A five-year relationship that turned a US-based brand into a global manufacturing name
In Stats
5
year partnership
Hundreds
of pieces of coverage in national and trade media
Key Results
Media coverage in key titles such as the BBC, The Manufacturer and Enterprise Times
12-page feature in Manufacturing Global magazine
UK press events with Epicor stakeholders
Tags
Date 2015 - 2020
Epicor is a global provider of industry-specific enterprise software to promote business growth. Operating across the globe – primarily out of the US – the company partnered with Berkeley Communications in 2015 to cement its status as a market leader of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in the UK. Over the last five years, Berkeley has maintained a strong, consistent UK press office – that has resulted in Epicor not only being regularly featured in the manufacturing trade press, including The Manufacturer, Manufacturing Global and Manufacturing Logistics and IT (MLIT), but in the business and tech press too.
The problem
Manufacturing and ERP is a dry topic – and as a result, coverage is often focused in software and logistics titles. To push Epicor into the manufacturing, business and tech press, Berkeley encouraged Epicor to be bold, and took advantage of news hooks to maximise topical stories. An ongoing thought leadership campaign, focusing on industry issues and around future-gazing themes, included pieces on:
- Brexit and its impact on the supply chain
- Nanotechnology and manufacturing
- Robotic process automation and cobots
This ensured a steady stream of coverage in Epicor’s core press.
The solution
To further build relationships with Epicor’s key press targets, Berkeley hosted a regular series of briefings with the company’s key spokespeople and leading UK media. Berkeley also supported Epicor with its in-house and industry events, maximising the company’s profile and journalist attendance. In conjunction with a hard-working UK press office, Berkeley undertook a number of creative activations to further push Epicor beyond the manufacturing, business and tech press and into the national titles. This included:
- The ‘Global Growth Index’, a research-led campaign looking at growth patterns amongst manufacturers across the globe and emerging trends in the space. This became an annual survey, creating annual benchmarking opportunities, with 2020 being the fourth year that Epicor has run the campaign.
- A UK roundtable event on whether ‘manufacturing is ready for IoT technologies’, bringing together experts and core trade press to discuss the emergence of new technologies in the sector and to discuss the future of manufacturing. Key journalists from The Manufacturer and MLIT joined Epicor spokespeople in the debate, all drafting lengthy articles in the wake of the event. A follow-up momentum release and whitepaper generated further coverage.
As Epicor continued to grow and the UK PR function flourished, more agencies were onboarded to grow the brand in other regions – including Australia and New Zealand, South East Asia and the Middle East. As a result of its impressive UK PR results, Berkeley was selected to manage Epicor’s global PR hub in addition to UK PR activity. This involved Berkeley’s PR and content team working together to create global storytelling-driven content, to generate coverage across the world; proof local content for in-country PR activities; host regular all-agency calls to update teams on news and global PR activation and report updates on a global level to demonstrate local agency results to the board.
Supply chain disruption doesn’t mean PR disruption
Regular press briefings with Epicor’s key stakeholders resulted in coverage in key titles such as the BBC, The Manufacturer and Enterprise Times. A highlight was a briefing with Manufacturing Global, which resulted in a 12-page feature that included core company messaging, thought leadership snippets and case study mentions.
With the coronavirus pandemic affecting businesses across the world – including manufacturing firms – Berkeley pivoted quickly, creating a topical byline that yielded 10 placements in the UK, and was turned into a global byline, given that the topic is resonating across the world.
Berkeley’s long-term relationship with Epicor and its ongoing commitment to storytelling ensured that Epicor has become a leading name in the manufacturing ERP space.
