How Workwear Group is making uniforms sing
On this episode of The CMO Show we sat down with Madeline Cambel, Head of Marketing – Uniforms at Workwear Group - home to popular brands including KingGee, Hard Yakka and NNT Uniforms.
With over a million people wearing uniforms to work across Australia and New Zealand, it’s a big market that Workwear Group is determined to lead. Hit play to hear Madeline chat to Mark about how they’re getting there.
As a marketing professional, you can probably barely remember the last time you had to wear a uniform. Maybe it was during your high school days, or perhaps your first job behind the counter at Maccas.
But for a large portion of the workforce - from construction workers to frontline staff - uniforms or workwear is just part of everyday life.
But not all workwear is created equal. Brands in this space know that the art and science of raising awareness, cutting through, and building customer loyalty is just as tricky as in any other industry.
On this episode of The CMO Show, we meet Madeline Cambel, Head of Marketing – Uniforms at Workwear Group. She’s taking a unique approach to the market and breathing new life into ordinary workwear.
“We understand that many people who wear uniforms still want to add an element of their personality to what they wear every day, not just necessarily what they're prescribed,” says Madeline.
While market size and customer demographics are hugely important, it’s the psyche of the workers wearing these uniforms that’s driving many of the marketing initiatives and discussion within the organisation.
“We like to cement ourselves as a collaborator who is more than just a uniform supplier. We actually understand this audience and champion the work they do every day.”
“We use genuine frontline staff in a lot of our photo shoots and campaigns. This helps with the authenticity of the campaigns – the diversity coming through in terms of age, gender, students, professionals, and more is invaluable.”
To learn more about Madeline’s consumer-first approach to marketing at Workwear Group, fire up today’s episode and give it a listen.
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Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Rian Newman & Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Hello, Mark Jones here and you’re listening to The CMO Show, a podcast produced by ImpactInstitute made for and made by marketing professionals.
Now as marketing professionals, you probably have to cast your mind waaaaay back to recall the last time you wore a uniform. Maybe it was during your high school days, or perhaps your first job behind the counter at Maccas.
But for a large portion of the workforce - from construction workers and tradies to frontline staff - uniforms or workwear is just something they put on every day.
But not all workwear is created equal.
Brands in this space know that the art and science of raising awareness, cutting through, and building customer loyalty is just as tricky as in any other industry.
So today, we meet a brand taking a unique approach and breathing new life into ordinary workwear.
Mark Jones here, my guest today is Madeline Cambel, Head of Marketing – Uniforms at Workwear Group.
You might not know the Workwear Group name, but you probably know some of their popular brands including KingGee, Hard Yakka, and NNT Uniforms.
Workwear Group aims to create world-class workwear. Madeline and I chatted about borrowing tactics from influencer campaigns and investing in brand ambassadors, among others, to bring their brand to the forefront.
Let’s dive in.
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Mark Jones
Thank you so much for joining me, Madeline.
Madeline Cambel
Oh, it's lovely to be here. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Jones
We're going to talk about uniforms, and I don't know, in the professional world, my uniform is jeans and a shirt and a jacket, right, but we're talking about everybody from people working in the healthcare sector to tradies, people working in mining and all sorts of places, right. Give us a picture of the Workwear Group and its mission.
Madeline Cambel
So Workwear Group has been around for, I'm going to say almost around 100 years. We started supplying uniforms to the military in the '20s. There's been quite a long history and heritage with a couple of brands that are very well known in the market, which would be Hard Yakka and KingGee, so very much around work wear, safety gear. Really the core DNA of our product is really around tradies, as we know today, and they're still existing brands.
Workwear Group also supports uniforms from the perspective of, we have an offering called Workwear Group Uniforms, where we actually create custom and bespoke uniforms for a lot of the industries that you just mentioned, so fire and emergency, healthcare, Qantas, various airlines, and a lot of our major banks as well are all dressed by Workwear Group.
A lot of what underpins those uniforms, as well as that Hard Yakka and KingGee product, can be a lot of bespoke product, which we do specific to the markets and industries, but we also have another brand which I'm heavily focused on in the uniform space, called NNT, which has also been around for quite some time, over 60 years.
NNT started out as Niche and Trim and we've evolved to NNT, and that range is quite large and it's the backbone of a lot of that bespoke product that covers healthcare, corporate, some hospitality, and a lot of that range we now promote in its own right, so NNT has really become a brand in its own right, that we go to market with.
Mark Jones
These would be custom designed for any type of organisation, to fit their style, etc, right?
