Double retail awards nomination for Adare's MC˛ marketing communications portal.
Marketing and Customer Communications specialist Adare has been nominated for two European Retail Solutions Awards (ERSA) after delivering a complete web-enabled marketing communications solution for Tie Rack, using the company’s bespoke MC² technology.
Adare has been nominated in categories for ‘Best International Solution’ and ‘Best Use of B2B Internet Technology’ at the prestigious awards, which focus on recognising retailers and suppliers for excellence and innovations in retail IT solutions and technology.
The Marketing Communications Centre, or MC² as it is branded, is a unique portal developed by Adare, which provides complete on-line management of the communications process from creative to delivered-to-store scale out. The new technology has totally re-engineered Tie Rack’s campaign management process, enabling the fashion retailer to work much more efficiently with greater control of its marketing campaigns as well as delivering significant cost savings and a material shortening of the time to market.
Working closely with Tie Rack in each of the 26 countries it operates in over an eight week period, Adare tailored its MC˛ platform to manage Tie Rack’s global campaign requirements. Adare audited all 260 stores to create an up-to-date store profile database to establish optimum and accurate POS requirements. MC² enables Tie Rack to add new stores to the system easily and, through log-ins, allows each regional manager to update their store details at a local level.
Before Adare came on board Tie Rack was manually managing marketing campaigns across its global store footprint from a central team in the UK. From quantifying point of sale volumes and couriering hard copy proofs to managers around the world, to identifying language and distribution variations manually, the process was time consuming, manually intensive and prone to human error.
MC˛ is a completely modular toolkit that combines store profiling, campaign planning and management, on-line proofing of creative work, digital asset management, print sourcing (through P², Adare’s e-procurement system that combines 5 unique procurement practices) fulfilment, distribution and real-time tracking for all Marketing and POS collateral.
Alistair Cane, executive director for strategic solutions at Adare, comments: “MC˛ has given Tie Rack’s Marketing team greater control over its whole marketing communications process and it is credit to the effectiveness of this bespoke solution that we have been nominated for two prestigious European Retail Solutions Awards”.
“We implemented our MC˛ e-portal solution for Tie Rack to automate and streamline its overall campaign management life-cycle. From campaign planning to final in-store kit out, the effectiveness of the model has prompted other retailers who have recognised the business benefits of using MC˛ technology to come forward. We are currently working on bespoke solutions for a number of blue chip companies to simplify their marketing communications processes.”
Sara Carter, marketing director at Tie Rack concludes: “MC² has changed the way we work and Adare has created a complete solution that really works for our business.
“The technology has brought the marketing team around the world together, enabling us to work much more collaboratively and efficiently. It has also delivered tangible process improvements and cost savings as well as significantly reducing the time-scale of projects so that we can allow for more time on our creative work.
“This is a key strategic development for Tie Rack and a solution that is enabling us to work more efficiently, channelling our expertise into delivering our core marketing objectives, safe in the knowledge that we have the right partner in Adare to execute our campaigns.”
The ERSA awards, which are now in their eighth year, will be held on Wednesday 25th June at Old Billingsgate Market.
