessie Paul,
who was instrumental in carrying out this program,
the perseverance with which they marketed the
program had a big impact on the results.
Metrics
The two key metrics used to measure the success of
this initiative were the number of new people who
were willing to talk to Infosys and also
successfully creating a higher entry point for
future sales. Infosys is very happy with the
status of these metrics, especially since the
budget was not large, compared with the scope of
the project. Exact figure were not divulged.
News
Flash
Bearing testimonial to the strategic
importance of such brand-building initiatives, is
the recent announcement that Infosys has received a "Diamond Award" for the WIBTA
Award. Infosys was conferred this award in the Special
Recognition category by IT Services Marketing
Association (ITSMA) as part of their annual
Services Marketing Excellence Awards. According to
ITSMA
“Tying the brand to a prestigious partner
and a high-level message, Infosys was able to
build valuable awareness, credibility, and direct
contact with top executives in its target market
worldwide.”
To
summarize how Infosys achieved its goal of being
viewed as a global thought leader:
- Infosys partnered with an institution whose goals
aligned with its own to create a Business
Transformation award for Fortune 1000
companies
- Created awareness of the award through focused
marketing efforts which achieved the desired
results without a high dollar outflow.
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