Madeline Cambel
Yes, so I would say a good example would be a major bank, which I suppose a lot of the time their uniform is very much branded with their colours. What their staff wear front of house is very much a badge, an extension of their brand, so it may be that they're looking at the NNT range and the NNT product line.
We will take that and create more of a bespoke solution for them, whether that's in the form of a colour, a particular cut or a particular use case that they may have for who they're dressing, or a particular styling element that they want to include for their customer.
We would take a lot of that base range and we'd really ensure that we're supplying them with something that is relevant for their workers who are the face of their workforce.
Mark Jones
Fascinating. I am so curious about this. I want to know, what's the size of this market? How many people in Australia wear uniforms and what are we talking about here?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, look, it's very significant. It's a huge amount of the Australian market. I think from the latest statistics, we know that we dress over a million people worldwide, that's mainly Australia and New Zealand.
In terms of the size of the market, it's very much one that we don't have a clear picture on in terms of the exact number of people who wear a uniform, but I can tell you from the research that we've done from NNT, from a healthcare perspective, we know that in Victoria for example, there are 450,000 registered nurses. We think about that alone as one market and one segment, and the way in which that can actually create traction around a consumer base.
We think there's still a lot of opportunity for uniforms and uniform products to be really integrated into the lifestyle of our workers, because as you said, a uniform for you might be jeans and a T-shirt, but a uniform for someone else could be something where they still want to add an element of their personality to what they wear every day, and not just necessarily what they're prescribed.
Mark Jones
Well, I think the interesting thing about this dynamic is actually the question of agency or choice, and I'm going to just confess a bit of ignorance here, because I get to choose my clothes every day. I don't know, to what extent is there a level of choice across the different sectors where you work?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, look, it's a great question, and one that I think we have discovered over time is really case by case and changes on the industry and also the professionals that you're talking about. For example, we know in the healthcare space there can be particular professions where it's really quite prescriptive in terms of what they have to wear and where, from a safety perspective or compliance for a hospital.
We know for example, that nurses on particular types of wards have a little bit more flexibility in what they're able to wear on the ward, but also have quite a lot of influence over procurement terms, in terms of brands that they prefer, a product that they like to wear, and are often able to choose pieces themselves alongside what is prescribed for them for their uniform.
That's something that we've really wanted to tap into with NNT, and really ensure that we're appealing to that market as more of a consumer brand, so to speak, ensuring that they're actually seeing our product and the product features and benefits as desirable themselves, not just necessarily appealing to that procurement team who might be signing off on who they're actually using as a uniform supplier for that particular period of time or for the whole hospital, but actually ensuring that those segments that actually do have influence and can have a little bit more flexibility in what they wear, still feel like we're a brand that we can talk to those individuals.
Mark Jones
You are both a B2B and B2C marketer, right?
Madeline Cambel
Yes, exactly.
Mark Jones
If I understand. Do you have to then fight the competitive battle at that procurement team level first, so that ideally you're the exclusive supplier of nurses' uniforms, for example, and then when the nurses get their portal or whatever it is, they can choose within your brand, is that the way it works?
Madeline Cambel We've found that it is quite bespoke across the board, and one of the things that we're really proud of that we do at Workwear Group, is through their uniform solution offering, is that we do work with all of our individual customers to make sure that however they want to present that uniform and purchase empowerment to their customers, we can allow for that, so it could be quite varied.
Mark Jones
Maybe then to jump into specifics, there's a Dare To Wear campaign that might really give the listeners some really nice context for what we're talking about here, which is, correct me if I'm wrong, but this idea that you can get around in your scrubs, for example, in all sorts of different things, like yoga and climbing up walls and that sort of stuff, which is fun, right.
I presume this is another way of doing the quality test. "Look, these people can do crazy stuff with their uniforms." Is that the idea here?
Madeline Cambel
Yes, absolutely. We have found what has been effective for us in building this community around NNT as a brand, has been our ambassadors, and those ambassadors are your healthcare workers. It's supported that move away from a catalogue, say that you would choose a uniform from, to campaigns.
We've been able to engage some really genuine and authentic healthcare workers to take part in what we recently launched this year, which was our Dare to Wear campaign. As you mentioned, healthcare workers were dared to wear their scrubs in settings outside the hospital, and we saw this as a great opportunity, I think for a number of reasons.
Something that we have just noticed, and maybe it's simply because I work, and I notice people who wear scrubs outside of a hospital now, but there's a real badge of honour now associated with that uniform post pandemic. There's a real sense of pride, I see people on their bikes riding their scrubs to work. I've been told by particular friends in the industry, that they might wear their nice scrubs to and from work, but then they put on the ones that are not so trendy inside the hospital.
