With care comes commitment

Fisons Instruments, a separate operating division within the Fisons Group, was formed from several separately branded businesses providing sales and support services for laboratory analysers, ovens and centrifuges.

The requirement was to launch a new contract service support operation to the existing customer base. Fisons Careplan would combine and enhance the service operations of the previous businesses under a single brand identity.

The major challenge was to achieve contract conversion to Careplan without loss of customers.

A lot of time was spent establishing what were the key issues of importance to the customer base and to Fisons own staff.

That process revealed that the campaign would become as important an internal marketing issue as an external one. Although the new company had physically combined the previous business operations, the attitudes of the individual personnel - both on the road and within the office - still remained attached to the separate cultures of the previous brands.

It was as though little islands of autonomy had been established within a single business. If internal attitudes had not yet completed the transfer to the new business culture, how could we expect the customers to follow?

The campaign had to address both internal and external issues.

A combined education and marketing programme included customer and internal staff seminars and presentations supported with news papers, direct mail and key sector advertising and all material carried the line:

" With care comes commitment "

Although primarily targeted at customers, this was a message with equal significance to our client's own personnel.

Two further re-launches were undertaken in subsequent years.