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A complex marketing campaign - involving national promotion and large volumes of branded merchandise - requires an agile, responsive supply chain that integrates people, processes and technology to achieve seamless fulfilment. This point was succinctly demonstrated by the success of the XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket campaign.
A golden pitch
Lion-Nathan and its agency partners developed the XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket series from the ground up, rather than sponsoring an existing sporting event like many competitors. The result was an event with strong appeal for Lion- Nathan’s target market: family guys with a love of sport, particularly cricket.
In 2007, over seven million viewers tuned in to the beach cricket broadcasts on Network Ten and various overseas stations. The series fielded teams from Australia England and the West Indies, featuring former greats like Allan Border, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson.
Last year, 100,000 people visited the official XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket website, and some 400,000 pieces of merchandise were redeemed or sold. In 2008, Lion-Nathan wanted to make this year’s series even more successful.
“The 2008 XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket Tri-Nations series took in an additional city –
Adelaide – and provided more seating capacity for spectators,” says Andrew Coates, XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket director. “And the line-up of teams included New Zealand who replaced the West Indies from 2007.”
Logistics test
The logistics behind the event were extremely demanding due to the momentum generated by the marketing campaign. The order rate for merchandise, which has to be personalised and assembled prior to shipment, rose rapidly during November and reached a sharp peak before Christmas (from about 350 orders a day to nearly 800). Rapid response and operational flexibility were key factors in Lion-Nathan’s decision to engage specialist logistics provider Markitforce.
“Markitforce was the only company we could find to effectively execute the XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket promo for us”, says Stuart Marsh, XXXX Gold brand manager for Lion-Nathan. “Without them, we would have struggled to put this promotion out to the market.”
The series started in Perth, travelled to Sydney via Adelaide and ended in Coolangatta, all within two weeks in January. The promotion began in October with cases of XXXX Gold bearing codes for free beach cricket T-shirts and beach cricket kits offered at special prices. Lion-Nathan had set-up a website (www.xxxxgoldbeachcricket.com.au) where people could enter the codes and place their orders.
Online, people could select their T-shirt size, and provide the name or a catchphrase they want to have printed on the back.
“This was quite a challenge,” says Alan Higgins, MD of Markitforce, “as up to 70% of the 65,000 T-shirt orders were personalised. We employed stringent quality controls to ensure that names were spelled correctly, that duplicate claims were not processed, and that offensive names, words or phrases were caught before printing. You’d be surprised how many requests we got for these!”
Match preparation
Markitforce is a specialist 3PL provider focusing on the distribution of sales, merchandising, point-of-sale and promotional material, providing an end-to-end service for its clients. This allows clients like Lion-Nathan to concentrate on the promotion and running of the Beach Cricket series, without the distraction of the logistics required to support it.
The company handles much more than order processing and fulfilment, as the company also plays an active role in campaign execution, working directly with Lion-Nathan’s campaign teams, advertising partners and website designers.
“Markitforce has worked in close partnership with Lion-Nathan and our agencies since the inception of XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket,” Mr Marsh says. “They offer us excellent advice and have always delivered to a very high standard.”
Fast delivery
Most of the orders were captured via the purpose-built XXXX Gold Beach Cricket website and transferred to Markitforce daily for processing, personalising and dispatch. As the order rate rose during November, Markitforce employed additional staff and digital lettering presses to cope with the demand.
Promotional kits pose special challenges as they are comprised of components from a number of specialist suppliers. Markitforce assembled these kits in advance to ensure rapid turnaround. Inventory management is especially time-critical during the XXXX GOLD Beach Cricket tournament in January, as stock had to be moved from venue to venue for onsite promotional activity.
Another complication is managing the number of invalid claims, which include missing codes, T-shirt sizes or payment for freight. To deal with these issues, Markitforce employed dedicated administration staff during the campaign peak.
The inside edge
Markitforce uses Advanta’s Atlas 3PL Logistics system to support its operation.
“We couldn’t handle these kinds of volumes without a scalable and flexible inventory management system,” Mr Higgins says. “The system gives us a single, integrated platform that meets our diverse and unique needs.”
Advanta is a Sydney-based software house that develops and supports IT solutions for the third-party logistics market, encompassing both contract warehousing and transport operations.
“The Atlas system delivers more than order processing and inventory management,” he says. “It includes online reporting and business intelligence modules such as dashboard and KPI technology that allow us to provide our clients with valuable market insights.”
The reports Markitforce provides for the campaign team at Lion-Nathan include detailed order analyses like T-shirt sizes and delivery location, to enable more accurate stocking. Consumer mapping that highlights varying demand in different post code areas can also be provided.
A great partnership
Higgins says the right IT platform is crucial to running an efficient 3PL business.
“We chose a local supplier,” he says, “because we wanted to develop a fertile partnership, including the ability to suggest additional features and functions as the need arose. We now have that kind of relationship. If we’d gone with a large overseas company, we’d be a long way down the queue with little chance of having our clients’ special needs given serious attention.”
Initially, Markitforce only used selected modules of Advanta’s 3PL software suite like eZorder, an online ordering, stock control and catalogue system Markitforce offers its clients under the name Markitezy. Once logged into the system, users can view products, place orders and track them in real time.
Last year, Markitforce invested in the full contract warehousing solution, the ATLAS 3PL suite, and the new ATLAS BI (Business Intelligence) product. Higgins is convinced that the right technology is a strong competitive advantage for an innovative 3PL company.
Higgins says: “Scalability was a key requirement since we are growing rapidly with five sites throughout Australia and a new operation in New Zealand with plans to expand into Asia in the future.”
The success of Lion-Nathan’s Beach Cricket promotion shows how an effective partnership of agile supply chain and flexible, scalable IT platform can deliver the most complex and ambitious marketing campaigns.
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