Sprint Retail Co-op
Sprint was in a distant third place in the wireless industry, competing with the enormous scale and marketing budgets of AT&T and Verizon. Sprint needed to be flawless in execution and have brilliant creative at every consumer touch point to stay competitive. Two West was tasked to find a solution that would improve both acquisition and the cost effectiveness of Sprint’s Co-op marketing program with dealers. The Co-op program had a number of challenges that needed to be addressed.
- Dealers work with many different carrier networks; dealer retention relies on the ability of Sprint to best support each dealer’s business.
- Dealers wanted customized creative and offers, yet the cost of providing that was prohibitive.
- With such fierce competition, all creative has to best target each audience in order to drive acquisition for the dealers and Sprint.
The Two West Solution:
We leveraged the Two West WaveMaking process, which is our methodology for winning shoppers through emotion.
- Ripple: Scanning the waters for opportunity.
- Swell: Forming an unstoppable idea.
- Surf: Turning momentum into action.
Ripple: Scanning the waters for opportunity
This was a huge challenge that required significant analysis upfront. Two West’s first order of duty was to thoroughly understand the dealer’s business in order to best support each dealer through Co-op advertising. This meant visiting dealers, analyzing their business models and tracking how often each dealer used different Co-op marketing materials. Second, Two West dove into the consumer research, identifying which offers, layouts and programs were driving the best consumer response.
Notably, we found that across the dealer network, most dealers were facing very similar marketplace challenges: there was an opportunity for Sprint to be more proactive than competition in addressing the dealer’s business and marketing issues; versus simply reacting after dealers brought an issue to Sprint’s attention.
Swell: Forming an unstoppable idea
Two west created an “if > then” strategic framework based on the dealers’ business issues and the most effective marketing responses in addressing them. This strategic framework provides both Sprint and the dealers with a better understanding of how to most effectively and quickly address challenges in the marketplace; whether that is a new product, promotion, competitor store or any other challenge.
Surf: Turning momentum into action
Two West then went to work building a number of preapproved and customizable marketing templates that were designed to address each prominent business challenge. As part of our creative process, we conducted a comprehensive review of previous marketing materials, including which were used the most by dealers and which ones best met their objectives. Then, after working hand-in-hand with Sprint to create our concepts, we used creative concept testing to make sure we selected the pieces whose layout, messaging and creative scored the highest for each objective.
The solution was that dealers would have access to a strategic framework and appropriate tactical materials for how to most effectively respond to business challenges. In addition, they have 24 hour access to preapproved, customizable, and ready-to-use marketing materials to best respond to each business challenge; including radio, direct mail, print, OOH, Yellow Pages and FSIs.
Since it is such a competitive and dynamic marketplace, Two West and Sprint continue to work together to track the success of each piece and optimize not only the messaging and creative, but also the mix and types of materials provided to the dealers.
The Results
Sprint and the dealers are delighted and have been aggressively using the new Co-op system to more effectively acquire wireless customers. Two West’s innovative solution continues to provide a multitude of key benefits and competitive advantages for both Sprint and their dealers:
- Improved Dealer Support — Sprint dealers now have the tools necessary to better compete on a day-to-day basis.
- Faster Response Time — Dealers can now respond to competition almost instantaneously via access to pre-approved marketing solutions.
- Lower Costs — The high costs of individual creative solutions for each dealer and specific one-off requests were eliminated and replaced by a streamlined and more universal strategic framework and creative template based solution.
- More Effective Creative — Since creative is now tracked and leveraged across a network of dealers, it is much easier to track which ones are being utilized the most by dealers; allowing Two West and Sprint to continually optimize each marketing piece and the marketing mix.