“Welcome Change”

VMware Brand-to-Demand Campaign, April 2021—October 2022

It was the end of the first year of the pandemic, an experience that challenged the world to think differently about everything. Our customers demonstrated incredible resilience as together we forged new approaches to productivity and profitability.

Our value became clear in this time: With our enterprise technologies, VMware could meet customers where they were and give them an unconditional path to where they wanted to be. It was a "welcome change," and we sought to capture that idea with this net-new brand advertising campaign, launched in April 2021.

Results

  • With a primary KPI of brand perception shift, our campaign drove a lift of 15 percentage points among ad-aware respondents (vs. unaware) when introduced in the US market in the first half of the fiscal year. In the second half, we built on that lift, raising it another 3 points.

  • When we subsequently introduced the new campaign into the UK, ANZ, India, Japan and Singapore, we saw an average brand perception lift of 4.3 percentage points, along with double-digit perception lift in key technology solution areas.

Stats

  • Markets: US initially, followed by the UK, ANZ, Japan, India, Singapore

  • Audience: Senior IT decision-makers; C-suite business decision-makers

  • Annual Budget: $25M US

Credits

  • Campaign strategy; brand-to-demand approach: Karin Tanaka, AJ Herrera

  • Visual strategy and brand-to-demand visual system: Susan Olsen, Molly Cover, Jef Tyler

  • Positioning, messaging and copywriting: Karin Tanaka, Wendy Kaplan, Greg Thomas, AJ Herrrera

  • Creative ideation: Karin Tanaka, Cathy Luo, Susan Olsen, Molly Cover, Jef Tyler, Lindy Groening, Rick Daniels, Jen Spoon, Wendy Kaplan, Amanda Galvez, Greg Thomas, Karla Ginzinger, Matthew Tincup, Sally Gardner, AJ Herrera, Gray Chapman, Impossible Engine, Aquent

  • Creative platform testing, quant and qual: Karin Tanaka, Lindy Groening, Amanda Galvez, Molly Cover, Susan Olsen, PSB Research

  • Visual creative: Susan Olsen, Molly Cover, Lindy Groening, Jef Tyler, Jesse Holden, Rick Daniels, Jen Spoon, Matthew Tincup, Sally Gardner, Impossible Engine, Aquent

  • Content marketing: Cathy Luo, Greg Thomas, Karin Tanaka

  • Website production: Cathy Luo, Houston Berry, Aquent 

  • Production and operations: Cathy Luo, Tara Hill, Aquent

  • Customer and partner recruiting: Dev Prabhu, Greg Thomas, Karin Tanaka

  • Media planning and execution: Karin Tanaka, Cathy Luo, Greg Thomas, Tara Hill, EssenceMediacom

  • Performance research, metrics and insights: Amanda Galvez, Karin Tanaka, PSB Research

  • Financial management: Karin Tanaka, Tara Hill, Dragomir Dachev, Usha Dhulipala, Nick Benson

  • Procurement: Catherine Jones, Bridget Whooley, Tucker Bass