Newsletter

Lighter evenings and warmer days are upon us. Spring is a time for growth and I spent much of March visiting our offices in Europe launching our new Liquid methodology to our colleagues in each market. If we execute Liquid across the region in the way we know we can and the way we expect, I know that this will mark the beginning of the next growth phase for CPM International and I am excited for that.

We have just completed our 3+9 quarterly planning process which is telling us that our existing clients are very committed to CPM and in many cases are spending more with us, but it is also showing we would like it if there was more new business around from new clients. Everyone in the company can help in finding new clients and we do have a client referral scheme in place which financially rewards colleagues for success in this area. For further details, please go to https://hubs.ly/Q01LVJ8K0

On the people front we have said goodbye to our Chief People Officer, Katie Lockwood, who left us at the beginning of April and at the same time we have welcomed her replacement, Lydik Grynfeltt, so if you see him in your office please give him a warm CPM welcome.

Mike Hughes

Hyphen Dared to Dream
Ferry Porsche couldn’t find the sportscar of his dreams so decided to build it himself. Likewise, Hyphen dreamed of winning an automotive client and were appointed by Porsche to deliver the launch of their new UK Flagship retail centre – Destination Porsche. A space where dreamers come together and where Hyphen got to create an immersive launch event like no other. Check out the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaOVXKnwAlI

Sharp Snips & Energy Hits!
Hyphen have been supporting the CPM UK Field Team since 2021 with the launch of Suntory’s new stimulation drink Alert by providing hyper-local experiential to drive trial, & brand awareness to support rate of sale. We then took their brand ethos of get sharp one step further by creating Sharp Snips – a pop-up barber experience which toured UK universities during freshers’ to allow students to both look & feel sharp.

Hyphen get it on!
Working closely with fellow Omnicom agency GMR, Hyphen are working (alongside Cosine) for Altria who have recently launched their nicotine pouches product ON! Into the UK Market. We are running a total experiential campaign over 2023 targeting smokers in nightlife, at a hyper-local level, when they are on the move and at festivals to show them there is an alternative to smoking and vaping, one which means they can stay in the moment as the patches are discreet and are placed in the mouth so are undetectable.

TPN Delivering EMEA New Product Launch Campaign

I wanted to take this opportunity to share a TPN update as we’re in the throes of working on a campaign that will have a phased launch from May this year across France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland and the UK. At the end of last year TPN was successful in pitching for a Brand Positioning Strategy and an Above the Line (TV, radio, outdoor) and Below the Line (shopper marketing) EMEA campaign for a Pet Healthcare company called Elanco. Elanco was already a client of TPN’s, with us previously having supported on digital shopper marketing for them.

As the pitch scope of work included the development of a TV campaign, we asked BBDO Proximity Barcelona to partner with us. We had previously successfully worked with them, supporting with delivering a Shopper Marketing Strategy for their Sanex client (across UK, France, and Spain). The combination of experts in ATL and BTL proved to be a successful pitch combination with Elanco.

Since January we have delivered a fast-track project. Starting with the development of the Brand Positioning and Look and Feel for this new product (for dogs and cats). The client had a few name options and packaging as a starting point early January but that was it. Matt Sewards, our Planning Director has led the brand positioning which involved us holding a 1.5-day workshop here in the CPM UK offices, hosting Elanco brand marketing clients from their UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland offices. The outcome of this was alignment of a Brand Archetype and activation touchpoints necessary for the first phase of launch across each market.

Since then, working very closely with BBDO Proximity Barcelona, two creative routes for ALT and BTL have been developed, both of which went into quantitative and qualitative research (facilitated by IPSOS). A subsequent winning route was chosen and creative and messaging have been tweaked based on research findings.

Our creative teams are in full swing delivering against the full scope of work which includes: a training deck (for trade), technical training deck (for Elanco teams), Brand Book (for markets to use when adapting campaigns locally), Motivational video (for Elanco staff), purchase of stock imagery, messaging strategy, TV, on-line Video, Physical and digital assets for Pet shops and Pharmacies, email marketing and also website content. As the campaign hasn’t launched yet, I can’t share the creative or strategy with you, but once we are live I think this would be a great case study to share with you all to illustrate the marketing strategy and creative capabilities we have in the Group.

