November 16, 2000
Case Study

Doublecuff.com Achieves High Visibility in London with a Marketing Budget of Just £100,000

SUMMARY: No summary available.
CHALLENGE
Keen to establish an online presence quickly and effectively, City recruitment firm Marshall Warburton enlisted the services of Content Content Ltd New Media. Their brief was... brief, but challenging – to create a site and establish it as one of the foremost City niche recruitment sites amongst both candidates and clients in such a way that it could also develop as a City portal. The business plan focussed on clients paying to use the site as an adjunct to their HR departments, as opposed to the more traditional commission-on- placements model. All activity therefore needed to fulfil a B2B objective as much as B2C.

CREATIVE

In order to encompass the core proposition of the site without limiting it to being solely recruitment- orientated, Content Content decided to aim for the ‘work hard, play hard’ ethos of the City when developing its personality. While they had to maintain a professional tone for the serious business of City jobs, they realised that this would be totally inappropriate for the lifestyle content and more light-hearted elements. They came up with a name - Doublecuff.com – and a brand image for the site to capture to essence of the City in an “amusing and memorable way”. The main ‘Doublecuff’ section of the site was reserved for serious jobsearch content, while the fun, lifestyle content was given its own section - ‘Off the Cuff’ - to avoid a conflict of tone and personality. Suitable and relevant links were also included in their own section‘Cufflinks’.

Content Content also devised and implemented the launch marketing campaign. Says Account Manager Lindsay Binnie, “Our creative strategy focussed on the use of bold colour to maximise standout across a variety of media, and to achieve as much impact as possible with the target audience in conjunction with prominent positioning of the URL and a positioning strapline. The site proposition had to be understood quickly by a ‘time poor’ target audience. To that end we rejected humour and teaser elements, and used ‘Doublecuff.com – the career website for the City professional’ as a clear and direct communication of the core proposition. Media strategy focussed offline more than online to target traditional city workers as much as a new media literate audience.”

CAMPAIGN
Marketing activity offline comprised of TV advertising on Bloomberg TV and dealing screens, mega rears on bus routes through the City, and print ads in targeted press such as the Financial News and Financial Times. Online, Content Content focussed on search engine registration using their own product ‘SearchMax’; an on-site promotion (offering a prize of £10,000) to drive registration and promote viral marketing; and, ongoing affiliation programmes with selected partners.

RESULTS
The site has achieved 30,000 unique monthly users since its launch on June 1st 2000, with 130,000 page views per month. The first candidate was placed within a week and candidate registrations are averaging over 240 per month. Client recruitment has been impressive with 18 City institutions having signed up for the site to date including major names such as JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch HSBC, Perpetual plc, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney and Nomura. Says Lindsay, all clients to date have reported awareness of the site prior to initial sales meeting.

Does Doublecuff.com recommend using the same agency for Web development AND marketing? “It’s been an absolute boon,” says Andrew Warburton, Managing Director. “Content Content understand the strength and the USPs of the site and the technology, and so they were able to give a more comprehensive marketing perspective than we might have received using two separate agencies.”

COST: The marketing budget for the project was £100,000. We’re not able to tell you what Marshall Warburton/ Doublecuff.com paid for the entire package.

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