We saw that there was this real momentum building around how we could actually talk to the product and the product features and benefits, around the stretch and flexibility of the product, but in a really unique and interesting way, with the support of those medical professionals who are brand fans.
Mark Jones
Okay, I just thought that was a health and safety thing. You don't want to be getting coffee on your scrubs on the way to work sort of thing, right?
Madeline Cambel
No, definitely not, but I think, again, there's antibacterial properties of the scrubs, so it probably would be pretty easy to wash off.
Mark Jones
Yeah, I fell right into that one.
Madeline Cambel
Yeah.
Mark Jones
Now, what I'm really enjoying about this is understanding the psyche of the customer, and I think that's part of what we're exploring here, is how do you get into the mind of your customers? What's the journey been like for you?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, so we started quite a bit of research, it was just coincidentally something that we started to do in early 2020, which was also the start of the pandemic. Because we did have a lot of questions around how we actually take this brand to market in a new way.
One of the things that we did notice was, with healthcare being a big opportunity in Australia, in terms of a growth industry across private, public and aged care, we saw that scrubs was going to be a really interesting angle for us to push as an opportunity for growth for NNT and for Workwear Group.
What actually came out of a lot of that research and deep dives, we did quite a lot of sit down interviews with various nurses and healthcare workers, was that there wasn't really a brand that was authentically representing them as a community.
We saw that there was this really lovely momentum building, and genuine passion for their work, that why couldn't we actually look at that space and think about the way we positioned NNT as a brand that was for healthcare workers, for real healthcare workers.
We took that angle, and I think it's really paid off in the sense of we're able to cement ourselves as a collaborator who is more than just the uniform supplier, we actually know and understand this audience and empathise, and really champion with what they do every day, which is a phenomenal industry and phenomenal work that they have done, not just through the pandemic, but day-to-day.
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Mark Jones
What are the levers that you pull to maintain the trust that's quite clearly evident between the brands and the customers?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, so we use genuine workers in a whole lot of our photo shoots and campaigns. When you're looking across what we do at NNT, you're seeing a majority of the real healthcare workers who we're shooting. We find that through that there's a natural, the diversity come through in that, in terms of across age, gender, students, professionals, and we see that building that actual connection with workers in the field has also just embedded this sense of trust, their endorsements, their view of the product, the fun that they actually have on shoots.
We're really building that long-term engagement with the industry by the way in which we are engaging with the workers directly. I think that medical professionals don't sit down and smile on a set, they're on the go, they're on their feet all the time, and we're really conscious of the way in which we're portraying the professionals and how they wear our uniform.
Mark Jones
It's obviously an influencer campaign, have you been inspired by other markets and applications of influencer campaigns, or was there a type of research that led you to this approach?
Madeline Cambel
It was quite organic actually. I think that we've had, most of the outreach that we've done with influencers has been run internally. We gift a lot of garments, we don't really sponsor a lot, we don't really have a lot of paid posts, so that this was something that evolved simply with the way in which we found people were interacting with the brand.
We did pivot for Instagram in particular, to be really focused on healthcare. I think we saw just a general trend in the way consumers want to be spoken to in an authentic way, with authentic connections, and that's relevant across a whole lot of different industries.
We don't think there was necessarily any brand that was doing it well in this space, so we saw that there was a gap there. I think it was just general engagement and understanding of the psyche and the way in which they interact across media, and engage with social media in general, we were able to see that there was an opportunity for NNT to be part of their conversation and to be part of their community.
Mark Jones
What would you say is the hard lessons that you've learned along the way? If you think about the listener, the CMO who will be reflecting on your story and theirs at the same time. Obviously we want to know the good stuff, right, what did you get wrong or assumptions that weren't quite right?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, that's a good question. I think that it's slow progress in terms of the way we actually make those transitions internally. It can look really polished on the outside, but in terms of the way in which we've iterated, I think season upon season, and I say season because we work in six month batches, in terms of we still work in the spring, summer, autumn, winter calendar, despite the fact that we don't have a whole lot of newness that necessarily comes through, like fast fashion.
I think we've found that it's the iterating and improvement over time, and ensuring that we're working really closely with our product team. There's a lot that was happening, where sales were having those conversations with customers, directly around what they liked in the product, and that was being fed back to the product team and they would iterate accordingly.
I think for marketing to also have more space at that table, to ensure we're getting that feedback as well, and those benefits that our larger customers see is something that an individual is going to see as well, so making sure that we're having those conversations and being able to show the wider team where we can add value, has really helped us be able to articulate where we can take our marketing and comms.
