How do you successfully get through to your target audience? You put them in the picture. That’s exactly what Bluebeam did with ‘Meet the Smartcutters’, an animated social campaign created with UK creative partners Reed Words and SomeOne that showcased Bluebeam users from around the world. The campaign celebrated the diversity of the Bluebeam community and put the “fun” in functional.
Bluebeam had two main campaign objectives: awareness and education.
First, they wanted to build awareness of their flagship software product, Revu®, with new AEC and SMB users who hadn’t yet switched to digital. They’d found the latter particularly hard to convince, as they tend to have set ways of working. Bluebeam measured brand awareness in terms of followers gained and increased engagement across Bluebeam social media channels, increased sign-ups for events, and free trial downloads.
As a secondary objective, they aimed to educate existing users about Revu, and expand the ways they used the software. Bluebeam’s research showed users tend to stick to certain workflows, and don’t explore Revu’s full potential to help them work smarter.
In Bluebeam’s audience and competitor landscape, they’d found new leads are more likely to convert if they have trusted recommendations from their peers. They’d also noticed social campaigns from construction tech brands tend to be full of tired visual tropes: stock image models in hard hats, on-site, holding a tablet. They decided anything in that vein would make their audience glaze over.
Instead, Bluebeam engaged real Revu users to sell the software’s key features through the lens of the people on the ground. Smartcutters showcases these users’ favourite tips and tricks to offer inspiration for others to try using Bluebeam’s product in new and impactful ways.
25 Bluebeam users from around the world showcased their Smartcuts including people from the UK, Germany, Sweden, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and more. As the participants were from a range of AEC disciplines, it gave Bluebeam more bang for their buck, as the campaign could appeal to a wide range of potential customers.
To break with tradition and stand out in a sea of sameness, Bluebeam partnered with professional illustrators and animators to create playful, colourful graphics. This dynamic look stood out from tired stock imagery. Clear and characterful copy by brand writing agency Reed Words turned users’ tips into engaging and witty soundbites.
Bluebeam also created physical assets including a poster, playing cards and other branded goodies which they sent to the featured users as a thank you. Not only did this campaign help Bluebeam reach new customers, it allowed them to give something back to current customers, too.
A new Smartcutter was revealed daily on Bluebeam’s social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn) over a five-week period in the form of a short video animation, which linked to a dedicated microsite as a gallery of all of the Smartcutters.
The campaign ran in four languages across five regions. Participants shared the campaign widely in their own networks too. Some have even become brand champions, promoting Bluebeam in public forums. Bluebeam see great value in having influential players in the industry advocating on behalf of their products to their friends and colleagues.
Following on from the social campaign, Bluebeam facilitated two Smartcuts events featuring customers from the Smartcuts campaign as part of Bluebeam’s wider 2020 digital event series. Of the 10 events hosted in this series, the Smartcuts events gained the best attendance and engagement with a 68% attendee conversion rate.
Smartcutters is one of the most popular activations Bluebeam has ever run across their social channels. Engagement rates were as high as 19% on Instagram, and 13% on Facebook in the UK and Ireland. That’s up to 6 times higher than their usual average engagement rate of 3-4% – a clear win for ROI.
The campaign helped Bluebeam build brand awareness among the target audiences, and hit all their other objectives, gaining 30K+ impressions across social channels, driving attendance and engagement at online events, and increasing free trial downloads.
It’s not done yet. The campaign has the potential to run and run, with the ability to grow and evolve it by including more Bluebeam users and sharing more product features through Smartcut tips. It’s a campaign that’ll continue bulldozing the construction-tech advertising mold.
“It was important that this campaign showed how diverse the design and construction industry is. With Bluebeam users worldwide, we were able to represent both a variety of ethnicities and gender in the Smartcuts campaign. The result is an engaging campaign that helps our audience discover new functionality they didn’t know existed—from people they can relate to.”
Kristine Plemmons, Vice President, Marketing
“I loved being part of the Smartcuts campaign, and it got a great response from my peers in the industry. Because the tips came straight from Bluebeam users, it didn’t feel salesy.”
Pablo Giraldo, Asst. Construction Tech Manager at The Walsh Group and Bluebeam Smartcutter
