by Herman Manson (@marklives) No stranger to agency start-ups or pushing against conventional agency boundaries, Gavin Rooke has launched a new ad agency named The New Order.
Rooke launched one of South Africa’s first digital agencies, tool®, for Hunt Lascaris in 1996. Aged 24. He left (in ’99) when the agency was merged into Tequila — an event that taught him he needed to own what he built.
Left advertising for a stint
He left advertising for a stint at Dimension Data and Internet Solutions, where he realised the overlap between technology, marketing and a business-consulting function. He decided to launch a marketing agency that understood technology and would guide business as they explored an increasingly digital economy. The result was Trigger, a new agency co-owned by Dimension Data.
Trigger quickly evolved into a full-service digital play with clients that included Nike, Coca-Cola and Woolworths. It was eventually sold to Aegis Media (in 2007), becoming Trigger/Isobar.
Rooke only left Trigger/Isobar end-2011 to serve as the global executive officer of the Isobar Global Network (headquartered in London, he commuted out of Johannesburg). His tenure ended in August 2013, when he started developing the concept for his newest agency play.
Set up to leverage design
The New Order is set up to leverage design (in its broadest sense) as the next wave to shape business and marketing.
According to Rooke, the most obvious example of the role of design in business and marketing is the world’s most valuable company. The New Yorker recently named industrial designer Sir Jonathan Ive “Apple’s greatest product”. Design stretched through product, retail and user experience, to name but a few examples. Rooke sees a design-lead agency solving a lot of business problems across multiple touch points.
Any agency today pretty much consists of a bunch of specialists sitting in silos/categories that make up a ‘full-service’ offering. In reality, consumers don’t live their lives in categories and they don’t consume media that way. Nobody steps from an ATL world into a BTL world — the transfer is smooth and seamless.
Interface the design challenge
Rooke sees all communication as interface — the product, packaging, channel, media — all of it. If everything is interface, that becomes the design challenge. In this world, says Rooke, concepts such as ATL and BTL holds no value.
Rooke says his stint as global executive officer at Isobar Global Network has helped him understand how to position networks globally. And if you play in digital, he says, make no mistake, you are global (as several local agencies and brands have learnt over the past two years).
Rooke also got to interrogate what true convergence means, having played a part in negotiation big media partnerships between his agency network and the new media giants such as Facebook, Apple and Google.
Global ambitions
Rooke has global ambitions for The New Order; he has spent a lot of time mapping out its structure, positioning and ways of scaling it. For the next year, the focus rests upon building its portfolio and creating great design work — after which Rooke hopes to replicate the South African model into new markets.
Talking of the SA model, the agency has in fact been trading since August 2014, building up an already impressive body of work with which to impress clients. The agency is focusing on new products and services — Rooke says he has spent a lot of time understanding how and why people adopt new products.
For client Saint Gobain South Africa, which designs, manufactures and distributes building materials, The New Order designed and built a home using its construction materials, and then built a marketing campaign (called Stand 47 — see case study below) around it.
Packaging solutions
For Rhinolite Easyfill, a gypsum-based wall plaster, it designed a packaging solution that would add value to the product itself (see case study below). In short, the packaging performed four functions (scooping and measuring; scraping; sanding; and resealing the bag).
The New Order both designed and manufactures the Rhinolite Easyfill Multitool on behalf of Gyproc (a Saint Gobain company). Easyfill was voted as Saint-Gobain’s ‘New Product of the Year’ across 63 countries in 2015.
The agency, which currently employs seven people but is hiring, puts designers and project managers at its core. Rooke is also building out a network of specialist partners, some of which he is acquiring a strategic stake in.
Slow and steady
Rooke says he sees the value in slow and steady, one of the reasons he delayed the official launch of the agency, and that he intends to scale controllably. Growth isn’t the short-term objective; it happens when you don’t run after it, he believes.
Rooke insists The New Order isn’t being built to sell. He wants to create a global business working on global brands and intends using his international contact base to scale the agency into new markets at the appropriate time.
Case study: Stand 47
Source: The New Order
The positioning of the Saint Gobain South Africa,the world’s largest producer of energy-efficient building materials
Background
South Africa’s residential building market lags significantly behind global norms in terms of the adoption of energy-efficient building materials. Reasons include negative preconceptions, a lack of consumer understanding and ill-advised marketing positioning by market competitors.
Challenge
Reverse negative preconceptions regarding non-traditional building materials in the South African residential market and accelerate the adoption of new, more effective ways of building homes.
Solution
The New Order proposed, designed, built and made available to the public a physical home to serve as proof of the claimed benefits of building using contemporary materials. The two-year process was documented and shared digitally and physically by the agency from concept to completion, and ultimately published as a formal ‘case study’.
Importantly, the process was undertaken as a premeditated step to develop the foundation for Saint-Gobain’s consumer advertising. The home serves as the core focus of all brand communication for Saint-Gobain in SA and now serves as the face of the Saint-Gobain brand all across print, television and online media channels.