Ruth Stainton, MD, TPN (UK office)

CPM partner with Elavon to bring industry leading payment solutions to the SME market across UK & Ireland

Elavon are global leaders in the payment services sector, with a global customer base more than one million. Providing flexible, secure, and innovative payment solutions to support business revenue growth. CPM began working with Elavon early 2022, launching a direct B2B sales channel within the SME market in UK & Ireland. We have 5 business development managers covering Ireland and 15 covering the UK. During the 6-month pilot, despite achieving month on month sales growth, we identified challenges holding us back from achieving exceptional results:
1. The suite of product propositions available to us to sell were not competitive enough to convert high numbers of business from Elavon’s competitors#.
2. We needed our field sales team to be industry experts, with previous experience in the payment solution sector.
So, with the ‘CPM Way’ in mind we challenged Elavon on the insights we had gathered and worked with their product/pricing teams to launch new competitive sales propositions. Also, our fantastic recruitment team’s launched social media campaigns to attract industry experienced talent to come and work with us.
The results a year on:
• CPM were awarded the contract as Elavon’s chosen partner for SME B2B sales in UK & Ireland
• We continue to delivery month on month sales growth, exceeding client targets for the past 3 months
• Elavon see CPM as The Perfect Partner and we are working with them on field sales team expansion across both regions.

For more details contact kim.shaw@omnioperations.com

Cosine wins UK trial with Kopparberg for a great tasting summer!

Cosine is excited to start a new client relationship with Kopparberg Cider to bring the amazing taste of Strawberry & Lime fruit cider to on-trade venues across Greater London. As the bestselling bottled cider brand in the UK, Kopparberg are expanding their consumer offering by launching their Strawberry and Lime flavour on draught, with their eye-catching new digital font which has been designed to give the perfect pour for every pint.
Following a tender process, Kopparberg awarded the trial to Cosine, we have 7 months to prove the concept and begin an expansion programme across the UK and then look to work in new channels.
Our team are working alongside the major suppliers and the wider Kopparberg team to ensure a great customer journey for the venues, from the point of ordering through to the set up and the pouring of the first pint in each venue.
We are starting with a team of 5, who have just completed their training and have only been a couple of weeks in the trade.
Already there have been some fantastic wins, the team are hitting their time to competency targets, a new listing has been secured with a wholesaler plus some great new venues to showcase the brand.
Reviewing the initial few weeks, our client has messaged to say, “We are delighted with successful start of this trial, already we are excited by the opportunity. We are impressed with your data capture and management tools; in fact, we are now considering how we can work with you to better manage our own internal sales team”.
This is a great start, and we can’t wait to build on this for future growth. For more information please contact, Richard.Pomeroy@cosineuk.com.

The next step for marketing Benelux

CPM Benelux has added two new marketing and communication interns to their team! They will assist with social media channels, the website, newsletters and much more. One of these interns will join the *Shopt team to help launch *Shopt in Benelux. She will focus on growing brand awareness among our target audience.

Our Marketing and Communication team will therefore be expanded with Sharon Keizer and Rosann Xiao. Sharon is a third-year Business Administration student in Amsterdam and she will prepare a study within CPM about communication processes within CPM Benelux. Rosann is a fourth-year student of Marketing and Sales in Amsterdam and will write her graduation thesis within CPM Benelux with *Shopt as primary subject.

We hope that our interns will have a wonderful and educational period at CPM and hope you’ll welcome them as well!

The CPM Ireland sales conference, which took place on March 9th, was a roaring success with both Mike Hughes and Lorraine Butler attending on the day in addition to our Finance and HR colleagues from UK and Group. We celebrated record revenues in 2022 making it the best year yet for CPM Ireland, successfully retaining 6/6 client contract renewals and on-boarding 4 new clients.

