Taking charge of communications for Indra

Brief

Indra Renewable Technologies is a pioneering smart electric vehicle (EV) charger and energy technology company on a mission to create the smartest way to power EVs. The business currently has two EV chargers on the market; but, alongside this, is pioneering new game-changing vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.

Challenge

Indra turned to Leopard Co for strategic communications consultancy to develop its first-ever communications strategy, coupled with associated integrated campaign tactics to fuel its ambitious growth plan. Our challenge was to deliver the communications strategy within 10 weeks of the brief. 

As one of our retainer clients, this was followed by routine delivery of ongoing integrated campaign tactics.

Solution

Knowing that awareness of home charging within the EV driver community was low, our 360°communications strategy centres on Education, Leadership and Trust, weaving this messaging into every brand and product story to target Indra’s core target audiences: EV drivers and installers. These stories are then cascaded across channels:

• Digital marketing — recognising that competitors ranked for high-spend keywords, our approach is to rank for less competitive, cheaper keywords, so Indra can own the secondary search space. Golden keywords inform our wider brand content, ensuring we tap into customer needs at all stages of the purchasing funnel.
• PR — we conduct media outreach to titles within national, automotive, tech and trade press, using topical events such as COP26 and energy price hikes to position Indra as the leader of the conversation. We also weave technical features in trade press within our PR programme, a space which competitors aren’t occupying.
• Social media — building the social media from the ground up, we create engaging, jargon-busting content that showcases Indra’s current product offering, such as smart tips for end-users and technical how-to videos for installers. Coupled with this is a suite of content showcasing Indra’s exciting V2X developments, for which we harness Indra founder Mike Schooling’s influencer status to position him as the genius behind the brand.
• Video content — to create high-quality, technically focused assets for the brand, our studio team joined forces with leading tech journalist and presenter, Nikki Dean, to deliver three explainer videos. These are cascaded across web and social media, offering both installers and end-users an easy, engaging way to consume product information.

Impact

The development of campaign strategy was delivered in six weeks, which enabled tactical delivery to commence in August 2021. Over a year later and we met all KPIs outlined in the strategy — and have continued to deliver on our targets set quarterly: 

• Achieved social media engagement rates above industry benchmark: LinkedIn: 11%, up on our target by over 80% Instagram: 11%, up on our target by 10% Twitter: 4%, up on our target by 10% Facebook: 12%, up on our target by 100%.
• First place Google ranking for ‘smart EV charger’ keyword, successfully putting Indra on the digital map.
• Driven a monthly average of over 2,000 website visitors from social, increasing the number by 300% in a year.
• Secured 25 items media coverage items, including two The Sunday Times items and three prime-time broadcast items.
• Achieved two CIPR PRide Awards for Integrated Campaign and Transport/Automotive Campaign.