Tama is a world-leading manufacturer and distributor of agricultural crop baling solutions. Headquartered in Israel but active on every continent of the world, Tama is a well-established, respected and trusted leader to the global farming sector.

The company’s bale netting, twine and cotton wraps are forerunners, setting the standard that is then followed by others. Tama works closely with agricultural baler producers to develop baling products tailored to their equipment, and also supplies directly in-market through a large distribution network. Training and support are key facets of its offering to farmers.

Over its seventy year history, Tama has transformed from a small domestic workshop business into a flourishing global operation. But this success bring with it numerous challenges, including competition that is agile and becoming increasingly aggressive and a growing customer base which needs addressing locally while seeing, understanding and valuing Tama’s global brand proposition and values.

Marketing expertise was split at Tama between a small team based in Israel and local in-country or regional resources. As a result, some markets deployed consistent and relatively effective marketing campaigns, whereas others, sometimes with no expertise of their own, had to rely solely on the Israeli team’s efforts, which by definition were generic and not tailored to any specific country, language or audience.

In addition, Tama was aware that its decentralised model meant there was inconsistency in approach, planning, messaging, implementation and measurement. There was also a clear opportunity for the marketing team to identify and share best practice, both from its own team’s experience and with the help of external consultants holding broader expertise from more industries and offering an objective view.

Tama required a solution, aligned to its commercial goals for the coming year, that would address disparate needs and deliver value for all participants, who had quite different levels of marketing experience. This needed to be delivered within one day or less, as its team gathered for its annual sales and marketing meeting.

BDB proposed a full day workshop, tailored to the specific needs of the client team. In consultation with Tama’s central marketing contacts, BDB developed a substantial agenda that would meet the needs identified by Tama itself and also address issues and unlock opportunities that we could see from our external perspective.

This involved extensive research by BDB ahead of the event, so we could immerse ourselves fully in Tama’s world and provide relevant and specific observations, examples, advice and ideas. The resulting workshop would educate, inspire and guide participants; helping them not only step up their marketing game within their individual countries and regions, but also identify and make use of opportunities to share ideas and pool resources where appropriate.

Six of BDB’s most senior and experienced consultants travelled to the location of Tama’s meeting to deliver the session, which was also videoed by BDB’s AV operator so the recording could be revisited, reused and shared more widely in future within Tama.

The day was divided into eight sections, each led by a different BDB expert. These covered differentiation, customer-centricity, communities, personalisation, sales & marketing alignment, ABM, measuring ROI and technology. We shared theory and best practice as well as examples from other BDB clients and the agricultural sector to maximise relevance to the audience. Five interactive group exercises were incorporated into the day, to enable Tama’s representatives to put into practice the ideas and methodologies they were hearing about, with help and guidance from the BDB team. These would be the starting point for their marketing plans for the following year.

During the day, BDB trained twenty three delegates from Europe and Australia in the latest and most effective b2b marketing techniques that could help Tama protect its market-leading position in crop packaging. The presentation we developed was subsequently shared with the American sales and marketing teams, to maximise Tama’s ROI from its work with BDB.

Critical was our ability to avoid preaching generic marketing theory. BDB ensured everyone could see how the information we shared was relevant to Tama and could be deployed within its niche. Tama commented on the effectiveness of our approach, the amount of insight we offered and the value of the group exercises, which stimulated freer but better focused discussion than had previously been possible.

The day after BDB’s consultancy, Tama’s central marketing team obtained feedback from all the delegates. This showed how they envisaged implementing their learnings over the coming year. The discussions confirmed participants’ understanding of what they had heard and also helped identify how the Israeli team could best support their colleagues over the coming year in terms of time, further guidance and marketing assets.

Follow-up conversations BDB held with some of Tama’s local marketing teams similarly demonstrated improved knowledge and the adoption of more strategic, customer-focused and measurable marketing communications activity.