Case Study

The Smart City

The Smart City interactive concept, based on a modern cityscape, connects together the various solutions provided by Clearview Trafficin the context of the environment in which they operate. It clearly illustrates how pragmatic solutions available from the portfolio can help solve the very real transport challenges faced by prospective customers.

Launched at the industry’s biggest bi-annual trade show (InterTraffic Amsterdam), the impact and engagement generated was beyond our client’s wildest dreams. It has revolutionised the way they can talk about their proposition, offering a superior customer experience and a real insight into the overall proposition; over 100 people actually photographed the stand and the Clearview Team ran out of the printed collateral (over 500 information packs) in the first two days. The net result from this show was a 49% increase in leads over previous years and a busy few weeks of following up on these leads.

The Smart City in its most interactive form exists as a Custom Web Application, with Responsive variants for Desktop, Touch Screen, Tablet and Mobile devices. In addition, users can access the smart city via large-scale printed collateral, a full Trade Stand environment and the Smart City Info-Pack.

Business Rationale & Context

In Clearview’s industry, ‘smart cities’ is seen as a buzzword without real substance and as a result, is starting to get a bad name. We wanted an effective way to dispel this myth and provide an engaging way to explain the vision for how this can be achieved. We used a pragmatic, step by step approach according to the pain points that an individual customer is feeling. At the same time giving customers the ability to understand the innovative nature of the product portfolio.

The ability to communicate the product experience by drilling down from the main cityscape makes it really simple for prospective customers to get a complete picture of how the products work. Whilst providing links to specific product data sheets, website pages and individual product animations enhances their appearance and the benefits they offer.

We wanted to create a highly graphical, visually stimulating piece that could readily translate across multiple media such that we could re-purpose the material for a number of different applications. Already we have seen this transform from a single interactive experience into:

Large format flat visuals to become the backdrop and theme for the InterTraffic stand as well as numerous other elements of the stand graphics to create consistent, powerful message

A very simple, user friendly piece of collateral that was snapped up and Clearview are already on the second print re-run

A high quality lead capture concept that can be used in digital marketing campaigns via social media

The Outstanding Customer Experience Delivered

The Smart City has brought together the numerous strands of a diverse product portfolio, vision and strategy into a clearly focused, easy to understand set of artefacts that concisely summarised the hard work and effort that Clearview have put in over the last two years to redefine their place in the market and re-establish Clearview Traffic as a key player.

It delivers a welcoming, captivating experience that helps users quickly see the answers to their problems such as reducing congestion or improving journey predictability. This piece presents a fundamental step change in experience that is enjoyed by Clearview staff, customers and prospects alike. Never before has there been such an interactive and immersive tool for the education, engagement and conversion of customers and prospects on Clearview Products and Solutions and this is the sort of credibility building and thought leadership style approach that will continue to set us apart.

The Smart City delivers this involvement and interactivity, and pulls the entire product suite together in one, device-agnostic, channel agnostic, deliverable. It needn’t stop here either; the beauty of this piece of work is that we can continue to extend it in new ways with new products and solutions, look at other ways to heighten the experience further such as augmented reality, access to other materials. There are many different directions we can and will explore further with this as a solid base point.

Business Impact & Results Achieved

Aim Results
Deliver a piece that succinctly demonstrates our pragmatic vision for the smart city and acts as a pivotal lead generation tool
  • Over 100 people photographing our stand
  • 500 brochures consumed in 2 days
  • 49% increase in leads taken during four day event; many of which have identified projects they would already like us involved in
  • Positive comments about how visually striking the concept was and how they could see a real joined up, integrated approach to solving today’s transport problems
Heighten staff understanding and buy-in to the company’s strategic vision Clearview circulated this internally as they do with all new collateral via an enterprise social network and were greeted with universally positive comments back. A new Business Development Manager said that it has really helped consolidate their understanding:“I really like it. From a new starter in the company, this gives me a fuller perspective of the whole product range and the benefits of combined solutions. I’m sure it’s going to go down well. A lovely bit of work.”
Provide a striking yet simple, visually engaging experience that is a living expandable piece Right now this sums up the existing wide ranging product portfolio perfectly and gives room to add more as the portfolio evolves, but also a platform which can be extended. To sum up how well this worked at the recent event, Nick Lanigan, the Managing Director said “From a personal perspective, it was the best exhibition I have attended with Clearview in terms of our proposition to the market and the level of interest in our products and services.”

Clear Customer Insight

For about 18 months, Clearview Traffic have been talking about Smart Cities and attending a range of industry events and exhibitions showing off the product range, but customers always struggled to make the leap as to how the range of vehicle detection, road safety and traffic data collection equipment really connected together and how they really helped local authorities progress towards making their cities’ transport infrastructure work smarter. So it was clear early on that Clearview needed to help them make the link between what they did and how these systems contribute towards a smarter infrastructure.

Clearview started researching what other players in the Smart Cities market (such as health, telecoms, utilities etc) were doing and found that they all relied on flat visuals or at best some videos. Then Clearview met with the team at Klarifi to discuss new ideas that would work across a range of media, but provide the simplicity that was needed. Clearview also spoke with a range of customers and internal stakeholders to get their views and it became clear that the infographics that Klarifi had been producing for the Clearview blog were seen as a really good way to get across the message and this is where we started.

Innovative and Creative Solution

Embedding Clearview’s entire Product suite into a futuristic, thriving Cityscape, was the vision of Klarifi Creative Director – Rick O’Neill, and Clearview Head of Product & Marketing – Wayne Stant. The objective was to communicate the vast array of Clearview Traffic’s solutions to a complex array of Customer Demographics, in a way that sets all products and solutions in the context of the “City of the Future”, but that also allowed customers to view certain groups of products and solutions by a particular category of need (e.g. “Reducing Congestion”, or “Improving Road Safety”).

The piece needed to work as a standalone application that is operating system and browser agnostic, as well as device agnostic so that it works on laptops, tablet PCs and smartphones. The application had to allow users to access as much information as they wanted to absorb on each individual solution, whilst enabling them to understand the positive impact of implementing each solution and how they each represented just one piece of the puzzle.

Effective Implementation

Combining the launch of the Smart City Web Application with a high profile attendance of one of the Industry’s biggest Trade Shows (InterTraffic) enabled Clearview to make a big impact with this campaign.

Catering to all digital devices, and also the creation of a real-world environment and printed collateral, created a completely immersive and highly engaging implementation.

The entire product, sales and marketing teams from Clearview were involved in the design and development of the Smart City from the outset, meaning the entire internal team were engaged from day one.

The Smart City is predominantly a marketing tool for Lead Generation, and this objective is designed-in to every part of the suite. From in-app request for info forms, to iPad lead collection solutions for the Trade Stand.

Let’s start with an informal discussion about your requirements… Call 01327 828 443 today and Laura-Anne will put you in touch with the relevant team member.