Ingram Ad Shop's Pitch to VARs: 'We Know Your Business'

Jennifer Anaya
Jennifer Anaya

Agency Ingram Micro has made a name for itself less than two years after formally becoming the in-house agency of one of the world's largest technology distributors.

The Santa Ana-based shop, housed inside the global headquarters of Ingram Micro, has seen business from partners boom, driven by the desire from VARs and vendors alike to broaden their customer bases rather than rely on selling more solutions to the same companies.

That's the word from Agency Ingram Micro Vice President of Marketing for North America Jennifer Anaya.

The agency formalized its marketing service offerings -- available only to partners currently -- about a year and a half ago, although Anaya said Ingram had always offered such services to channel partners.

Business is up with the Agency clocking in more branding projects for solution provider clients in the first quarter of this year than it did for all of last year along with an increase in work from manufacturers, according to Anaya.

"Partners tend to be technologists and they don't necessarily think of themselves in marketing themselves outwardly to those end businesses," Anaya told CRN. "But the more they're taking on new solutions, the more they are transforming themselves as companies. It's really more about them being able to position themselves out to new customers, new end customers, that they hadn't really historically worked with."

Houston, Texas-based Computex Technology Solutions has always had in-house marketing executives, but much of its focus had been on media outreach through public relations and not much in the way of branding.

New acquisitions for the company brought new companies and brands into its fold, calling for a need to consolidate the company's four brands and unify employees in its eight offices, Computex President and Chief Executive Sam Haffar said.

Agency Ingram Micro created a single logo for the company, helped with business card layouts and created a PowerPoint deck for the new brand. A new website for Computex is set to launch soon.

"When you go out to conferences … and I have four people there and they have four different business cards and four different logos, it's confusing," Haffar said. "This is bringing everybody together internally and externally. It was very important to be seen as one company. It makes a lot of sense to consolidate in front of the vendors and in front of customers."