Marketing Communications

66 CHAPTER 2 BRANDING

According to a recent employee survey, Barco managed

to keep high employee engagement after the brand redirec-

tions. For example, 72% of the employees agree or strongly

agree that they feel proud to work for Barco, 65% feel

motivated to go beyond their formal job responsibilities,

71% feel their job provides them with the opportunity to

do challenging and interesting work, 73% agree they are

treated with respect as individuals, and 89% agree that

the people in their team are committed to delivering

high-quality products and services. These findings are also

reflected in the fact that CRF Institute (an independent

company specialising in international working conditions

research) named Barco as one of Belgium’s ‘ Top Employers’

in 2011.

Next, it was time for Barco to practise what it preached.

The marketing communications campaigns for digital cin-

ema projectors launched in 2010 was the first test case of

the new strategy.

Digital cinema: from challenger to

market leader

Barco launched the first digital projector in 1999. Shortly

afterwards, the first generation of digital cinema projectors

followed. However, the market was not very interested at

that time. The main reason was that, for conventional pro-

jection, movie studios pay the costs of the film reels

whereas, for digital projection, the movie theatres them-

selves had to bear the huge costs of the expensive digital

projectors, with studios saving on distribution costs (a film

reel costs up to $1000 a theatre). With the launch of the

3-D movie Avatar , demand took off. At that time, there

were four digital projector manufacturers in the market:

Christie (the historic market leader in the cinema market),

Sony (strong consumer brand holding a dominant market

position from cameras to movie production), NEC (strong

consumer brand) and, as an underdog, Barco. Initially, all

offerings were technology-focused, with none of the com-

panies having a clear technological advantage as most

players – except Sony – used the same chipset from Texas

Instruments. Sony had an advantage as it had access to 4K

resolution technology (i.e. an image size of 4096 × 2160

pixels as compared with 2K or 2048 × 1080 resolution for

the other companies). However, digital cinema was not

driven by resolution but by 3-D. For 3-D there is 80%

light loss, therefore brightness is more important than

resolution. As Barco was strong in brightness, it held a

competitive advantage here. In contrast to the other three

players, it did not focus on the technical advantage though,

but built a brand-centred campaign. To strengthen the link

between Barco and digital cinema, the central element of

the campaign was a stinger movie which was shown at

tradeshows, at customer demonstrations, in Barco offices

and, most important of all, in cinema theatres before the

main movie. In line with the new branding strategy, Barco

looked at what its technology could do for the end-user.

Therefore, the stinger movie showed the magic of cinema

as experienced by a young boy and fireflies were used as a

metaphor for the light Barco was bringing. The headline

was ‘Projecting the magic’. Instead of overwhelming poten-

tial customers with the exact technological details, the

movie stressed the result of the extra brightness and

focused on emotion.

The stinger movie was not the only tool Barco used.

To maximise the impact of the campaign and to ensure

all target groups were reached, the stinger movie was

accompanied by an integrated marketing communications

campaign. To this end, Barco also made use of the following

marketing communications tools:

z Direct mailing to Film Echo magazine subscribers

z Ads in various trade press worldwide

z Dedicated website: http://www.projectingthemagic.com

z Online advertising (Manice, Cinema Today)

z Barco quarterly digital cinema e-newsletter

z Video on YouTube

z Social media: Twitter, Facebook (screensaver and

wallpaper)

z Presence and screenings at tradeshows (e.g. Showest,

USA; Cinema Expo, the Netherlands)

z Press release announcing the new projector range

The tradeshows were very important for Barco, resulting

in more than 1000 visitors a day. Importantly, it was able to

reach the whole industry at only four key tradeshows and

to generate 1200 leads, of which 250 were qualified. The

online campaign resulted in 6500 web visitors with more

than 34 000 page views. The stinger on YouTube resulted

in more than 2400 views with more than 800 downloads

of source files from barco.com. E-blasts had a read rate of

47% and a click-through rate of 23% (as compared with an

industry average of 1%). But, most importantly, Barco

created massive credibility in the industry.

How did the competitors try to counter Barco’s attack?

Sony played even more on 4K and Christie copied Sony

by announcing 4K projectors as well, even though Texas

Instruments would not have the chip for 4K ready. However,

according to industry specialists, 4K is nothing more than

a marketing hype and brightness is more important as

far as 3-D projection is concerned. Barco would soon have

4K projectors ready, but did not want to comprise the sales

of its 2K projectors. To this end, Barco responded to

Christie and Sony in a three-phased approach: (1) a viral

campaign; (2) the launch of the 4K projector at the opening

night of Cinemark; and (3) a Guinness world record. For

the viral campaign, Barco hired Peter Knight, a free lance

projectionist and valued guest writer in industry magazines.

He travelled from Europe to Orlando (where Barco will

later launch its 4K projector) and interviewed key

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