Knauf - Are you missing something?

Our client for this campaign is Knauf, a leading multinational producer and supplier of building materials and constructions systems. In the UK the brand is synonymous with high-quality plasterboard. This enviable level of awareness does come with a challenge: how do you get your target audience to also see you as a manufacturer and supplier of a much broader range of innovative products and systems?

Knauf commissioned us as lead creative agency to create and drive an engaging multi-channel campaign to raise awareness of its other categories of products to a broad audience of influencers, buyers and decision-makers, from architects and specifiers through to contractors, sub-contractors and installers. Knauf’s success as a manufacturer and supplier of gypsum-based products and systems for the construction industry is well known. However, it’s for its core product, drywall, that Knauf has become identified. This is great but does present a challenge – when you’re really great at something, how do you convince people that you have so much more to offer?

Knauf’s newly reconfigured marketing team wanted a campaign that
reflected the energy and confidence the organisation has in its less well known products and systems, including doors that disappear into wall cavities, engineered floor panels that are inherently strong and ceiling systems that save installation time. As well as effective delivery of the market development message to a segmented audience, it also wanted to create a buzz around the campaign itself – success meant people talking about Knauf, not just awareness of new categories of products.

Broad objectives were developed:

• Raise general awareness of the Knauf brand amongst target
audiences (contractors, specifiers, architects) through a multichannels approach and creative that marks out Knauf as being different and a more energetic brand that its competitors.
• Change perception of Knauf as being ‘just a drywall specialist’ and highlight other categories of innovative products.
• Reinforce the quality of Knauf’s core product and ensure that the ‘brand equity’ enjoyed by the drywall product is shared with other Knauf products.

Within these aims were ‘markers’ that had to be hit; the segmented audience (architects, contractors and sub-contractors) required differentiated messaging and were targeted with different products and systems.

Leading a project team of other retained agencies (both PR and paid search experts), we tackled the problem head-on and created an entertaining, engaging campaign that openly challenged the audience perceptions of what the Knauf brand stands for by asking the simple question: Are you missing something?

Initial desk research for the project and in-depth discussions with the client revealed two key insights:

1. Most construction industry campaigns tend to adopt a workmanlike approach, focusing on communicating technical or data-driven information. These campaigns seem to reflect an unspoken wisdom that to be taken seriously by the industry, you had to act seriously.

2. A reason Knauf’s previous attempts to extend brand equity from its core drywall offer to some of its other truly innovative products and systems may not have achieved the desired results was that it started ‘the conversation’ by talking about the new category of products, rather than acknowledging the fact that they were seen as something of a ‘one trick pony’ and then subverting expectations.

We used these two frustrations as the springboard for our creative and conjured a world where unsuspecting Knauf customers were confronted with breath-taking spectaculars and unmissable extravaganzas. All they needed to do to be part of the jamboree was (literally) look past the plasterboard. This playful approach tackles the central issue of the campaign head-on. It challenges the target audiences to ask themselves if they are missing something spectacular, important and, frankly, unmissable by focusing on just drywall. The creative features acts, film sets, can can dancers, magicians and more, hidden behind sheets of drywall and flexing effortlessly across channels.