Dell looks to evoke ‘emotional connection’ with Glasgow 2014 push

Dell is looking to the activation around its sponsorship of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games to raise awareness that it offers more than just desktops and laptops and to drive a more emotional connection with the brand among business decision makers.

Video: Dell Commonwealth Games teaser video

The brand, which is the official IT hardware and data centre supplier to the Games, is set to launch an integrated marketing campaign to appear across print, outdoor, VOD and digital display six months before the opening ceremony on 23 July.

The campaign builds on the brand’s wider “Power to Do More” marketing platform and features a video series of real-life stories about athlete ambassadors such as Scottish 800m runner Lynsey Sharp and Glasgow 2014 staff such as its CIO Brian Nourse and athletes’ village accommodation manager Caroline Rogers who have used Dell products to prepare for the Games.

A two-minute teaser video (above) will be promoted across Dell’s social media accounts, featuring glimpses of the stars of the series and how the brand is “powering” Glasgow 2014.

The activity is aimed at business decision makers, particularly those in the North of England and Scotland a location where Karen Morton, Dell EMEA brand director, told Marketing Week the company has a huge opportunity to grow. Media booked includes an eight month out of home placement inside Glasgow Airport and a partnership with the Glasgow Herald.

Morton says the aim of the sponsorship is to support sports and business people at a grass roots level and to shift awareness and perception of the brand.

She adds: “Our challenge is that Dell has been in the UK for 25 years and we are so well known and had such high brand awareness for being about selling laptops and desktops. Now we have evolved to become an end to end solutions provider and the challenge for us is getting that across.

“I want people to come across the content and say ‘Gosh, this is something different from Dell’ and therefore have a more emotional connection with the brand.”

Last September Dell’s shareholders approved a $24.9bn (£15.6bn) buyout by founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake partners, ending its 25-year history as a public company.

It came a month after Dell reported a 72 per cent decline in profit, highlighting the stiff competition it faces in the personal computing space as consumers increasingly opt for mobiles and tablets from the likes of Samsung and Apple.

In recent years Dell has made a number of billion dollar acquisitions in an attempt to follow in IBM’s footsteps in reinventing itself from relying on the sales of consumer hardware to becoming an enterprise computing company.

Last year, Dell’s UK and Ireland general manager Sarah Shields told Marketing Week how the company was tasking its marketers to take on a “try something new” strategy in order to find new ways of communicating with customers beyond the traditional product catalogues and TV campaigns.  

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