Hexagon Construction Tech Outlook
When Hexagon, a multinational tech company specializing in sensor, software and autonomous technologies, wanted to extend its brand reach in the UK & US, they came to TFD for support. The Hexagon marketing team were in the midst of creating a “Blockbuster” content campaign – one that borrows from the movie industry by leveraging a major piece of content that can be used or ‘franchised’ in a variety of ways to provide ongoing value (much like movie sequels do). That major piece of content was a commissioned survey for the construction industry.
TFD jumped in to develop the PR program for Hexagon’s marketing mix. Our goals were two-fold: use the survey findings to begin positioning Hexagon as expert advisors and problem solvers and to increase brand awareness and relevancy in support of sales.
We worked with the Hexagon marketing team to shape the survey by creating questions focused on not only the key issues their target customers care about most, but those that would resonate with media as well – balancing the need to educate the market on Hexagon solutions like autonomous technology with how these technologies help solve key business problems. TFD also created a plan to amplify the survey results that included outreach to US and UK media (to broaden outreach scope), pre-briefing journalists (to allow for more in-depth coverage) and sustaining activities like byline placement (to ensure a ‘long-tail’ effect).
Over the course of four months, TFD worked closely with Hexagon to finalize survey questions, analyze the results, create press materials including pitches and press announcements and prepare spokespeople with key messaging and Q&A’s. We conducted ‘pre-pitching’ prior to the survey launch and pitching day-of the announcement and beyond, leveraging timely news angles along the way.
Did it work?
Throughout the survey launch and the weeks to follow, TFD secured proactive media opportunities resulting in 24 pieces of coverage with more than 900k unique views /impressions, across the US, Canada, and the UK. The majority of articles were in Tier One industry outlets and included backlinks to the Survey report, driving traffic to the Hexagon website.
TFD secured opportunities for live or taped interviews in new outlets like IRONPROS TV and the Construction Technology podcast, each of which provided an extended platform for Hexagon AB Geosystems President Thomas Harring to showcase his company’s expertise as advisors and problem solvers for their clients. In addition, we secured byline opportunities with outlets like Construction Executive and Digital Construction Week, which allowed for additional platforms to tell the Hexagon survey story, with more opportunities in the pipeline for publication through the rest of the year.
Overall, the number of articles and their publication in various industry outlets – especially those identified by Hexagon as part of their ‘wish list’ – clearly helped increase the visibility of the Hexagon brand amongst a global construction audience. And story headlines and body copy promoted Hexagon’s leadership in autonomous tech and positioned the company as a resource, which helped us achieve our PR goals within the overall campaign mix.
