NEW MEDIA PAPER
NEW MEDIA PAPER
COMSTOR |
COMSTOR |
Brandgagement
michiel hutten
2054625
Brandgagement michiel hutten
2054625
2014
2014

Table of Contents Introduction 2 Chapter 1: Business description 3 Chapter 2: Brandgagement 4 Examples of succesfull brandgagement 5 Chapter 3: Applicability Comstor 7 Roadway for brandgagement 7 Recommendation 8 Bibliography 9

Introduction
In this report the possible applicability of brandgagement by Comstor is further clarified. The first part of this report contains a business description of Comstor. In the second chapter brandgagement will be explained. What is brandgagement? Which companies are using brandgagement at the moment? What are the benefits of brandgagement? What are the costs to introduce brandgagement by Comstor? When brandgagement is explained, the applicability for Comstor will be outlined.
Finally there will be some recommendations.

Chapter 1: Business description
This chapter provides a description of Comstor. There is a description of the core business, the Westcon group and the turnover. We will also take a look at the competitors and the global activities of Comstor.

Comstor is the leading Distributor of Cisco's advanced networking products. Comstor also sell a number of other brands, but the main brand they sell is Cisco. Comstor provides expertise and experience at each stage of the sales process, including consultancy, design, implementation and support for single site through to multi-site and multi-national environments. Comstor also provides the services, support programs, training, and tools needed to make companies more profitable and competitive.

Comstor is part of the Westcon Group. Westcon Group, Inc. is a value added distributor of category-leading unified communications, network infrastructure, data center and security solutions with a global network of specialty resellers. The company’s Comstor business unit is a dedicated provider of all Cisco networking, collaboration and data center solutions.
The subsidiary Comstor has a turnover of USD 80 million in the last year and had a market share of approximately 50 % distributed among the different product lines. This company had the largest market share in the Dutch market for Cisco products. In addition to Cisco Products Comstor also sells products that support Cisco solutions. This is about 10% to 20 % of total sales . Now the company is coming to the end of its year, it becomes clear that there is a growth of approximately 10%.

The company has two main competitors: Tech Data and Ingram Micro. These competitors sell alongside Cisco, HP and Dell products. So these companies have a broader portfolio of products . Comstor is the only distributor that sells all the Cisco products. can sell Comstors two competitors can only sell a few specialized products of Cisco and these are often expensive products. These products can only be sold with certain certifications and Comstor has these certifications as divided among the account that the team collectively knows everything about the Cisco product. The business as a sole distributor also has a warehouse in the Netherlands so there ' next business day ' can be delivered.
In addition to a distribution center in Houten, the company also has a large storage in England and Germany.

Chapter 2: Brandgagement
In this chapter the term brandgagement will be described. What does it mean? Which companies use it? What can a company do with it? What are the benefits? All these questions are answered in this chapter. It also identified a number of companies that make extensive use of brandgagement.

What is brandgagement?
"Intentionally engage your customers with your innovation, brand building and / or marketing '

This notion is further specified:

- Intentionally
We all know that today we have to listen to our customers. But not every company sees this as a welcome and positive development. Many/a lot of companies are even more afraid of their customers and that is why they are closing their doors, becoming more firm with hierarchies, copyrights, patents and terms of use.
However, modern companies see the input from their customers as valuable 'assets', and they open their doors open them intentionally for consumers.
They invite their customers explicitly to make their wishes and ideas known and have non - hierarchical processes developed with their input to go.

- Involvement Involving people is of course much more than "putting up a suggestion box." With brandgagement companies allow their customers to participate in their business 'innovation', ' brand building ' and ' marketing'. They treat their customers with respect and give them control.

- Customers
Brandgagement is not only the involvement of consumers, but also to the involvement of intermediaries such as business customers, wholesalers and retailers. It is therefore not limited to the B2C market. Precisely in B2B there is a lot to benefit from. This is why brandgagement is for companies that focus on B2C and B2B.

- Innovation, brand building and marketing
This sounds like every company do now, but that is of course not. Finance, management and human resources are out there for example. Brandgagement is after all about your brand ; your 'brand '. And that is outwardly shaped by your innovation, brand building and marketing / communications.