The LIQUID launch was well received by all and the key theme on the day. It was really worthwhile taking the time out of everyone’s busy calendar to celebrate our successes, forward plan for our business and most importantly enjoy some well-earned team building!

CPM Ireland’s annual People Awards nominations are earned by the winners of our quarterly People Award and are announced during our Townhall meetings. Congratulations to all our nominees and very well done to all our overall winners for each category:

Care Award: Monika Florczyk
Curious Award: Mary O’Toole
Achieve Together Award: Connell McCloone
Inspire Award: Colin Hawkins
People Person Award: Karen Ferrie
Team Award: Suntory

It all came together so well this March not only for CPM Ireland with the LIQUID launch and more but for the Island of Ireland and all Irish across the globe!

Of course, we have St Patrick’s Day, which is celebrated far and wide followed by the Guinness 6 Nations where Ireland triumphed winning a Grand Slam and taking home the Triple Crown and 6 Nations Trophy …

But the icing on the cake has to be lunch at the EI Platinum Lunch Series where CPM and our clients had the pleasure of sharing lunch with none other than the recent winner of the 6 Nations Grand Slam, Captain of the Irish Rugby Team Mr Johnny Sexton..

De Cecco

De Cecco is one of the most well-known and long-standing pasta brands in the world. Its claim is “De Cecco, rigorously” and this is perceived in everything they do. We have worked with this amazing client since 2019 and the relationship with them is becoming more and more profound as well as the degree of satisfaction they show.
Last year the salesforce went to an outstanding training course inside the main De Cecco plant, and this year we are invited for the second round of this deep dive. We asked Carlo Aquilano, De Cecco’s commercial director, for an interview for our blog column "The point of view". You can read the story of excellence, passion, quality, attention to people, and, of course, its positive sentiment for CPM, told through our three lenses "Inspirational, Influential and Human". Below is an extract from the interview.
In an increasingly hybrid and technological shopping experience, how can the store influence people's buying process?
“… Where possible, De Cecco tries to interpret this new dimension by creating partnerships with large-scale retail customers by agreeing on dedicated spaces, corners up to actual "shop'n'shops" to adequately communicate the brand's values, the ‘uniqueness’ of product, and the initiatives it undertakes, paying great attention to "showrooming" and visual merchandising… However, this mix of traditionally intended promotional activities and interaction runs the risk of being ineffective without the correct supervision of motivated and qualified personnel, such as the one De Cecco requests from its partner CPM with a specialized network, who knows the market and knows how to build true relationships on the "touchpoint" of the supermarket. The quality of the physical touchpoint therefore plays a fundamental role in influencing the shopper's purchasing process…”
Brands today have to meet people’s needs, but also meta-needs. In this context, how can De Cecco continue to inspire people?
“…The challenge for FMCG companies will be precisely that of integrating the digital channels with the instore, combining the online and offline experience, maximizing the coverage of meta-needs with instantaneous methods and making new contents and objective and personal advantages usable also on the latent needs of consumers. Generally, the integration of ATL and BTL communication finds precisely in the store the perimeter of greater attention and willingness of the shopper to sum up the messages and be able to materialize in a purchase act...”
Attracting talent is still a challenge. What is De Cecco’s approach to capture the attention of potential candidates and to keep them in house?
For a company that inspires its every choice to certify quality, training is an essential lever…. field staff are continuously supported by De Cecco staff thanks to coaching with the area managers; moreover, in-depth moments are foreseen at the company offices with training managed directly by the areas of production, quality assurance, customer trade marketing, in order to guarantee the development of skills and, in general, awareness and full participation in company decisions on certified quality issues. Thanks to training courses and coaching, continuous updating and cross-fertilization with the other company teams, with the constant collaboration of CPM, we therefore try to give each collaborator an experience that is motivating and engaging to the point of produce project ideas aimed at developing future potential and guaranteeing continuous and transversal teamwork.

