GyroHSR | B2B Agencies Top Agencies

Major 2010 campaigns: Chicago Board Options Exchange, “Now Public,” print, online, out-of-home, events; Scotsman Ice Systems, “Luv the Nug,” online; USG Corp., “The Weight Has Been Lifted”

Comments: Increased overall agency revenue by about 7%; won new b2b accounts including Blue Coat Systems, Corn Refiners Association, FedEx (EMEA), Heathrow Express and Tetra Pak

Rick Segal, worldwide president-chief practice officer at GyroHSR, New York, gave a controversial speech in Berlin in December, declaring that “b2b marketing is obsolete.” The new paradigm, he said, is: “Work is no longer a place; it is a state of mind.”

It is this trailblazing approach to seeking new ways of communicating with business audiences that has contributed to GyroHSR’s continued global growth and the development of innovative marketing campaigns for clients.

Last year, GyroHSR grew its overall agency revenue by about 7% to $79.0 million and picked up new clients including Blue Coat Systems, Corn Refiners Association, FedEx (in Europe, the Middle East and Africa), Heathrow Express and Tetra Pak.

It also developed creative marketing campaigns for existing clients, such as Chicago Board Options Exchange, Scotsman Ice Systems and USG Corp., founded on its new way of thinking about business audiences and how to reach them with information.

“The dynamics of business decision-making and the lives of business decision-makers have changed,” Segal said. “There is a very fast convergence happening between work life and home life.”

For USG Corp., which makes drywall and other building materials, GyroHSR developed a campaign called “The Weight Has Been Lifted,” demonstrating how USG’s lightweight Sheetrock panels literally take the weight off the backs of installers in the building industry.

“When we looked at USG and this space of decision-maker, using the at-work-state-of-mind model, we found that one way to reach Hispanic installers is connecting with them through family and social networking,” Segal said.

To reach this audience, USG launched a mobile campaign giving away free cups of coffee at youth soccer games, and it put SMS texting instructions on the drywall itself so installers could text for more information.

For client Scotsman Ice Systems, GyroHSR developed a campaign called “Luv the Nug,” aimed at consumers with the intent of driving b2b sales of Scotsman ice machines to restaurants and distributors.

In doing research on soft nugget ice, which is made by Scotsman ice machines, “We learned that there is a significant amount of social media conversation about the ice cubes used by Sonic [restaurants],” Segal said. “Our client makes the machines that make those cubes, and there is expressed consumer preference for that particular type of ice.”

So GyroHSR developed a social media campaign promoting Scotsman ice cubes to fans of the soft nugget ice.

“We were able to accelerate the social chatter to create analytics that fed back into sales collateral and material for people selling the machines,” Segal said. “This whole program is creating the reason why customers ought to specify and procure Scotsman—there is preference for it.”

GyroHSR also developed a traditional print, online and out-of-home campaign for the Chicago Board Options Exchange called “Now Public” to announce the company’s initial public offering last year.

Using black-and-white imagery offset by CBOE’s blue logo,

GyroHSR placed ads in key trade magazines, on financial websites and in outdoor locations near CBOE’s Chicago headquarters.

To handle its international growth, GyroHSR named 11 new executive creative directors in offices including Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, London, Paris and San Francisco.

“2010 was perhaps one of the most important and significant years in our development,” Segal said. —K.M.

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