Marketing can be intimidating for small business owners who are the backbone of New Zealand’s economy and Yellow’s bread and butter.  As one of New Zealand’s leading digital groups, Yellow wanted to show Kiwis that their suite of digital marketing solutions can give small business a customised, outsourced, and varied way of addressing the marketing challenges they face.

Anthem rose to the challenge with the creation of “Yellow’s Marketing Machine.” The insight behind the creative concept was to find a simple mechanism to communicate with potential customers what Yellow can do for them.  SMEs could drop in their business pain points in one end, and Yellow’s Marketing Machine would serve up a digital marketing solution tailored to their needs.

Yellow’s Marketing Machine campaign was spearheaded by a 3D animation which featured in a real time video ad showcasing real talent.  A digital offering called for a digital campaign.  Anthem, along with our partners, developed the diagnostic tool – Yellow’s Marketing Machine – to feature online, boosted by a social and digital-led media campaign to promote Yellow’s digital offering to SMEs across New Zealand.

In support of the media campaign, Anthem engaged SMEs and Yellow’s internal stakeholders directly via EDMs and drove publicity through national and trade media coverage.

The results speak for themselves. After the six-week integrated marketing communications campaign, awareness of Yellow’s suite of digital marketing solutions grew substantially amongst the SME target audience. YouTube alone saw over half a million completed views of the Yellow Marketing Machine video.  Brand health metrics demonstrated that Yellow’s Marketing Machine campaign had not only had a strong influence in changing brand perceptions of the Yellow product offering, but that it had also resulted in increased advocacy levels for the business as a whole.  The campaign effect was significant with SMEs seeing Yellow as not only innovative but increased the innovation metric in relation to their competitors. Those exposed to the campaign were also more likely to recommend Yellow.

Yellow’s Marketing Machine was extended in early 2019, to coincide with a new financial year for New Zealand’s SMEs. We utilised the machine thematic again, but this time showcasing the ineffectiveness of common-place workplace machines (such as the coffee machine, toaster and printer) against the strength of Yellow’s Marketing Machine.