Sony Ericsson invited iris, its award-winning agency, to manage the complexity of new product launches across Europe.
Sony Ericsson relies on well executed product launches to maintain its position as a leading mobile handset manufacturer. Sony Ericsson works closely with iris to manage and coordinate production of collateral to support product launches in 14 European markets and 23 local languages. Managing projects of this complexity on a manual basis presented iris with challenges that impacted their client's success and their own costs. Each product launch required eight account managers. Gathering complex requirements resulted in late product launches. Production errors were difficult to correct, and costly both for iris and for Sony Ericsson. In addition to this, creative staff had significant production problems managing localisation into non-latin fonts.
Iris put together a brief, identifying Sony Ericsson's needs and outlining a solution to overcome these problems. It included the creation of a marketing asset catalogue available to Sony Ericsson staff in each of the 14 local markets across Europe. The solution needed to facilitate translation of assets into 23 local languages and resolve the problems of working with non-latin fonts. It needed to reduce labour costs, and deliver cost savings through volume buying. It would provide improved management information about marketing spend, and it would be rapidly deployable.
After evaluating vendors, iris came to Mtivity who were able to show that its application would meet the needs of both iris and Sony Ericsson.
Using Mtivity's online tools, iris was able to quickly build a catalogue of Sony Ericsson branded marketing assets and publish it online to marketing communications managers. Marcoms managers were then able to order localised versions of these assets using a standard web browser and broadband internet connection. A key feature of the solution was iris's ability to maintain its existing creative workflow, but use Mtivity to publish assets, source translated copy and manage the overall fulfilment process.
Concurrent with the catalogue development, Mtivity worked closely with iris to resolve production problems stemming from use of non-latin fonts. Mtivity also provided a Group-Buy feature, which enabled orders from local markets for the same items to be grouped together and purchased at the same time. This gave iris the ability to negotiate volume buying discounts with print suppliers.
Since implementing Mtivity, iris has successfully managed six European product launches using the system. Using Mtivity has resulted in the following benefits: