Godiva Ltd

Godiva, part of IDEX Fire & Safety, is the world's leading specialist emergency services equipment provider. They have been serving the firefighting community worldwide for over 85 years. Godiva champions specialists in the industry to convert and create new technology, whilst generating trust and building their heritage with innovative product launches, including SAMFlows.

SAMFlows

SAMFlows sits within a group of brands owned by IDEX Corporation. SAMFlows is an integrated waterflow control system that manages a vehicle’s pump, tank, intakes and discharges. SAMFlows removes the need for a complex fire engine pump panel. Instead, all pump controls can be completed effectively on a 10" intuitive touch-screen display.

Project Overview

To showcase their industry-leading trust, heritage, and innovation, Godiva Ltd reached out to Red-Fern to begin their digital transformation, ready for a European product launch, and to look at developing a solid long-term digital strategy.

The deadline for the agreed assets was June 2022, supporting the launch at INTERSCHUTZ, the world's leading trade fair for fire and civil protection, rescue and safety industries.

However, we saw potential beyond this. In addition to the assets required, we outlined our in-house capabilities and ideas to help reduce the sales cycles, optimise internal processes and achieve optimal marketing for products and services. So, here's how we achieved it!

Our Process

The four phases of the successful digital growth strategy

Discovery

To begin the project, we carried out a series of virtual discovery calls with Godiva. They gave us an overview of the business, how they were established, what the product is, why it’s needed, and what problem they were solving.

During the initial discovery phase, we realised that audience profiling and buyer persona development was critical to this project. We needed to understand how the terminology, language, tone of voice, locations and countries operated.

To collate the information we needed, we spoke with the Godiva Sales Team to understand their sales process, the challenges they faced, the content they needed to aid the sales process - and more. We also watched live virtual product demonstrations in Germany, to understand the product interface in-depth.

Strategy

We collated everything learnt and understood and created a positioning document, detailing a strategic working process, and an in-depth buyer persona and brand discovery document.‍

The positioning document included:

• Responsibilities in-house and externally
• Expectations broken down per core capability: marketing, technology, design, AR, brand, strategy, client services, and website
• Deliverables: timelines, expected delivery, launch, feedback, turnaround times
• Budgets

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The discovery document included:

All of the information gathered from the discovery phase created an in-depth buyer persona, audience profiling, and brand discovery document. This allowed us to deeply analyse their target audience and examine the Godiva and IDEX Fire & Safety companies in-depth.

This document is essential for everyone working, developing strategies, and creating content and assets for the SAM brand. This ensures marketing, technology, and bespoke systems are strategic and aligned.

The completed discovery document was passed onto IDEX Corporation stakeholders and  championed as one of the most detailed strategy documents they’d ever encountered across their desks. This has now opened up additional conversations to be a global partner of IDEX Fire & Safety - great news for Red-Fern!

Implementation

Once everything was agreed upon, our in-house specialists began the work on the digital transformation strategy. This covered all capabilities within the Red-Fern team.

Clear communication was maintained between the Godiva team and our technology, marketing, and project specialists. Internally, we had a weekly project meeting to discuss progression and timelines, and answer questions. This information was then relayed to the Godiva team to collate work and set expectations.

We kept things as simple as possible; this enabled the partnership to be transparent and followed the projected path detailed in the strategy and positioning document.

Red-Fern created an in-depth detailed strategy that encompasses all types of digital media for a global product launch for multiple languages and territories.

Strategy and Audience Research

Before any project can get underway, detailed and in-depth research needs to be conducted. This helps inform our strategy and give us real insight into who Godiva’s audience is. This forms part of our discovery month - a crucial element in truly understanding a client.

This Discovery Document outlined Godiva’s key stakeholders, including purchasers and OEMs, as well as some secondary audiences too and helped develop their tone of voice and content goals.

Godiva now uses this document as a benchmark for the whole company - and would like to see something similar created for the other brands in the IDEX Corporation. It’s so important for the Red-Fern team to create a document like this and constantly refer back to it, but the value it also brings to the client is paramount.
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Branding and Print

When Godiva started their partnership with Red-Fern, they needed to establish a brand name for its SAM product launch. Our Senior Designer, Summer, focused on their target audience, and the demo product interface and used this as a driving force for the inspiration behind the branding.

We created three brand identities and concepts. This was then finalised down to one concept - SAMFlows. The brand identity was then used across all marketing materials, augmented reality, website design, brand guidelines and user experience.

Website

From the insights gained from the buyer person and discovery documents, we identified that the website needed to be dynamic and innovative, but easy to navigate and understand. These were paramount factors for the SAMFlows buyer personas.

Firstly, we created the initial wireframes to organise information and create a seamless user experience. Once the wireframes were agreed upon, design concepts were overlaid onto the wireframes in Figma. This allowed us to present the concept and quickly make changes to the content and design.

The outcome achieved an immersive website on a new domain, including excellent navigation and consistent interface design cues throughout. The website was built into WordPress for easy management across the team.
Visit www.samflows.com to view the website
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Augmented reality

After understanding the sales process, we identified drawbacks of the SAMFlows product demonstrations. With our expertise, we proposed using augmented reality technology to save time and resources and shorten the sales cycle of a global product.

Godiva loved the idea! So we created an immersive augmented reality (AR) experience. We initially developed 3D models of their demo fire engine and SAMFlows interface in partnership with Burnley college students. These created the foundations of the AR experience and were repurposed as visuals across the entire website.

The AR experience is launched by scanning the QR code on printed assets, social media, email and the web. This allows sales and prospects to launch a desktop experience in seconds to demonstrate how SAMFlows delivers the waterflow, removing the need to ship a demo engine around Europe.
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Video

To visually promote SAMFlows, establish authority and educate the audience, a video was directed and created. This introduced the SAMFlows product, explained the benefits and unlocked the purpose behind SAMFlows on the fire ground.

We completed the following:

• Created an in-depth shot list and brief for a photographer in Germany
• Wrote a video script for a voice over artist
• Outlined a visual and descriptive video storyboard
• Virtually directed an external video crew in Germany
• Converted raw footage into the finalised product and brand video
• Optimised the video for various formats and digital channels
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The partnership

Attending the INTERSCHUTZ event, seeing the digital assets and printed materials in action is all part of us honouring and developing the growing, global partnership with IDEX Corporation and Godiva Ltd. This entire project was completed virtually. We’ve worked miles apart, but completed several successful product launches and achieved a cornerstone for the future.

We were ecstatic to beat off global competition and partner with a world-leading manufacturing company. This project touched every department and capability of Red-Fern, giving testament to the staff and the team for working hard and collaborating virtually, accurately and efficiently.