Top Honors at 2006 TED "Best of the Best"
Marketing Awards for "True Colors™" Promotion

Hailed as the first promotion to ever earn electrical conduit a place in distributor showrooms — by way of hanging chimes made from the actual product — Allied’s True Colors™ promotion earned the top award in the Direct Promotion category for electrical manufacturers at the 2006 TED  “Best of the Best” Marketing Awards competition — the most prestigious marketing competition within the electrical construction industry.

The win was the culmination of a collaborative effort between Tyco Electrical/Allied and the Arends agency.

“Allied first came to us with a straight-forward problem to solve,” recalled John Arends, president and CEO of the ad agency based in Oak Brook, IL. “They were looking for ideas and communications that would help elevate the company’s new‚ proprietary color-coded EMT conduit above commodity status. Our solution was to create an entire new category in the electrical construction marketplace.”

The cornerstone of the program was a distributor promotion, called True Colors™, designed to garner new visibility and engagement with two key target audiences:  the channel, electrical distributors, and the channel’s core customers, electrical contractors. 

The Arends team created an innovative merchandising display — hanging chimes made out of color-coated metal conduit. A header at the top carried the branding message‚ while the dangler that rang the chimes served double duty by dramatizing the offer:  a 42” flat-panel HD television. Post cards for entering the TV set giveaway drawing anchored the dangler.

The displays were an instant hit. More than 1,200 chimes were deployed to distributor showrooms, and within the first four months, several thousand electrical contractors had filled out the postcards and/or registered on-line to participate in the promotion.

“We created the unique display with the intent to move the product from the back of the distributor warehouse out into the showroom,” explained Rick Sebok, vice president, strategic services at Arends. “Where conduit generally is perceived as a back-of-the-counter commodity item, our client’s product line and brand name moved to top-of-mind status among electrical contractors. We created a new tier of EMT conduit, and defined a new category of electrical power infrastructure products.”

The Arends team also crafted a direct mail component for communicating the compelling cost/benefit story for the new color-coded conduit — reduced installation time. The promotion’s creative concept, True Color™, also appealed to professional pride in workmanship. By specifying Allied/Tyco’s True Colors, contractors avoid time-consuming, unprofessional-looking, over-sprayed conduit runs.

The on-line component to the True Colors promotion featured a web microsite designed by Arends to excite and engage the channel, as well as to fulfill and convert inquiries into sales.

Long after the initial promotion ended and the winner received his HD TV, the popular chimes displays still hang in hundreds of distributor storefronts across America. Reacting quickly to the program’s success, Tyco Electrical, working with Arends, has expanded the True Colors™ theme to support a broader range of color-coded product applications.

The Arends agency is known for bringing the perfect balance of ideas, communications and branding to its clients through integrated programs that move markets, generate buzz and contribute to the bottom line.  Founded in 1958, Arends has produced winning results for a wide range of clients in the electrical industry, including General Electric, Tyco Electrical & Metal Products, Allied Tube & Conduit, Philips Lighting, Panduit, EESCO/Englewood, Communications Supply Corporation, SOLA and Advance Transformer Co. 

Arends provides a full range of brand marketing communication services, including brand development, advertising, sales promotion, interactive marketing, web site development, public relations and trade show programs for its clients — with an in-depth expertise in creating marketing and branding solutions for business-to-business firms in manufacturing, technology, transportation, electrical, and building products, systems and materials.

The TED  “Best of the Best” Awards recognize the finest marketing efforts in the electrical industry for campaigns occurring in 2005. Separated by sales volume, more than 45 awards were presented to electrical distributors and manufacturers in 10 categories, ranging from merchandising to events to product launches.

Winners of the 2006 TED “Best of the Best” Marketing Awards were announced at a special awards luncheon on April 24, 2006, during the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) annual meeting, in Orlando, FL. TED, the official publication of the NAED, received nearly 370 entries for the 2006 competition — up from 350 in 2005.