Melina Borgmann from Mammut in interview
Melina, tell us a little bit about MAMMUT and your job in the marketing team.
When Kaspar Tanner opened a rope factory in Dintikon, a little village in the Canton of Aargau in Switzerland in 1862, after completing his apprenticeship, he certainly could not have imagined what would become of it. Only decades later, the company was named „Mammut“. What began as a small rope manufacturer has become one of the largest global outdoor groups, with the expertise of over 150 years. Every day, Mammut produces equipment, shoes and clothing that defy the toughest conditions – on the mountain, on the climbing wall and in urban areas.
Our tasks in the marketing team are quite extensive and varied. In addition to the more than 1,000 field customers and most important key accounts in Germany, our team also attends to many dealers in the Benelux region. Our aim is to provide retailers with the right tools every day and to design individual options so that Mammut as a brand receives a strong omni-channel representation with each of our partners.
What are your goals, especially in trade marketing, and how do you want to specifically involve and support your dealers?
Looking ahead to the next five years, our success will largely be based on strategic pillars with which, among other things, we strive for healthy growth – but not growth at any price. We want to achieve this by placing consumers at the center of everything we do. And by developing an all-encompassing customer focus from design to product development to sales.
Our “new “ focus on consumers also means that we are continuously striving to understand their needs even better and to find out how we can reach them in the various channels and above all through our trading partners. As a result, we are creating a Mammut brand world for consumers – with the aim of providing them with unique experiences, products, and services. We are creating an ecosystem for our fans, consumers, for ourselves and other stakeholders.
What has changed through the use of the socialPALS platform to this effect?
The cooperation with socialPALS was a very helpful opportunity to ensure seamless communication of our Mammut brand world with local dealers as well. In this group in particular, it has not always been possible to guarantee the recognition value of a campaign, taking our CI and other requirements into account.
socialPALS was the crucial interface here, which made it easy for retailers with little social media knowledge to exploit the full potential or our campaign content. From my point of view, the cooperation and the relationship with local dealers have benefited enormously from this.
The socialPALS platform gave us a new perspective with regard to stationary sales channels. This will also be of use to us in the future in order to be able to organize the sale of our products and services even more successfully with tailor-made local campaigns.
Can socialPALS help increase retailer awareness regarding online marketing?
I think for many of the social dealers, online marketing is still comparable to an expedition on an eight-thousander. Such a project requires a lot of preparation, know-how and the right equipment. So it’s great if you can still rely on one or two tips from the local Sherpas before the tour. For me, socialPALS is like a sherpa in digital marketing.
Due to positive factors such as the usability of the platform, the good price-performance ration of advertisements and constant support, the retailer is never alone on the campaign path, which also creates good experiences with the tools.
If the expedition into the world of online business meets the partners’ expectations, feedback shows that they will also be prepared to invest more in online marketing in the future. socialPALS is therefore certainly helpful as an entry into the digital world.
Do you already use other tools to provide your retailers with digital content? Why is the use of socialPALS still interesting for you?
So far, we have always used a media server to provide the necessary content. Here, as with most other brands as well, the individual product images, texts and videos are made available in the form of download links.
Usually, downloading and entering the files is of course not rocket science, but time-consuming.
In order to create meaningful campaigns on the retailer’s channels, it is “unfortunately” not enough to download our content. And if the partners do not have their own social media department, a large part of the content made available for sell-out support remains unused due to a lack of time or a lack of know-how. This is exactly where we wanted to accommodate our dealers. By using socialPALS, we were able to ensure that the factors mentioned are no longer an obstacle to implementation.
How difficult was it to introduce socialPALS internally or ultimately to implement it?
The great thing about working with socialPALS was that we were already able to add some positive references from our sales force and other brands as examples. Therefore, after the first internal discussions, in which the potential within the cooperation was outlined, it was quickly decided. After all, we didn’t want to lose unnecessary time with implementation and onboarding and instead put our heads together.
I was particularly pleased with the initial feedback from our sales force. Many of our partners were interested in participating in the campaign as soon as they heard the first details. This enthusiasm was felt to a certain extent in the conception and was also taken into the implementation.
How great was the effort for you internally to set up or implement the campaign?
First of all, the three of us took the time to assess the chances and the supposed potential within the use – this was the greatest effort. After that, we quickly agreed as a team that one person was completely sufficient for the implementation.
The use of the platform is intuitive, as long as you are not completely unfamiliar with the basics of e-commerce. Even in this case I am sure that quick help and support is guaranteed by socialPALS. In my previous job, I had to do with online advertisements and campaigns a lot and consider the effort involved in creating the campaign to be relatively low in relation to the output. I think that this is also one of the platform’s great strengths. Probably anyone would be able to do it, as it is almost self-explanatory after the first few clicks and introduction.
How difficult was it to motivate the retailers to participate and how did socialPALS support you in this?
It was not difficult for us to convince the dealers to participate. The selection of our contents was definitely a big advantage. The launch of a new Eiger Extreme collection is always something special. In combination with impressive images and texts that bring breathtaking impressions of expeditions in the ice to life, it is an appealing topic. And it is also one that benefits from an additional application due to its exclusivity or the price point with smaller retailers.
However, if you cannot reach the contact person of the respective retailer for onboarding, even the strongest content is of little use. In order to be able to start the campaign promptly, socialPALS was an important interface in this regard by actively approaching our partners and being constantly available for queries.
How are things going with MAMMUT and socialPALS? Are there any plans for further campaigns?
I think it’s almost in the nature of a marketer to constantly have new and wild ideas for the implementation of campaigns. How things will go on in concrete terms remains to be seen.
What is certain is that by using the platform we have gained a new and efficient option for display. I look forward to future projects that can be implemented again with socialPALS.
Melina, thank you very much for the interview!
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