Bringing Clarity to Guardian’s museum campaign

When global glass manufacturer Guardian Glass decided to pursue the museum sector as an exciting new market for its Clarity™- anti-reflective glass, it was clear that they needed a different approach that would appeal to this specific audience. 

Guardian turned to Mason Bower, their creative agency, and EMG, their content and media relations partner, to combine strengths in developing a dedicated museum display campaign.

Andrew Wilkins, Marketing Communications Manager, Guardian Glass Europe, explains: “We wanted to create awareness amongst museum curators/directors that optical barriers in display cases can be eliminated by using Guardian Clarity – and in turn generate market pull-through demand from their suppliers.”

Driving curiosity and appeal with the museum community ‘The unseen hero’ was developed as the creative hook and supported by museum curator/director testimonials about the use of Clarity in museum exhibits.

An integrated communications road map generated a continuous flow of information built around a dedicated microsite, video testimonials, story development, highly targeted media outreach, and case studies plus traditional media advertising as well as banner ads and Guardian participation in relevant events.

In just 8 months our media outreach led to around 300 stories referencing Guardian in media focused on the museum sector. We worked with the Guardian team to identify application stories and testimonials that highlighted installations from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The print and digital media campaign involved 10 carefully curated and influential museum titles, sites and newsletters across Europe.

We created extensive exposure for Guardian as a sponsor of the Museums + Heritage Awards for Excellence 2016 programme. And coordinated Guardian’s presence at the 24th General Conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM 2016) in Milan, Italy, as both a “Gold Sponsor” and exhibitor; taking care of stand design and build, organizing and distributing the targeted promotional materials, and arranging pre-show media coverage as well as a series of on-site media interviews for Guardian’s executives with key editors.

The integrated outreach and promotional activities made one thing clear -- Guardian Clarity glass delivers the properties and performance sought by museum directors and showcase builders and as a result has begun to stake out its turf in the museums sector.

Andrew concluded: “The campaign delivered not only an impressive number of page visits, but importantly also resulted in dozens of requests for samples and further information. This enables us to raise interest and convert into business opportunities which are at the core of all our communication programs.” 

 

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