Indie fusion
With more people turning to digital media, it’s ever more important for marketers to engage agencies that know how to build brands and intimacy with consumers across mediums. Auckland indie Fuse Creative did just that for Southern Cross Travel Insurance, helping bridge the gap between digital and traditional worlds in a rapidly changing marketplace
This year marks an important moment in the evolution of our media consumption habits. For the first time, according to eMarketer.com, consumers in the US will spend more time interacting with digital media than they will spend watching television — and trends are similar here in New Zealand. What’s more interesting is that time spent on mobile will increase significantly, while PC and laptop use will decline.
For marketers, this means they need to engage agencies that understand these trends, and adapt their strategies to fit. And they need agencies that know how to build strong brands and engage with audiences directly — in the places they choose to inhabit — in order to build an intimate link with the market.
Small mouth, big bite
This is a time where indies — generally smaller, independently-owned agencies unencumbered by old-school thinking or global profit and loss targets — are well-positioned to move quickly and adapt to the changing needs of their clients.
But there are pitfalls as well as opportunities for marketers looking to adapt their strategies to the age of digital. Startup agencies can come out of nowhere and sell themselves as the next big thing in digital marketing. Often these newcomers don’t have the core brand and communications skills to go with their newfound digital expertise.
Open to change, quick to adapt
With over 25 years in business, Fuse Creative saw the writing on the wall early. It made a deliberate shift from a traditional brand agency to one that took all its creative expertise and adapted it to bridge the worlds of traditional and digital media. “You could describe us as an integrated brand engagement agency,” says Jeff Evans, Fuse’s director and co-founder. “We take real pride not just in creating great campaigns, but in seeing and being a part of our clients’ success.”
That sense of partnership has been core to the success of its work with Southern Cross Travel Insurance (SCTI). In 2002, SCTI was beginning its move from contact centre-based direct sales operations to a webbased business; after evaluating market options it selected Fuse. SCTI was looking to build its brand and grow share in the online market. Fuse created a brand property, the Starman, that could live and breathe
Fuse Creative’s partnership with SCTI and its ability to leverage traditional marketing skills with digital expertise helps drive growth and results for the insurer.
Fuse creatives: Andrew McLeod, Steve Spain, Leigh Cockerill, Piers Menhinick, Alexandra Longbottom and Jeff Evans.
across all future media — whether television, out-of-home or online — and still engage its market and drive a sales response.
The results have been extraordinary. SCTI has seen breathtaking growth over the duration of the partnership and is now almost an entirely web-driven business. The brand has been built to a position of strength through the use of traditional media — and that strength has been leveraged online to deliver remarkable levels of web traffic and conversion to sales.
“Working with the team at Fuse has been a great experience. Their work has helped us to become the most recognised travel insurance provider in New Zealand,” says Craig Morrison, SCTI’s chief executive. “They have the ability to consistently engage and motivate our audiences to purchase with us.”
One of the critical drivers of its success is Fuse’s approach to the client-agency relationship. The days of a client delivering a brief and then standing back and hoping for some creative genius to come back is well and truly gone. Fuse Creative promotes the concept of client-agency intimacy. The marketing strategy, the creative approach and the media planning all happen in tandem.
Keeping an eye on the scoreboard
Fuse analyses the sales results from SCTI every day, poring over figures to see where traffic originated, which executions were the most effective, monitoring engagement, website share against key competitors, and the resulting sales volumes.
With its in-depth knowledge of the business results in real time, the Fuse team are core members of the SCTI strategy team, and can adapt marketing executions and spend almost on the fly. This creates a remarkably dynamic environment.
It is this sort of engagement between the client, the agency, the brand and the market that drove SCTI to an all time record sales result this year.
“SCTI’s business has experienced 20-plus percent compound annual growth over the last 10 years and Fuse has been a key contributor to that success,” says Morrison.
Fuse Creative has no ‘suits’ in the traditional sense. The team is actively and directly engaged in the business of making its clients successful. From strategy, to creative, to production and back to strategy — it is a continuous loop of feedback and adaptation.
In this rapid shift to the digital world there is one thing that doesn’t change; the art of creating and building great brands. This is where Fuse Creative sets itself apart, having developed a remarkable depth of experience in building strong brands over its 25 years in business.
“The key now is creating brands that can thrive in the traditional media world, as well as engaging more directly with customers and the digital marketplace,” says Evans.
If you would like to find out more about how Fuse Creative can help your business step up results, call us on 09 379 9800 any time, or email jeff@fusecreative.co.nz or steve@fusecreative.co.nz.