Catalyst Cloud: we’ve made marketing NZ tech BIG

In a nutshell

Catalyst Cloud were given All of Government approved status in early 2022, allowing the 100% Aotearoa owned and operated cloud provider to operate on a level playing field with American-based AWS and Microsoft.  Our job was to convey Catalyst Cloud’s new, uniquely local status while significantly growing awareness, on a very modest tech marketing budget. We used high impact creative and outdoor advertising – and went BIG!

 

What was needed

Catalyst Cloud were given All of Government approved status in early 2022, finally allowing the 100% Aotearoa owned and operated cloud provider to offer their services to New Zealand Government agencies on a level playing field with American-based AWS (Amazon) and Azure (Microsoft). This new status was granted against a backdrop of, what we knew anecdotally and from quantitative survey results, to be a very low level of awareness among Government IT decision makers.

This is significant, especially in the context of New Zealand’s updated privacy legislation, because data sovereignty is of increasing concern to many New Zealanders, especially many who whakapapa Māori. Not only does the location of data-centres matter (as at May 2023, neither Amazon nor Microsoft can yet offer cloud computing here in Aotearoa) but the country in which companies are based determines the data protection and privacy laws that apply to data that company holds.

For instance any cloud providers with head offices in the USA are subject to the CLOUD Act, which gives the US Government greater powers than NZ legislation allows. We love working with a cloud company that is so fiercely passionate about New Zealanders’ data. Our job was to convey Catalyst Cloud’s uniquely local status while significantly growing awareness, on a very modest tech marketing budget.

How GoodSense helped

After working as Catalyst Cloud’s outsource marketing team for several years, creating a firm foundation of content-based marketing, using LinkedIn and media relations, it was time to recommend to our client they go BIG.  The highly defined target audience, of IT decision makers in government agencies, is notoriously hard to reach; they are low users of traditional media and expert users of ad blockers in digital media. However a significant portion of them work in Wellington Central, or travel in for work meetings regularly.  This geographical opportunity, coupled with the significant announcement, made outdoor advertising a suitable choice.

With very limited budgets, and a technical Business-to-Government story to tell, the creative would be all important.  We developed a clear creative brief and challenged our long-term collaborator and talented advertising copywriter, Philip Tetley-Jones, and his advertising design partner, Darryl Roycroft, to craft an outdoor advertising campaign that would sing.  The talented creative team presented us with two strong concepts. We then worked through pros and cons of these with the Catalyst Cloud team, choosing one concept to develop to full billboard designs and copy.

The winning outdoor advertising design treatment uses vibrant green zeroes and ones, the binary ‘off or on’ code in which all computer languages have their origins, to display a tūī, an iconic indiginous bird, in one creative and the beehive, New Zealand’s unmistakeable government building, in the other.  The billboard copy was crafted to be inspiring and bold, making it clear that Catalyst Cloud is Aotearoa’s Own cloud computing provider, and promoting the new government approved status.

The campaign ran across billboards (digital and printed), bus stop ‘adshels’ and flyposted posters in the Wellington Central area in April and May 2022, as well as at Wellington airport. The outdoor advertising campaign was accompanied with a highly targeted LinkedIn campaign, using organic and paid-for content posts and online advertising.

Because the outdoor advertising campaign budgets were too small for a media agency to undertake the planning and buying, we delivered this for our client in-house at GoodSense. Our client strategy director, Karen Short, worked with five different outdoor advertising providers to secure handpicked sites to give Catalyst Cloud the maximum impact, and adapting twice for covid-19 related disruption. Thanks Karen!

 

What this has meant for Catalyst Cloud

The external and internal impact was immediate; within the first weeks, loose contacts were offering introductions to key decision makers inspired by the ads and staff in government agencies were suggesting meetings.  The Catalyst Cloud team, and their colleagues in sister company Catalyst, have demonstrated their pride in the outdoor advertising campaign in their own LinkedIn posts and shares of the creative.  Even the project manager at Mediaworks has said this is a stand-out campaign.

“I was blown away by the energy and focus of GoodSense when we put our marketing campaign together – and the results are absolutely stunning. What’s more, we know our message has reached the right audience – major customers have mentioned that seeing the banners was what brought them to us. This is what happens when talent and values align so strongly, and we are hugely grateful to the GoodSense team for being our champions and spreading the word.”

Doug Dixon, CEO, Catalyst Cloud

“I love the creative & the strategic lens you have put on the campaign. The artwork looks so great, the colour is fantastic. I would love to put these forward to our marketing team to use as a best practice example. Thanks!”

Sarah Milligan, Business Development Manager, Mediaworks

“Together with the face to face activity that Catalyst Cloud has been focussed on, this campaign has fundamentally altered the awareness of Catalyst Cloud in the market. Whereas once no-one seems to know about us or had heard of us, now it is more likely than not that they have some awareness of who we are and what we do. Our strategically important All of Government market is far more aware and open to us and while still relatively early days, our AoG business is beginning to ramp up.

 

It has been wonderful seeing our name proudly and unmissably up in lights around Wellington. I was like a giddy school kid watching the electronic signs roll over at the stadium and elsewhere. The sheer scale of the Wellington Airport signs took me by surprise and the exposure they gave us to thousands of travellers a day, was incredible.

The images have a proud and prominent kiwi flavour which represents our company values perfectly. They all look amazing and the yellow/green hue really pops from a great distance.

 

The motivating messages now inform our customer discussions and are assisting customers understand just how Catalyst Cloud is different, and better, than their alternatives. This is exactly what we wanted.   We also figured the messaging and designs prominently in recent Wellington conferences sponsored by Catalyst Cloud so the investment has been and will continue to be well leveraged.

 

The organisation of the campaign by Karen and GoodSense was superb. Organising subcontractors and vendors is never easy and Karen dealt with some unexpected events in her stride. When one provider dropped the ball, Karen managed to secure high value extended electronic billboard coverage as compensation, which was a sensational outcome.  Karen and GoodSense were a pleasure to deal with throughout.”

Robin Whitaker, Head of Sales, Catalyst Cloud

 

To have a kōrero about how we can help make your ethical brand more famous, please do get in touch. We’d love to help