Hempel – From Paint Sellers to million € Energy Efficiency Advisors in 3 months

Baggrund

One of the big old Danish companies, Hempel, with more than 7.500 employees globally and servicing customers in more than 100 countries, has for a long time followed the industry wide GTM strategies, relying primarily on trade shows and network driven relationship selling.

During 2022, Hempel decided to speed up the digital transformation and re-think the industry’s approach to relationship sales. With the first pilot taking offset in a new marketing opportunity within the Marine segment – The CII (Carbon Intensity Indicator), initiated by the UN.

CII is a measure of how energy efficient a ship transports its goods or passengers, affecting more than 29.000 vessels globally. By 2023 all these vessels must comply with CII, or otherwise risk being taken out of service. Put simply, shipowners are obliged to improve the energy efficiency of their fleet.

For the industry this is a burning platform. For Hempel Marine a great opportunity – not only in commercially, but also as a chance to kick start a new way of approaching and driving the market.

Because what Hempel Marine does, hull coatings, is the key to make any ship glide effortless through any waters minimising water resistance and algae growth. Shipowners can with the right hull coating, reduce fuel consumption, save money and maintain a great CII-rating for years (ensuring their vessels are allowed to operate). A certain win-win for all.

However, Hempel had two big challenges:
1) Only very few within the maritime industry would ever think of coatings – paints – when considering methods for energy efficiency.
2) The upcoming regulations were just 9 months away and Hempel had to engage new decision makers and influencers, that are not responsible for hull coating, but responsible for operational excellence, sustainability and regulatory compliance.

The task was clear.
Hempel had to ensure that shipowners would not choose other, less effective, energy efficiency solutions, before considering hull coatings. To do so, they had to engage and change the perception of a completely new audience, to unlock different budgets that they were used to. Not just the standard coating budgets, but the bigger ‘energy efficiency budgets’.

Together with the B2B-focused commercial acceleration agency, BirdsAtFive, Hempel Marine initiated the project in the summer of 2022.

Løsning

The ambition was to transform the industry’s way of selling – from purely selling paints to selling energy efficiency solutions, by leveraging digital tools and distribution platforms.

Reaching this huge, untapped CII-market in time with the industry’s traditional tradeshow and network driven way of selling – wouldn’t do the job.

Therefore, to kick-off the project, Hempel initiated a very thorough process where sales, product and marketing took part to ensure the right insights and knowledge were shared and utilised across the organisation. From insights about the customer, market, competitor landscape, CII regulations to development of value proposition, messaging hierarchy and potential digital tools that could assist in fulfilling the ambitions.

After having sharpened the brief, a creative and digital planning process was initiated.

A creative process that had to solve the communication challenge lying ahead – making a new decision-making unit aware that one of their biggest pains could be solved with something as simple as hull coating. All while making sure that the complex technical details around energy efficiency were simply communicated, for the target audience to easily understand.

A planning process that had to put all the customer journey touchpoints together in one program design. From engaging the right target accounts and personas, to educating and converting them – across various digital touchpoints.

The creative solution was developed: “Paint your way”. Linking coating to the solution to the target groups most important pain point.

The program design involved multiple distribution channels and the creation of an advanced digital tool to showcase the impact of Hempel’s hull coatings on CII for a specific vessel – solving one of the target groups most urgent pain-points - while educating them on total cost of ownership and the ROI scenarios they face when choosing energy efficiency upgrades.
All elements that enables sales reps to become true energy efficiency advisors, not just paint sellers.

All-in-all, a transformative approach that cuts through the noise and stands-out in a conservative, product-focused industry. All of it rolled-out within only 2 months!