BHP’s first ads in three decades start to pay dividends as next stage rolls out
Just three months after launching its first mainstream advertising campaign in 33 years, BHP said it is already seeing positive results from the campaign as it rolls out the next stage.
Superannuation is the focus of the next stage of BHP’s first campaign in 33 years
Tony Cudmore, BHP’s group sustainability and public policy officer, told Mumbrella the next stage of the campaign was launching, moving the message from the Think Big positioning to focus on the role that BHP plays in different parts of the Australian community and economy.
“I would say I’m very encouraged would be the way I would put it,” Cudmore told Mumbrella of the launch.
“We are tracking this in a research sense on a regular basis. We are seeing really strong brand association. Very, very high direct association.”
The latest stage of the campaign with an ad focussing on the role BHP plays in Australia’s superannuation system launched several days ago noting that one-in-three Australians had had some sort of investment in BHP through their support and a further 600,000 people held shares in the company.
The first two ads, created and voiced by legendary adman Ted Horton, were meant to re-introduce the brand to Australia after the three decade marketing hiatus.
“We are seeing very, very encouraging levels of association of those ads with BHP, for both ads. Overall because this is intended to be a long game, we are off to what we would consider a very encouraging start,” Cudmore said.
“As you would expect, TV’s been performing very well, we are doing some out of home, cinema and some strategic placements in airports – that is certainly performing well.
“I think across the board we’re fairly confident that the mix is working for us at this point in the cycle of the program. The investment is weighted towards TV but every part of that.”
The campaign has also moved into radio in recent days to support the initial media schedule.
“On the [media] mix, we were very thoughtful about the mix and we are encouraged in terms of what we anticipated is what we are seeing in terms of the recall and attribution to BHP, but I would say in that we we have started commercial radio and that’s performing really strongly.”
Cudmore reiterated that the rebrand and campaign was not an end in itself but the first stages of a larger and ongoing effort to engage Australians in the brand “from the community level through to the big policy debates”.
He described the brand work as “one response to what our research has been telling us over the last few years which was that the company needed to do a better job of communicating with its stakeholders”.
The company will continue to evolve the campaign in coming months but Cudmore said that the first stages had delivered the foundations BHP needed.
“We feel that the underlying approach is at this stage performing very encouragingly,” he said.
“We are obviously looking at additional topics at the moment and we are mindful that we need to be very thoughtful bringing new materials on because we are hoping that each time we do there is a resonance with our audiences. We think we have got a very strong story to tell across our support for communities, our economic contribution, environmental stewardship, diversity. I’m not saying there will be a TVC for each of those issues, but to talk about how we move forward the brand, we are pretty thoughtful about the types of issues that we think are important to our stakeholders.”
“. . . one response to what our research has been telling us over the last few years which was that the company needed to do a better job of communicating with its stakeholders”.
Rhetoric, jargon and spin can’t disguise one irrefutable fact. BHP’s share price today is what it was 10 years ago.
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