MANSFIELD, Ohio — When developing their latest marketing campaign, MT Business Technologies decided to take a humorous approach, incorporating the slogan, “When the copier goes down, bad things happen.”
Dozens of billboards recently began running across the Cleveland and Columbus areas. These outdoor advertisements are the beginning of a regionwide advertising and community relations effort by MTBT currently running in these regions.
The campaign includes outdoor, print, and online marketing as well participation in many key community initiatives in the Cleveland and Columbus markets.
The company also created a series of humorous videos that illustrate all of the “unusual” things that happen in a business office when the copier or printer is down. The videos are available for viewing on the company’s YouTube page.
“In this market, around Mansfield and up in Toledo, we’re fairly well-known for having a pretty good market share in those markets. It’s probably not the case, or at least to the same degree, in the Cleveland and Columbus markets. So for those areas, the big push was to get something out there that was a little bit edgy, that would grab people’s attention and build some name recognition for us so that when we talk to somebody in Cleveland or Columbus our name would stick with them,” explained Bill James, director of project management office at MTBT.
“If you think about it–office equipment, copiers–we’re not selling Ferraris. There’s not a whole lot of excitement there, nothing really emotional; so to kind of build some interest and something that was catchy, the humor was our hook for that,” James said.
He added that though the campaign is “a little bit of a departure from the norm, it’s not really going to transform who we are, how we do business or the products we sell.”
The campaign was created in partnership with Communica, a full-service marketing, advertising and public relations agency. “A majority of this has been driven by Communica. They’re the experts,” James said.
“We’re in the process of spreading [the advertisements] out across the website, Twitter page and some other social media sites. We will also transition the videos into cable commercials,” said James.
Having done radio ads in the past, James noted, “I think we’ll start to put the same kind of funny spin on those, too.”
“It’s going to be a maintenance thing going forward,” he said. “We’ll continue to add to the campaign and continue to push out to the same avenues and same conduits but then branch out where it makes sense to branch out.”
MTBT is a privately held third-generation office solutions firm, founded as Mansfield Typewriter in 1918. The company’s headquarters remain in Mansfield, and MTBT now has major operations in Toledo, Cleveland and Columbus. MTBT provides total office solutions with an emphasis on managed printing services, managed IT support, document management and copier servicing and maintenance. It is the largest independent RICOH dealer in the United States. Learn more at www.mtbt.com. #copierdown