“Barenbrug wanted to add even more value through Customer Journey design”
Barenbrug is a global leader in grass seed in the livestock farming, sports, recreation and horse farming. For several years, Barenbrug has been responsible for the turf at the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship. With over 100 years of history, the organization now has more than 800 employees worldwide. Stay Future Proof and Barenbrug are no strangers to each other. In the summer of 2022, they collaborated to map out the Customer Journeys of different customer segments of Barenbrug Netherlands. This has helped Barenbrug Netherlands to add more value throughout the entire customer journey. Based on this positive outcome, it was decided to apply the basic principles of Customer Journey Design for Barenbrug worldwide.
Mirella van de Sant, Global Marketing Director at Barenbrug Group, has been organizing the Barenbrug Global Marketing Meeting for several years now. This year, all international Barenbrug Marketing Managers were brought together in Toulouse. Stay Future Proof was invited to assist this group for 1.5 days in applying the concept of 'Customer Journey' in practice. Mirella: "We all know what the concept of Customer Journey is, and we can list all the phases of such a journey, but I wanted to take it a step further. I wanted to challenge the Marketing Managers to truly step into the shoes of the end-user and to critically examine our journeys from that perspective."
Our approach
The road to the Global Marketing Meeting in Toulouse started with an extensive and structured preparation, involving close collaboration between Barenbrug and Stay Future Proof. Stay Future Proof always works in co-creation. Together with Mirella, the challenges faced by the international Marketing Managers carefully identified. Subsequently, the global marketing objectives were discussed. The insights gathered during this process formed the basis for the content of the session in Toulouse, focusing on the End-User Journeys.
Josephine: ‘We conducted several interviews with landscapers, owners of distribution channels and buyers of landscaping companies. We asked interesting questions to identify the context that can affect the work of our customer groups.’
De huidige klantreis werd verrijkt met de inzichten die in deze interviews werden opgehaald. Daarnaast werden er nieuwe momenten, zogenoemde Moments of Truth, aan de klantreis toegevoegd waarin er door Barenbrug nog meer waarde voor de klant kan creëren. In deze Moments of Truth kan de klant verrast worden en zo een positieve relatie met het merk vormen.
Stay Future Proof always works in co-creation in its processes, including at the collaboration with Barenbrug. Different people with different functions within the organization were brought together to gain new insights. This approach was not new to Josephine, but Barenbrug had not yet worked with this approach before. But it worked out very well.
Josephine: ‘Initially, the question arose how colleagues from other departments could contribute to design the Customer Journey. But I’m glad we set it up that way. It’s super fun, but you also come up with ideas that you didn’t come up with before. This provides motivation and creates understanding for each other’s work.’
Results
The main result of the collaboration between Barenbrug and Stay Future Proof is of course the renewed and accurate Customer Journey of the Dutch gardeners and related customer groups. In addition, Stay Future Proof has introduced structure and offered concrete tools that Barenbrug can now apply in practice for other target groups and countries. A methodology has been set up that Barenbrug can use to take concrete action. In this way they make much better use of all the data and knowledge they already gathered.
Het traject met Stay Future Proof heeft er ook voor gezorgd dat Barenbrug meer vaart in haar processen weet te behouden. Dit kwam door het succesvol gebruiken van de pressure cooker approach. Met deze aanpak kom je in korte tijd, en onder tijdsdruk, tot zo veel mogelijk nieuwe inzichten en ideeën. Josephine: “Stay Future Proof heeft geholpen om de vaart erin te houden. We maakten duidelijke afspraken en hanteerden strakke deadlines. Dit werkte goed.”
Barenbrug was already well on their way but Stay Future Proof has given the final push and laid a foundation with which Barenbrug can continue. They are now entering the experiment phase to test all their client assumptions. In addition, the aim is to arrive at new value propositions through experimentation.
We would be happy to discuss how we can also make your organization future proof. Curious?
