Harcourts harnesses the power of Launchpad6’s competition hosting platform to drive employee engagement and showcase its new brand.
The Harcourts challenge
Harcourts International Ltd offers a full range of real estate services, specialising in residential, commercial, and rural property sales as well as property management. In January 2016, the organisation underwent a massive company wide re-brand.
The brand refresh has been exciting and reinvigorating for the Harcourts team, with early adopters quickly getting on board with new office fit-outs, proactively using the new marketing materials suite, and incorporating the company’s personality and 10 corporate pillars into their operations.
Keen to further capitalise on its rejuvenated team and brand revitalisation and to maintain its momentum, Harcourts was looking for a way to:
Ensure that the Harcourts offices would remain excited about the new brand
Increase employee engagement
Make sure that the Harcourts team feels both proud and protective of the brand
Motivate and inspire those who have been a bit slower to adopt the brand refresh.
The competition mission So Harcourts came up with the idea to run an online photo and video competition. The contest would be open to all staff in the company’s global franchise offices and would provide them the opportunity to:
Showcase their newly branded office spaces
Highlight their use of Harcourts’ updated marketing suite of tools
Shine a spotlight on their enhanced digital presence.
“We intend to recognise and reward those who have embraced and are representing the Harcourts brand refresh and personality to a high standard in their local markets,” says Deb Swanson, International Brand Manager for Harcourts.
“We hope to motivate and inspire our Harcourts team worldwide by sharing others’ successes.”
The question then became: Who would host this online competition? Harcourts did not have the internal capabilities to do the hosting itself, so the company looked at competition hosting sites from around the world, ultimately selecting Launchpad6.
"Our Launchpad6 experience was easy and efficient. The support team was fantastic!
I am definitely not techno-savvy, but the site was easy to use, and Andrew and his team were amazing in their level of constant support - saints!"
- Deb Swanson , International Brand Manager for Harcourts
The Launchpad6 fix “Launchpad6 offered the best system in our eyes,” says Swanson. “It was easy to use and great value for money, given the high level of service we received.” Among the reasons that Harcourts chose Launchpad6 was that the platform allowed:
Harcourts to fully customise the contest site with its own look and feel and within its brand refresh guidelines. Plus, it allowed the company to add a video for the Harcourts team to officially launch the competition.
Harcourts employees to upload their entries, including videos, photos, PDFs, and other file formats directly from their phones, tablets, and computers, and without any reliance on third-party solutions.
The Harcourts team to share their entries with their followers and databases on social media or by email, which further helped the organisation get the new brand – and the best examples of this rebranding – into the marketplace.
For easy administration of the competition, which included multiple competition managers across five websites and various countries, different competition dates, varying T&Cs, and the ability to download entries.
The Launchpad6 team to take Harcourts’ base site set-up and duplicate it for the company’s other four websites necessary for the five countries taking part in the competition.
The results
“We were very happy with the level of employee engagement,” says Swanson. “From the five countries and 785 offices that the competition was open to, we received a total of 259 entries.” Swanson attributes this success both to the immensely positive reaction to the company rebrand and to the fact that the competition was so user-friendly thanks to the Launchpad6 sites.
Go for launch!
Like Harcourts, are you looking to boost employee or audience engagement and share your message by harnessing the power of video and the thrill of competition? Contact Launchpad6 to find out more about how we can help your brand really take off – today!