Why brandgagement?
Business leaders believe that their stakeholders, consumers, employees and influencers have valuable insights, and crowdsourcing people’s insights are one of the main drivers for leading innovation and change. We have a significant body of knowledge on crowdsourcing: including business rationale, application areas, best practices and case studies.
We have seen dedicated third-party crowdsourcing platforms in action for almost a decade and learned from their successes and failures.

What delivers it?/ What does brandgagement give you as a company?
- Criticism and commentary
- Ideas and Tips
- Help in brand building and marketing
- Help with sales and distribution
- Better service
- Opportunities to improve your knowledge and reputation

Examples of succesfull brandgagement
In this part are four successful stories of brandgagement described, regard to the following companies: * LEGO * Dove * Achmea * Lays

Example 1: LEGO’s Factory
In 2003, it was still very bad with LEGO. Very bad even; the company turned this year by as much as 1.4 billion Danish kroner loss. A few years later, everything is fine again, and we see this point at the top of its 'Future Strategy' points list are:

1. Direct dialogue between the LEGO Group and LEGO consumers to drive innovation
A closer relationship should be established between LEGO and the consumers. For example, loyal LEGO fans should be serviced through a number of measures, such as LEGO Factory.

The Board that set up the brandgagement project in 2004 apparently a brilliant success achieved a lot for LEGO.
LEGO's Factory is an especially 'innovation' directed brandgagement project; LEGO uses input from its customers (little customers) to increase its innovation and better align them. Their target group (children) invent all sorts of new structures, thus inspiring 'professionals' and simultaneously with all their activities to which things go their interests. That is of course a fantastic win-win situation.

Example 2: Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’
Unilever's agency Ogilvy & Mather won the 2006 Grand EFFIE, with a campaign for beauty products. which this time were not even models, but real consumers to see. And a Grand EFFIE - This award is for the most effective campaign of the year – one that really stands far above all gold, silver and bronze Effie where marketers already anyway would make a killing. And as if this was not enough to praise, he also won the prize: also became the advertiser as "Marketer of the Year 'honored. Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty 'is the world's most successful 2006 campaign in 2006.

With this gorgeous, very bold brandgagement Dove campaign hangs its entire brand experience to the beauty of its customers. While all competitors with their 'beautiful top models' campaigns are still above their customers, step Dove of the ladder and has abandoned her client made the hero.

Example 3: Achmea ‘You’d rathor not think about’
A third example is an oldie, because I have encountered, the customer in its marketing involves so many different ways simultaneously. No other campaign than Achmea's 'you’d rathor not think about'-launch campaign slogan was consumers in three different ways involved.
First in the creation. The customer asked a (fake) newspaper together, by adding text and image to one of three basic story to add. Then at the range selection: given the customer for whom the expression was intended, and his expression was there go-ge narrowcast. And finally in the distribution: the recipients of these expressions supported the dissemination of the campaign through this - at their discretion customized - yet again send (viral marketing) flows through.

Example 4: Lays
One of the most successfully brandgagement champagnes of the last years is the champagne of Lays. Customers can choose their own favorite taste crisps. Thereafter Lays choose 3 tastes and let the people of the Netherlands choose which they like the most. The winning taste will be introduced in all supermarkets.

Of course there are many more examples of more or less successful brandgagement campaigns.

Negatifs
A quote from Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows brandgagement is not always successful:"You can't just ask customers what they want and give that to them. By the time you get it built they'll want something new."

Below is an example of a failed brandgagement champagne of Chevrolet.

Chevrolet AVEO
Chevrolet thought it was a good idea to pick out a few teams of students and put them in some massive cars. Then they had to do some Big Brother like antics.
Fourteen students were put into seven parked Chevrolet AVEO's. They performed tasks of a loved weblog. The idea was to show how large the car was. But the campaign shows just how tight the car actually was.
On the picture you can see how little space the students have.

What are the costs of brandgagement?
The cost of brandgagement can greatly vary. As you can see in the four examples, there are many ways of brandgagement. You can ask a few customers to create his favorite taste(like Lays) but you can also set up a forum. Even a company with a small budget can use brandgagement.

