The municipality of 's Hertogenbosch

The municipality of ‘s Hertogenbosch was our client company during the first semester of year 2 of my International Business study programme. They are aiming to create an area where people and businesses within the ICT/data sector come together. This includes living spaces, office spaces and amenities. In addition, it is a hybrid learning environment as schools in ‘s Hertogenbosch will be working together with the ICT/data companies. This will then hopefully result in them becoming the ICT/data city of the Netherlands.

This page shows the research process in short, as well as my 360 marketing proposal. During the project we also learned about testing marketing campaigns (we ran a 5-second test, highlighter test and preference test) (grade: 7.3/10). In addition, we wrote an introduction plan including marketing KPIs (grade: 7/10).

Research (grade 9/10)

We decided to conduct a short survey to discover how many people were aware that ‘s Hertogenbosch aims to become the ICT/data city of the Netherlands. It appeared that about 95% of respondents were unaware of these developments and we then continued in the following direction. We wanted to research how ‘s Hertogenbosch could improve its brand awareness and positioning. During the specialization part of the assignment, each group member also created his/her own marketing campaign.

Business model canvas was used to gain a better understanding of the organization and external research was done via the DESTEP model, as well as looking into the users, industry, and competition.

Solutions (grade: 9/10)

After conducting research, it appeared ‘s Hertogenbosch has various locations that are specialized in different kinds of ICT/data areas, such as AI and agri-food. However, this is not properly communicated and therefore a survey confirmed people were unaware of these locations and therefore, the assets of ‘s Hertogenbosch as ICT/data city. It was advised to create a house of brands, such as Unilever. Here all of these locations would fall under the “Innovation Quarter” but would have the ability to promote themselves. This would give ‘s Hertogenbosch the possibility to promote all locations but keep the individuality of each location. Showing all current knowledge the city has, s’ Hertogenbosch can have a stronger position in the mind of the target audience to why they aim to become the ICT/data city of the Netherlands.

A survey showed that respondents were unsure of the added value of ‘s Hertogenbosch when cities such as Eindhoven and Tilburg, both well developed on technology level, are so close by. In addition, Den Haag also has an innovation quarter on agriculture, also decreasing the added value of ‘s Hertogenbosch. However, as ‘s Hertogenbosch is a central city to all places and Amsterdam, it was advised to create a partnership with all cities where ‘s Hertogenbosch would be the central meeting place and the city where events regarding ICT/data would take place.

Research showed that the current positioning of ‘s Hertogenbosch mostly lied on its history as well as the Burgundian lifestyle. After researching the use of historic data within big data, as well as finding out ‘s Hertogenbosch is a part of the time-machine project, where historic data is collected, we chose to focus on this. Suggested was to make this a unique selling point and to create challenges/hackathons surrounding historic data.

We ended up focussing on solution 2 and created a marketing plan based on that solutions. The main focus was on the product/price, so how can they make money, and promotion.

360-marketing campaign proposal (grade 8/10)

The 360° campaign “Are you our next data hero” was designed to give our community a sense of belonging. The term data hero is wildly used within the data and ICT industry and is described as “the person that is an indispensable asset in the increasingly data-based business landscape[AT1] ”. This was an individual assignment.

The campaign’s aim lies in brand awareness and participation, feeling a part of the data/ICT community in ‘s Hertogenbosch. Participation can be seen as interacting with the created content and signing up for the created event.

The promised value proposition is that they can be a part of a like-minded community within the data/ICT industry, in their perfect “hideout” to gain more knowledge. Data heavy non-ICT and ICT/data businesses are targeted to join the community, in particular the CEOs/decision makers. They namely make the decision whether to let the business join the community or not. In the assignment it was chosen to target Dutch and Danish businesses.

[AT1]https://towardsdatascience.com/do-you-have-a-data-hero-on-your-team-e4ddc318926e

City light

Social media post

The Innovation Quarter Den Bosch. The city where data and ICT comes together. (5).png

Magazine

Cape + Box

Invitation