Falling in Love with Consumer Relations
Our wonderful partnership with Reckitt continues to blossom with a two year contract extension secured.
On February 14th, we had the pleasure of hosting the Reckitt Global Quality Leadership Team for a Speed Dating event in Barcelona. The aim of the evening… to fall head over heels with our Consumer Relations Team.
The Reckitt leadership team had the chance to learn more about our interactions with their consumers, understand the core needs of consumers, and gain a better understanding of the role of a Consumer Care Advisor. In addition, they got to experience CPM as a trusted partner, capable of offering integrated services and guiding consumers through their customer experience journey.
Marie Tanner (Food Safety, Quality and EHS Executive) at Reckitt commented: “This was a wonderful opportunity to see the Customer Relations teams in action, driving consumer-centricity through excellence in consumer care. Customers have a choice and CPM are there to promptly answer inquires, resolve problems and protect our brand through consumer retention. Valuable insights are also gained and shared with our organization on improvements”

Finding a great balance to our relationship
As we rapidly approach the four year anniversary of CPM working with New Balance in EMEA, the time has come to truly take our business relationship to the next level. During 2023, CPM will embark on a new Digitization journey with New Balance, analysing and implementing new potential tech solutions such as WhatsApp, Chatbot and AI to further enhance the CX experience for their customers across EMEA and into our 7 APAC markets.

To supplement this, we have further expanded our CPM leadership team in the New Balance campaign!

Ibrahym Mokhtar has joined us as our new Business Analyst, where he will deep dive into data analytics, competitor benchmarking, identifying best practices across the industry and making recommendations for service and operational efficiency improvements.

Giada Vizzi has also been appointed as a dedicated Sales Trainer to support upskilling behaviours of our front-line team to drive sales through service propositions.

On the 15th of March, we were finally able to work through our busy schedules to get the entire New Balance leadership team together to officially welcome them in person! Congratulations and welcome to Giada and Ibrahym!

Discovering our energies

On 3 March colleagues from the ICC in Slovakia attended Insights Discovery: Beginning the Journey. Attendees from Aktiia, Colpal, Dyson, Reckitt, Smile2Impress and the People Team learned about their personal preferences in relation to four colour energies: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue.

The purpose of the training is to learn more about ourselves and our colleagues and, with that knowledge, work better together. The training was facilitated by Peter Nesbitt from the People Team and as you can see, the course has a dynamic learning methodology with participants often on their feet, learning through doing and interacting with each other. This was a great learning experience for all and an excellent chance to learn about each other.

ICC DNA Awards!
The ICC held its very first DNA awards recently, celebrating the incredible impact our fellow colleagues have on all of us. Our teams were invited to nominate a fellow colleague who they felt had "lived" our DNA values over the past 6 months (We Care, We're Curious, We Achieve Together). We were inundated with hundreds of nominations. It was truly touching to read all the wonderful testimonials.
Last week in Barcelona, we came together to congratulate and celebrate our very first DNA awards winners.
Special congratulations to Stefania Capozza, Refka Smida, Maaike Oostland, and our overall winner, Petra Cizikova, from our Slovakia hub. Huge congratulations to all involved and thank you for your wonderful contribution to CPM. A big thanks to all our employees who took the time to write nominations.

New Key Client for ICC

We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of a new key client for our Contact Centres as well as our business as a whole. Our new client will be the Chinese technology giant Lenovo!

Lenovo is a brand-new client with exciting prospects and new opportunities ahead for our business.
The partnership began in February this year at our international contact centre hub in Bratislava, Slovakia. The city is also home to Lenovo`s European HQ.
Beginning with tier 2 tech support for the French and Dutch markets, it will soon expand to the German market with the expectation to go further.
Lenovo first approached us thanks to our online video marketing campaign during the launch of our ICC hub in Slovakia. At the time, Lenovo reached out to us to learn more about CPM Slovakia. We are immensely proud to be partnering with Lenovo and look forward to a wonderful future together.

Good vibrations with our new client Sound United

Please make some noise for our new client Sound United! Sound United are one of the largest high-end audio tech companies in the world. The company were recently acquired by the Masimo Corporation, an American global medical technology company.