The home has further been incorporated into the curriculum of the University of Pretoria’s architecture school and has won numerous awards, including commendation by Afrisam’s 2014 Innovation Award for Sustainable Construction.
It remains open for public tours until August 2015 and has to date received over 2 100 local and global industry professionals and homeowners alike.
Strategic approach taken
Slow consumer uptake of innovative, superior products is not a unique phenomenon and many excellent innovations fail by not achieving sufficient market penetration. This is sadly often the result of ill-considered marketing.
Proven marketing theory (developed in the early 1960s) explains aspects of this phenomenon. The theory points out that market penetration will seldom progress beyond a certain point if marketing is focused on a product’s technical features alone.
While technical performance is key for a small ‘innovator’ portion of a market, an emotional appeal is paramount to extend to the early majority of consumers. We mostly buy with our hearts.
Accordingly, The New Order developed a reverse-engineered marketing strategy for Saint-Gobain that significantly leverages this theory. The need for a compelling, believable and emotionally weighted marketing message was identified over two years ago — but to truly deliver a believable message, the agency felt a physical home was required off which to build all messages.
The process of designing and building the home was purposefully shared with the professional services market from the outset by the agency and www.stand47.co.za was developed as a detailed, technical blog environment that documented the day-by day progress of the home. This content was then packaged for more consumer-friendly consumption by way of a “Four-Step” guide, dispelling fear and offering clear advicerequired when considering the building of a new home.
Once complete, the focus on “Building the home” was replaced with “Living in the home” to allow the true benefits of the products to be highlighted. Journalists were invited to stay in the home to share their personal experiences first-hand, and physical tours allowed consumers to see, touch, hear and feel the benefits of a home built using contemporary materials.
The agency developed an effective, device-agnostic ‘virtual tour’ of the home, leveraging HTML5 and Java technology. Over 52 800 people walked through the home,prior to the launch of the online media campaign.
The advertising approach was heavily informed by the underlying strategic approach. All technical detail was purposefully removed, and the agency focused on the creation of an emotionally appealing message, broadcast by way of a number of media collaborations (print, TV and digital) directly aimed at early adopters.
This campaign launched in December 2014, and continues to scale through end-2015. It serves as an example of the importance of design (in the broadest sense) and the effectiveness of a fully integrated campaign across diverse media.
The success of the Stand 47 project led to The New Order being awarded the broader Saint Gobain Gyproc business — which comprises approximately 50 products — and its first step into the retail environment.
Case study: Rhinolite EasyFill
Background
Rhinolite is a premium, market-leading, gypsum-based wall plaster. The brand is owned by Gyproc and is seen as the preferred choice among contractors for high-end wall finishes for residential and commercial application.
As part of Gyproc’s strategy to become more consumer-focused, a fast-drying derivative of Rhinolite was developed that is specifically suited to domestic interior crack filling.
The New Order was tasked with branding, packaging and launching the new product.
Challenge
The market is highly saturated (there are over 14 alternative crack-filler brands available), with certain brands holding established leadership positions (eg Plascon PolyFilla). A core challenge was how to launch and uniquely position a new brand, at a premium, into an established market category.
Approach
The New Order proposed an approach where the packaging solution would add value to the product itself. Gypsum is a natural product that requires ‘breathable’ packaging. The standard competitor packaging solution comprises a breathable paper bag within a cardboard box that is not easy to use and leads to waste.
The agency’s proposed approach was to differentiate the product by way of packaging, which in turn would serve as the positioning and USP of the product itself.
Solution
The agency designed a packaging solution that was easy to open and seal after use — and removed the need for additional tools to measure, scrape and sand the applied product.
A patented “Multitool” was designed that performs four functions (scooping and measuring; scraping; sanding; and resealing the bag), which in turn was attached to a breathable paper bag.
The agency then developed:
- The Easyfill corporate and packaging graphic identity
- The Easyfill positioning line:“Scoop it. Scrape it. Sand it. Seal it”
- The Easyfill Strapline:“Easy Does It”
- All retail design (including permanent and free standing point-of-sale design instore branding across the entire MassMart franchise)
- Digital instructional video: ‘How to use’ the product
The agency also developed all advertising messaging across:
- Out of home
- Digital (w/c 13 April 2015)
- Television (the formal TVC will launch w/c 20 April 2015)
- Easyfill will also feature on the popular webseries, SuzelleDIY (w/c 13 April 2015)
Results
Of significance is that the product has been successfully sold into all of SA’s leading DIY stores, with leading groups requesting promotional exclusivity.
Most importantly, Easyfill was voted as Saint-Gobain’s ‘New Product of the Year’ across 63 countries — at the annual Global Marketing conference in the Netherlands in April 2015 — and is set to roll into global territories using all agency-developed assets.
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