Brand-building campaign won Hendy Group the AM Award for Best Marketing Strategy

The winner of the 2024 AM Award for Marketing Strategy of the Year, sponsored by Blueprint Partners, was Hendy Group.

A collaboration with Harry Redknapp as Hendy Group’s brand ambassador combined with a marketing strategy to position the business as a world-class customer service specialist.

Hendy needed a campaign capable of delivering big, brand-defining ideas intertwined with tactical messages around choice, offers and service. This led Hendy to build a campaign around Harry to significantly boost its reach with its target audience.

Once merely a well-liked character among a largely male, sports-oriented audience, Harry was propelled to national treasure status when he was crowned King of the Jungle in 2018.

But rather than just rely on star power, Hendy also wanted to inject a sense of authenticity and ‘family- run’ into its comms by featuring Paul Hendy in the campaign, alongside Harry.

The resulting campaign – ‘When ’Arry met ’Endy’ – played on the celebrity’s warm personality and tendency to drop his aitches, creating an instantly memorable campaign that was immediately put to use across TV, radio and online.

The marketing campaign is underpinned by the ‘That’s Hendy’ mantra, which has driven its objective to position the brand as the best in the business.

Hendy’s internal marketing team of 15, led by Vicky Hart (pictured), oversaw a multi-million pound marketing budget which has led to a year-on-year increase of 23.5% for new and used vehicle enquiries, a 23.2% increase in vehicle orders, plug a 15.8% year-on-year increase in service bookings.

Web attribution and sales match-back exercises revealed that its TV activity generated 84,000 incremental visits to the Hendy website, over 2,000 sales and 5,000 workshop visits over a 130-day evaluation period.

Hendy’s paid social media generated over 25,000 visits and its Google search and display campaigns generated over 10.5 million impressions, 68,000 visits and 1,608 sales conversions.

Hendy’s marketing strategy has achieved a great deal with very little. The group’s utilisation of brand ambassadors and exceptional showrooms has successfully communicated that Hendy is not only the South’s largest name but also its most customer focused.

Excelling in everything from product choice to payment methods to aftersales? That’s Hendy. Capable of creating a national-level-feel TTL campaign with a small regional budget? That’s Hendy too.

Highly commended: eStar Truck and Van

Finalists:

• eStar Truck and Van
• FOW Car Supermarket
• Hendy Group
• TrustFord       

See all the photos from the 2024 AM Awards night here