B2B | Industry Pub Media Relations Case Study

Research:

Baldor Electric Company (now ABB Motors and Generators), located in Fort Smith, Ark., designs, markets and manufactures industrial electric motors, drives, and mechanical power transmission products. These products are sold worldwide in more than 70 countries to an almost endless group of customers, ranging from end-users to original equipment manufacturers to consulting and specifying engineers. Industry trade publications remain a pertinent source of industry information for Baldor’s customers.

Our team was asked to create an event for influential trade media outlets that reinforced Baldor’s continued commitment to investing in U.S. manufacturing and the resulting economic benefits.

Planning & Implementation:

The purpose of the Baldor Publishers Tour was to highlight plant expansions and new product innovations while further positioning the company’s thought-leadership. The focus was on maintaining Baldor’s technical experts as the editors’ first-choice resource for industry information.

We developed the theme, “A History of Excellence” to signify the long relationship between Baldor, the publishers and editors, and the 98 years of the company’s success.

The graphic identity for the event supported the “history” theme and highlighted the historical role Fort Smith played in the days of the Wild West. Fort Smith is the setting for the novel “True Grit” and was once known as the “Gateway to the West.”

Our team developed a series of competitions that focused on keeping the publishers fully engaged in the “tour experience.” We built simple quizzes on company history, facts, company products, engineering applications and plant tour information. We created a hands-on product assembly challenge during one of the plant tours. (Think men in business attire assembling a motor in under 90 seconds.)

We developed a hashtag, #BalPub and Twitter competition. As a finale, each publisher team was responsible for creating and performing a song based on the tune “Home on the Range,” with lyrics describing their tour experience.

Evaluation:

The Twitter competition generated more than 400 tweets over the 24-hour tour period with a total reach of over 60,000. The Publishers Tour was an immediate hit with the publishers and editors, evident by the numerous follow-up emails, editorial content, personal notes and industry information we received.