Making Opportunities
At Rainmaker we make our own luck, and on behalf of each client, we make theirs too. So in addition to reacting to opportunities (a staple diet of many new business practioners) we also 'create' opportunities via intelligent and consistent dialogue.
Steel first engaged Rainmaker in January 2006 when the company was in the process of being bought out by the senior management team. Initially Rainmaker’s task was to help the new owners to build a unifying proposition, having come from a broad skill-base of design and advertising. With its heartland in digital communications, Rainmaker encouraged Steel to build its offer around this area – a recommendation that was initially met with reservations, but ultimately, after an internal review, accepted as the right direction for the agency.
By 2007 Steel was starting to build a small base of travel industry clients so Rainmaker broadened the target list to include a selection of premium travel brands. Rainmaker approached Kuoni’s New Media Manager introducing Steel's combination of Lastminute.com and SeaFrance credentials. Although impressed at the time, he wasn’t in a position to use UK digital agencies at that time, so we stayed in touch with him every four months until May 2008 when he moved jobs to head up new media at P&O Cruises.
In his new role, the opportunity for agencies was very different, and two conversations down the line, he confirmed that the company was in the early stages of exploring options for viral projects. Rainmaker arranged a new business meeting for Steel to go down to Southampton to present viral creds and Steel suggested some potential routes the company could take. Following a pitch in July the viral project work went live at http://www.aperfectholiday.co.uk.
Rainmaker then suggested at our monthly review meeting that we should be prospecting to P&O’s sister brands within Carnival plc. We started prospecting to the Ocean Villages Online Marketing Manager, making her aware that the P&O work was in its infancy but was producing positive results. We managed to arrange a face-to-face meeting with her and Steel and this led to a proposal for a new online project.
Subsequent to winning both these projects Rainmaker also targeted and arranged a meeting with the Princess Cruises decision-maker, another Carnival plc brand. So we’re hoping for a hat trick of wins from that initial phone call to Kuoni!
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