The challenge
Ayesa, one of the world’s leading engineering and technology consulting brands, had spent a quarter of a century building an enviable reputation in mainland Europe as a trusted expert in large-scale infrastructure projects. One year on from acquiring Irish engineering consultancy ByrneLooby, Ayesa now sought to strengthen its presence in the UK and Ireland by assimilating the brands under the banner of the parent company.
ByrneLooby was far more well-known in these territories than Ayesa, so this identity shift presented a challenge. The new Ayesa brand would have to be familiarised, and existing ByrneLooby clients would need reassurance that the change in identity wouldn’t impact the excellent customer service they’d become accustomed to.
The big change also opened up an opportunity – if the right PR strategy was deployed. By harnessing UK trade media to raise awareness of the rebrand announcement, The Think Tank sought to generate blanket press coverage and spread the word of how the business’ new proposition would be better than ever.
Our solution
A rebrand isn’t big news in itself, so we had to think strategically to really capture the imagination of the press.
We realised that we could use the lack of awareness of Ayesa in the UK and Ireland to our advantage. The rebrand offered the opportunity to introduce Ayesa to new audiences as a big player capable of offering all the service benefits you’d expect of a global brand.
To make this introduction, we leveraged our media relations skills to set up interviews in key titles with several of the company’s charismatic in-territory spokespeople. With this platform, they set out their huge ambitions for the market and articulated how ByrneLooby’s heritage would be combined with Ayesa’s global brand to scale new heights.
We followed up by devising and writing a programme of thought leadership content centred around a host of issues relevant to Ayesa’s audience, including articles on climate change and its impact on the UK’s erratic weather. Features in the Irish Times and New Civil Engineer, a tier one engineering title, amplified news of the rebrand, and momentum was maintained with a steady stream of press releases celebrating new contract wins.
The result
Our targeted strategy, creative thinking and smart leveraging of media relations conjured up huge excitement about the rebrand and Ayesa’s ambitions for the market, firmly establishing it in the UK and Ireland.
We achieved widespread press coverage by placing 52 articles in important trade titles, and news of the rebrand reached 47 million people. The average domain authority of press clippings mentioning Ayesa achieved an impressive score of 45, meaning the brand featured higher up in search engine rankings.
By amplifying the rebrand in such a positive way, we gave ByrneLooby’s old clients confidence that the service they’d experience from Ayesa would be more powerful and comprehensive. Ultimately, we made sure that what could have been a tricky brand assimilation exercise was pulled off with style.
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