Mark Jones
Got it. It sounds to me like there's a polite level of frustration at, maybe could we go faster? Is that right?
Madeline Cambel
I think any marketer will say that, "We'd like to go faster."
Mark Jones
That's awesome.
Madeline Cambel
Yeah.
Mark Jones
What about the sustainability angle? Ultimately these garments are going to wear out, most of them probably going out to landfill, so what's the sustainability angle?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, it's incredibly topical right now, for what we do from a uniforms perspective, particularly in the sense that a lot of the time uniforms are badged, so to speak, with a particular brand or label or can be for a particular industry where you can't just donate the product.
We are looking at a few different ways in which we support our customers with an end-to-end model, when they actually engage with Workwear Group as a uniform supplier. We are working with a couple of large industry partners, some who actually do a lot of the recycling in terms of sorting of the product, and then they will actually break it down to fibres again, and actually be able to take particular elements of the garment, the zippers, etc, off the product, so that the majority of the garment can be recycled.
There's also, what we're doing, I suppose in terms of for NNT, it's really around looking at the use of our raw materials at the start of the journey of product development, so thinking about what we're doing across a lot of our cottons and polyesters, and where we can actually embed recycled fabric into the design process, to ensure that at the end of life we've actually created something that isn't necessarily raw material heavy.
Mark Jones
Yeah, so watch this space?. All right. Interesting to see if you ever got to the Patagonia level of, send your garment in and we'll patch it up and send it back type thing.
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, definitely.
Mark Jones
Then what about metrics? We need to talk about, this journey that you've been on, how have you been tracking progress, are you really obsessed with likes and comments and follows? Well, the vanity stuff, or what's really moving the dial for you, particularly with those tricky internal stakeholders?
Madeline Cambel
Definitely. In terms of metrics, it's been very channel based, I think where we've started to see we've been able to shift the dial. In terms of likes and comments, less of a metric for us or a measure of success. Really we've been able to see that the genuine connection and passion for the brand, in terms of the influencers and ambassadors that we've spoken to, has seen in our reach to go into the millions across their followers as well as ours.
That's really paid for us in terms of brand recognition and brand awareness. We know for NNT that that's our biggest challenge, is actually ensuring that a lot of healthcare workers in particular, could be wearing NNT but not even know it. Because it's a uniform that they're supplied with and the brand hasn't really been something they'd had to engage with or make a personal choice around, so for us it's really ensuring that they know that they're in NNT, and that their scrubs are the best scrubs that they can get.
I think for us overall, we've seen great growth year on year, since its inception of our e-commerce platform, so our website, sales direct to consumer, and seeing that growth year on year in terms of the individual shopper or perhaps small business shopper on nnt.com.au has been huge, so that's really being a strong measure of success for us.
More broadly, we're also starting to dive a little bit deeper and think about overall, what are the different markets, given that the range of NNT crosses over from healthcare into corporate apparel and other sectors, that we actually want to dive a little bit deeper to understand that awareness set and consideration set across multiple areas, to see where we're over indexing perhaps and where we're under indexing and where there is more opportunity for us?
Mark Jones
It sounds like your integration with sales is pretty tight, is that fair?
Madeline Cambel
Absolutely, yeah.
Mark Jones
What happens there? Are you having coffee or exchanging notes, or do you just look at the whole thing together?
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, I think we have a little bit of a regular run of meetings and catch-ups and trade, that the members of my team and members of the sales team actually come together and engage with how we're looking overall.
The elements of responsibility for that, for us it's mainly that B2C, but also supporting them from a B2B perspective in terms of what they may need in terms of collateral support with messaging, support with activations, etc.
Definitely it's around constant connection with what's happening in the business and where those big opportunities are, that can actually drive a lot of the way in which we do things from a product and also marketing perspective.
Mark Jones
What's the key success do you think? What's the way to make those relationships really sing?
Madeline Cambel
I think for us, we've been fortunate in the sense that Workwear Group probably isn't such a huge business from a Wesfarmers perspective. We're owned and backed by Wesfarmers, we certainly don't have the headcount in marketing that a lot of other Wesfarmers businesses do.
I think that keeping it tight and keeping our engagement direct with a lot of the sales team and product team, has meant we've been able to be part of conversations that perhaps other marketing teams don't get to be so heavily involved in.
That's really been a credit to the way in which the whole business has wanted to engage and see a shift in the way marketing has been done, and I think for us, we're just continuing to support, and we're really passionate about the way in which we can support growth for these brands.
Mark Jones
A couple of things before we break, the brand architecture, I love a bit of nerdy brand architecture conversation. Quite clearly these brands that are customer facing are leading the charge. To what extent are you investing in the Workwear Group brand, or is that just on invoices?
