Show and tell

Taking to the stage in Cambridge

For someone who constantly craves time at my desk to tackle my 'to do' list this blog contains a lot of tales of my travels! So, this week I've been out and about continuing to promote our latest campaign 'Shaping Your World'.

With the amount of work it took to get us to this point the fact that's it's grown legs around the business, and beyond, has been very satisfying. One of the main strategic goals of our central marketing function is to provide integrated campaigns that the entire business can utilise. With 21,000 colleagues across four divisions this is no mean feat and required months of planning. But we have already proven that this adds value not only to winning work but also to existing contracts.

I was the only non-Anglian Water van in the car park!

This is why I spent two mornings this week presenting to 400+ colleagues on the Anglian Water contract. This is a big one for the utilities business with the challenge being that Kier employees are so embedded with the client they sometimes hear more from them than their actual employer. By hosting a two day event (at the Hallmark hotel in Cambridge) it allows them time off work to hear about our latest benefits and initiatives.

Given that I have presented on this topic, to different audiences, on many occasions it was still a challenge to fit it all into 15-20 mins. Especially as I was all that stood between the audience and their lunch! However, it was really well received and started the conversation with many colleagues volunteering to be Kier Ambassadors.

Go team!

My second trip out this week was definitely for a much larger audience as we took 'Shaping Your World' to the World Skills Show. This is a first for us on this scale being held at the Birmingham NEC over three days. The amount of preparation to get us there was immense with all of us working until the final hours on stand designs, t-shirts, freebies and staff rotas.

I had oversight of the technical elements of our stand in the build up. We asked visitors to complete our avatar quiz in order to receive a personalised notebook. All they had to do was enter their name and have a printout of their avatar affixed to the front!

It was great seeing our target audience
interacting with our Virtual World Plaques

I managed the team on the Friday so arrived bright and early to get setup and deliver the briefing. We had helpers from all areas of Kier, from graduate to director level, and they were amazing at speaking to visitors about the opportunities in the built environment. Whilst it started quite slow the coach loads of school children all descended on us around 11am with swarms of them invading our stand! In fact, the personalised notebooks were so popular that we could barely keep up with demand!

Design-wise our stand did definitely look the busiest but in some ways this worked in our favour. It stood out from the crowd by presenting a traditional career in a modern way. It wasn't just school children who approached us as we spoke to teachers, parents, the cabinet office and even the girl guides.

After three days of this there's no doubt that our campaign has now been bought to the masses and it's my job to ensure that this is measured. Whether it be avatars built, or jobs searched, I'll now be crunching numbers to prove this activity was worth our time and investment.

It’s been an excellent 3 days for all involved @SkillsShow. The future of the built environment is looking bright thanks to the amount of people to #visitvibe https://t.co/m64XKkFh4R

— Kier Group plc (@kiergroup) November 18, 2017

The favourite bit for me is seeing how well 'Shaping Your World' is received by all audiences. In particular the target audience of 11-15 year olds loved the avatars and their notebooks had them grinning all the way back to their coaches.

The next possible step for this campaign is our shortlisted entry at the Construction Marketing Awards. Win or lose I'll be covering the further adventures of my, now vintage, Matalan dinner suit in my next blog post...