Conclusion
Brandgagement is intentionally engage your customers with your innovation, brand building and/or marketing. Brandgagement is a good way to involve your customers in your innovation. It’s very important to listen to the wishes of your customer to fill their needs. A lot of successful brandgagement champagnes showed that brandgagement can be very profitable. It’s not expensive to set up a brandgagement champagne and companies can do it on many ways.

Chapter 3: Applicability Comstor
In this chapter the researcher examines the applicability of brandgagement on Comstor.
As Chapter 1 indicates, brandgagement focusses on the B2C and B2B market. Also for the B2B market brandgagement can be very attractive.

The easiest way to involve your customers in your business is to start a blog or a forum. You keep this communication initiative in their own hands, but it allows you to open questions, comments and criticisms. Bolder is starting a wiki; a website that lets you and your customers change the content of the website. a website that not only you but also your customers may change the content and complete.

Roadway for brandgagement
A company that wants to make brandgagement use should take into account a number of things. Thus, for example, needs to be well thought out first what the company wants to achieve exactly what the added value for the costumer and whether this is actually one of his needs. For convenience, formulated the steps that lead to the effective use of brandgagement.

Step 1: Identify the objectives of the consumer
The company should analyze the costumers needs. what the needs are of the costumers.With that information Then a company they can anticipate by examining what the the demands that consumers have of their business and what expectations they have.

Step 2: Identify spear consumers
These are consumers that your company / brand help with understanding the needs and problems of life with them. A company should first check whether these customers know what they are talking about. There are a number of consumers who need their fellow consumers want help with finding solutions to their challenges. These are consumers who want to share their inventiveness and creativity happy with your company / brand. They help the company to encourage them to be creative.

Step 3: Select contact staff
At all times there consumers must be able to have personnel contact with employees of a company available. The contact staff is a group employees of the company that help consumers like to help with getting answers to their questions and they give them solutions for there problems to their challenges. Examples are product developers, engineers and the PR department. Also there is need that the ins and outs of all participants to keep an eye on staff.

Step 4: Set goals and a budget
A company does well needs to consider the following question, before proceeding to propose:
What we would like to 'soft' areas such as respect, commitment and loyalty to the project achieve? What the project must yield under financial line? And how can these be measured? How much money and resources are provided for during the period the brandgagement project is available?

Step 5: Select / define the resources to be
Internet makes it possible to use. A variety of resources Therefore needs to be carefully examined what it means and what resources will not continue. Use Thus, for instance, action sites, blogs, wikis, coapplicaties, widgets and games are among possible means.

Step 6: Plan the construction and set deadlines
Make sure that the whole is described in detail in documents. It is also important that these documents are discoverable and attend the parties. The company would be wise to use only for business and consumers, the spear is visible. Trial version first This plan early and handle that schedule. Plan well in advance of the date on which the final version will go live.

Step 7: Monitor the results and make adjustments
After the trial is conducted it should be. Thoroughly thoroughly analyzed It should be pre-conceived how the results are measured, recorded and will be processed. It is also important to establish that indicate when the process needs to be adjusted.

Recommendation
Brandgagement is certainly applicable for Comstor. At the moment they don’t use any kinds of brandgagement.
First I would recommend starting an online forum. On this forum, customers can add reviews and give advice. The forum should be a kind of a chatbox. One employer should be ready to answer the chatbox in only a few minutes. so he can asked questions about the reviews. The costs of this activity are low but will lead to a lot of input from consumers not high. Setting up an online forum is easy for the personal to build. The forum should look like this picture below.

Picture 2: Link to forum

Picture 3: Forum

Secondly I would recommend to invite a few customers and let them talk about their product needs. Invite five of the main customers of Comstor. What kind of products do they want? What kind of service do they expect? When Comstor has an answer on all this questions, they can improve their service and also their products.
Bibliography
Books
Ulco Schuurmans, 2010. Handboek Digitale Marketing & communicatie

Websites
Comstor, 2014. http://uk.comstor.com/content/overview. Laatst geraadpleegd op 4-6-2014.

WikiFoundry, 2012. http://sbrmk3a1.wikifoundry-mobile.com/m/page/Brandgagement. Laatst geraadpleegd op 4-6-2014.

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[ 1 ]. http://uk.comstor.com/content/overview
[ 2 ]. http://sbrmk3a1.wikifoundry-mobile.com/m/page/Brandgagement