Madeline Cambel
It's a good question. Workwear Group overall, we've split out and have even this separation of identity between Workwear Group and Workwear Group Uniforms. Workwear Group is that corporate business that we work for. We have a particular strategy in terms of EVP, in terms of what we're doing across sustainability, in terms of our brand being world class and our leadership and culture.
That very much sits under who we are as Workwear Group, as a business that we all show up to every day. It has established that that's more of a mentor model, that that's who we all are a part of, but within that there's Hard Yakka, KingGee, NNT and then Workwear Group Uniforms.
Yeah, it's pretty nerdy, and I could draw it out as a matrix and it would still seem complicated, but it's one of the things that even when I came into the role, that a lot of my team said to me, "Sometimes we don't know the difference between what should be Workwear Group and Workwear Group Uniforms." We've really worked hard to delineate the two and give them a different brand presence.
They've got their own unique websites now, different collaterals, so it's still an ongoing piece of work, but we think we're making it clearer by the day.
Mark Jones
Yeah, good. Well, I asked because I know a lot of brands in your context can really struggle with that, and it can suck a lot of oxygen out of the organisation or inside the organisation, and get you distracted from the actual business of marketing the consumer facing products, if you don't have the clarity.
Mark Jones
What's coming up next? Give us a sense of the future.
Madeline Cambel
For us, for NNT, I think it's very much, we've got some more campaigns in the works, that we're going to be extending Dare to Wear. This year we've used some key figures, in the form of Nell, who is a registered nurse, an AFLW player, we've seen that get some real traction. Looking at the way in which Dare to Wear can move across the healthcare space, and various faces who can represent the brand and engage with Dare to Wear.
I think we've also got some great above the line media that we're launching soon, which will really show how NNT product is fit for the frontline, and that proof behind the promise, in terms of going out with some bold numbers around how many scrubs we've sold across Australia, that I think will be a real point of difference in how we present in market.
I think continuing to build a bit more buzz and really focus on some earned media, to make sure that we're still really embedding ourselves in that healthcare space, and extending the campaigns into the various corporate ranges and other new products we have in development over the next 12 months.
Mark Jones
Yeah, I think a really good creative idea that I'm taking out of this conversation, is that if you put your product in contexts or situations that's a bit out of the ordinary, that illustrates an underlying point, it can be an effective way of getting cut through.
Madeline Cambel
Yeah, definitely. I think one of the things that previously we were a traditional marketing team, in the sense that just every six months we were creating a catalogue, that was just then given into the hands of the sales team and they just felt confident having that tactile thing in their hands, they could go to someone else and show.
I think we've been able to be able have more of a constant conversation around the brand and who we are and what we offer, and the product offering now plugs into that, so we can see that there's been a shift in the way, not just the way we present, but the conversations that the team are now able to have around our brand and product.
Mark Jones
Well look, let me know if you need any further ambassadors. My son, just to tell you a quick fun story, a 17-year-old tradie, goes straight from his work to the gym in his KingGee's and boots and fluro, and I've been saying, "Mate, what are you doing? You should get into the right gear." He's like, "No, it's fine, it's fine."
Then I popped on social media, this thing about reminding all the members what not to wear, and they showed a picture of my son walking in the door. Oh, I was so embarrassed and also hilarious, and then they ended up changing the rules because of what he was doing, because he didn't stop.
Who knows, maybe you've got some gym wear, tradie gym wear in the future as well. It's just a free idea to throw out there.
Madeline Cambel
No, I love it. I think, well maybe he should be part of Dare to Wear, and he's that tradie, he's wearing his clothes as a badge of honour, for what he does. That's awesome.
Mark Jones
Yeah, so who knows, anything's possible. What a fun insight into a whole world that I have observed, but never really properly understood.
Thank you so much, Madeline, for your time today and sharing your story. What incredible opportunities to connect brand with the psyche and to continue creating value, so thanks for your time.
Madeline Cambel
Thanks so much, Mark. It was great to chat.
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That was Madeline Cambel, Head of Marketing – Uniforms at Workwear Group.
I really enjoyed hearing about the different ways that NNT uses earned media and well fleshed-out campaigns to establish themselves in the healthcare space.
Their journey towards increased brand recognition is holistic – the team clearly takes the time to dig deeper into their different markets and the many crossovers between them.
We could all learn a little something from their integrated approach to brand recognition, if I do say so myself.
A huge thank you to Madeline for joining me on today’s episode. That about sums it up from me – we'll catch you next time.