Case study

From 300 marketers to 5—changing the mindset at Group-IPS

In 2017, Group-IPS undertook a strategic change. It included a new look at marketing, which until then had been done in some way by all 300 project managers. senseZOOM is now an integral part of the company and contributes to the overall company strategy. And the result? First and foremost, a unified professional brand reflects the new life phase of Group-IPS.

With a business change comes a marketing change

Clients such as Novartis, AB InBev, Shell, and GSK value the professional services of Group-IPS. Their expertise in construction project management is unquestionable and IPS has long believed that the best marketers are their engineers. However, they often wrote too technically, didn’t talk about many projects because they couldn’t name the client, and the company communicated on social media rather sporadically in less than professional English. Furthermore, each of the 15 branches handled marketing in its own way. That needed to come to an end.

In order for the company to move forward, it was clear that a big change had to take place, externally and internally. And that also meant having marketing and internal communications experts who could partner with management to implement change, devise an overall marketing strategy, recommend appropriate tactics depending on the business strategy, and so on. At the same time, the team should ensure that ideas are transformed into reality.

But how to appoint such a team?

In-house or outsourcing marketing

with 15 branches, it's a tough nut to crack

Group-IPS management had to select the right tactics to hire a new marketing team. Their options were:

1. Hire their own in-house team

But given the size of Group-IPS, they would have marketers spread across 20 offices in 15 countries. That's where the in-house advantage gets a little lost because the team only interacts with each other remotely.

2. To find a marketing manager who will build a team of external agencies

It is a real possibility, but certainly not cheap. It depends a lot on the skills of the manager in question and how they set up their processes and the whole ecosystem of external agencies, their project management, and other issues. Such a person is hard to catch, not to mention their replaceability.

3. Hire an external agency to handle marketing in all countries

In short, it handles everything with one team from one agency that takes care of strategy and execution, and if it doesn't have its specialists, it hires them in-house and stands behind them.

Yes, you guessed right, that this trio is the right one, and the choice fell on senseZOOM. This was because of our approach to projects and our experience in the industrial construction industry. And so, in 2018, a collaboration began that continues to this day, where you would never know the difference between IPS and senseZOOM employees. And that’s exactly what we want! But we are not just implementers; on the contrary. We are actively involved in developing a new strategy and devising new methods and activities, and we also implement everything step by step.

“The people at senseZOOM are part of our team; they even have our email addresses and provide us with the flexibility we need. We don’t have to deal with additional suppliers and tenders for sub-activities, we don’t burden HR with recruiting for creative professions. senseZOOM always supplies us with the team we precisely need.”

Juan Sanchez Chatar, CEO, Group-IPS

1. Clarifying the strategy

We clarified with the client what their business strategy is, their business channels, and what the organizational changes will be. We defined the target group, refined the positioning, what the brand should look like, and how Group-IPS wants to be perceived in the long term.

2. Unifying the communication

Unified communication To ensure that all clients perceive IPS in the same way in all countries, communication needs to be unified everywhere. That’s why we centralized marketing, allocated a core team, and created a unified marketing plan.

3. Original content Every month a different team

We had a strategy, we had a plan, and now we just needed to bring it to fruition. We create custom content for Group-IPS—develop the content, the film The Hub podcast, and videos, and make all marketing materials and visuals. We rotate the team on the client side depending on what’s needed. Sometimes we need more graphics, other times, we need a brand manager. That’s why someone a little different is in charge of Group-IPS every month.

Results of the Group-IPS and senseZOOM cooperation

In two years of working together, both parties have learned much. For example, we had to learn to speak the engineers’ language to convey information to the target group better, but there is much more. We are pleased that we are growing together with IPS, but also with the results we have achieved:

  • unification of the brand and visual communication
  • unification of external communication in 15 countries
  • creating a marketing strategy in response to IPS business changes
  • creating original content to differentiate ourselves from the competitors
  • producing The Hub podcast with an average viewership of 20/month
  • increase in LinkedIn followers to 12,000
  • increased brand awareness through targeted PR
  • transparent internal communication

What's next? Maintaining direction

At Group-IPS, they dealt with the change that sometimes awaits every company—they had to reflect on the new era and their growth to realize where they were heading, what they and their clients wanted, and what they needed to do to get there. This is certainly not an easy change, and external and internal communication is critical. We are delighted with IPS’s confidence in us and are constantly working to improve current activities and invent new ones. However, it is also essential to maintain the direction that has been set. And we at senseZOOM will continue to help with this and look forward to all the challenges that this will bring.

Want to know more about Group-IPS? Check out their website, give The Hub a listen, and let us know how you like it.

“senseZOOM’s enthusiasm, entrepreneurship, and initiative are amazing. Their experience and approach made us realize how important marketing is to our strategy. I would recommend senseZOOM to anyone in a similar situation to where we were back in 2017.”

Juan Sanchez Chatar, CEO, Group-IPS