Marketing strategy maintains brand position for Wavin

The Solution

Osma and Hepworth were directly competing brands. Both had a strong presence with merchants and distributors, enjoying a loyal customer base.  From a business perspective it didn’t make financial sense to maintain two brands that were creating similar, if not identical products. It was decided Hepworth would be amalgamated into Osma, with Osma becoming the sole brand for plastic above and below ground drainage systems.

To understand the impact of this decision, research was conducted. This confirmed that brand loyalty across both product brands was very high, but it also illustrated that many customers didn’t know that Osma or Hepworth were owned by Wavin.

Fabrick worked with the senior leadership team on devising a marketing strategy to (1) inform the market that Osma would now be the primary product brand, and (2) raise the profile of Wavin as the parent brand. 

It was essential that merchants were made aware of the changes and understood the reason for doing so. The strategy looked at informing merchants from regional level through to branch managers, the telesales teams and counter staff. The counter staff and telesales teams played a critical part in the strategy as these were the individuals that engage with customers and have the ability to influence decision making.

Packaging, Point of Sale and a wider communications campaign was devised and targeted towards merchants and customers. As well as customers that purchased directly from their local merchant, consideration also had to be given to customers where supply agreements existed as well as the specification audiences of house builders, architects and engineers.

The project required close collaboration between the Wavin senior leadership team and Fabrick to ensure that communication was clear and effective so as not to impact overall brand perception. The ultimate aim was to ensure that customers of Hepworth simply switched to Osma, safe in the knowledge they were buying a quality product with which they were familiar.