Project implementation began in early March in Bratislava, Slovakia, with a team of 15 agents covering four markets: German, Dutch, Spanish, and French.

During training, our team had the opportunity to visit a Sound United retailer in the capital to check out the cutting-edge cinema room and to experience for themselves the incredible audio speakers on display. Great learnings and insights for the team that will help ensure the best tech service support is provided to consumers.

With this new acquisition CPM ICC has reinforced its goal of making Bratislava our contact centre tech hub. Sound United will be in good company alongside our other tech clients based there including Dyson, Aktiia, and Lenovo.

The Samsung UK DA Training team are TV stars!

“Sunday Brunch” is a Channel 4 production hosted by Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer. They chat with some amazing guests in the kitchen and on the sofa. The programme features musical performances and famous chefs and the show has become a perfect Sunday ritual for viewers everywhere.

From 12th March (and every Sunday for 52 weeks), we will have 8 Samsung products featured within the studio kitchen and have 115 seconds of advertising across each episode in the form of idents.

To support this launch the Training Team have spent time with the hosts of the show, training them on the products that will be displayed in the kitchen as well as completing technical training with the show’s Home Economist. See Lydia one of the regional trainers with the stars of the show!

Business: France Back on Track!

For the beginning of 2023, we are proud to welcome three new clients:

Natura is a leader in cosmetics in Brazil, specialising in ethical and eco responsible products. Direct sales to open new POS: Hairdresser, SPA, Beauty institute

GDT (Général de Téléphonie) is part of Orange (leading telephony in France). They will manage 100 stores in France. CPM won training business : 6 coaches will train GDT ambassadors for the next two years. For example, our team will train 250 sellers for the next three months
ZAPP is a UK company that designs, manufactures, and sells high performance electric vehicles. Two sellers from CPM will drive sales for the first Zapp flagship in Paris.

International Women's Day with Omniwomen!

On March 8th, it was time to celebrate IWD in partnership with Omniwomen. It was the last Omniwomen event with Véronique Motte as co-chair in France, and the opportunity to highlight gender equality within our company and the parity within our board and management. For the occasion, a breakfast was offered to employees and messages about women's rights were transmitted throughout the day. Céline Lafourcade, National Sales Director for our client Bricomarché, was interviewed and answered our questions about being a woman at CPM and in our business. At CPM, whoever you are, you have the same opportunities to succeed and it’s amazing!

CPM International Marketing News

Liquid on the Move

We’ve been talking about Liquid for some time across our business, but introducing a new methodology across all markets and all our services is no easy feat. So, how do we bring Liquid and the one brand into our everyday lives?

Company Conference

We launched our liquid methodology and one brand across six markets from the 7th of February to the 8th of March, with Mike Hughes and Andy Buck in attendance. It was a great turnout in every market, with high energy and a genuine appetite to know more. We also had some fabulous feedback on the new creative and several requests offline wanting to know when they will start seeing Liquid around the business.

What next?

Website: You will have seen a preview of the website pages at the company conference and heard how we are moving to one website for all markets and all services in English, Dutch, French and Italian so we’re delighted to share that the website is now live!! Please visit www.cpm-int.com

Social media: Over the coming weeks, you will start to see content on our social media platforms directing viewers to the website, as always we would appreciate your support by engaging with our brand with your comments, likes and shares. You can follow us on social by clicking these links LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Liquid Labs: Next month we will launch liquid labs in every market, these sessions are aimed at all our Commercial Managers/Directors and anyone in a client-facing, business development or marketing role to have a more detailed and consistent view of what this means out our customers.

Sales & Marketing plans: The Sales and Marketing team met at the end of March to review the Sales & Marketing strategy and align with the one brand and liquid approach. For more information please get in touch with your local team.

Justine Vernon, Group Marketing Manager

Insight Newsletter - Spring 2023

CEO's Welcome

Group

Benelux

Ireland

Annual Sales Conference and Liquid Launch

People Awards 2022

The Perfect Storm!

Italy

International Contact Centre (ICC)

UK

France

CPM International Marketing News