As the world’s largest provider of water and wastewater treatment solutions, and a leading provider of pumps and related technologies, ITT Industries was the ideal candidate to be Gold Sponsor of Aquatech Amsterdam 2006. And the group was delighted with the results of the event. "Everything that we set out to do has been achieved," says Björn von Euler, Director of Corporate Communication at ITT. "Aquatech genuinely exceeded our expectations."

Over the last couple of years, ITT Industries has been following a strategy to bring all the group’s different activities together and promote them under a single brand. Aquatech Amsterdam 2006 saw this modus operandi come into its own, with a 285 m2 stand combining all ITT’s activities in one location: Flygt, Lowara, FB Leopold (pre treatment), Wedeco (disinfection, oxidation), Sanitaire (Biological treatment, aeration) and ITT Advanced Filtration.

Parent brand
"It was very important for us to be at Aquatech and present ITT to a European and international audience as the parent brand of these strong product brands," Bjorn reveals. "We sent out 4000 personal invitations and the Gold Sponsorship deal opened up promotional opportunities both inside and around the exhibition. Almost half of all visitors to Aquatech actually came to our stand, representing an increase of 35% on the last show." According to Bjorn, a key aim was to explain the purpose to the ITT brand. "The results of our investment have been very pleasing. We wanted to say that ITT has focussed on life cycle products/cost, energy efficiency and driving environmentally correct practices. Our surveys show that this fact was accepted by the audience, and we have clearly started to establish ITT as a parent brand. This is in turn benefiting our product brands and shows that our branding approach is working."

More business
From branding to business, a post-show analysis proved that ITT also enjoyed a significant success in terms of lead generation. "We gathered 20% more Dutch leads than last time round and saw a staggering increase of 185% in the international leads," Bjorn reports. "Moreover, these leads are translating into a lot of business. In fact, actual sales just 14 days after the close of Aquatech Amsterdam were higher than all the turnover generated from the 2004 exhibition." ITT also had a product development programme running parallel to the exhibition, which brought together technological, engineering and marketing expertise from its different operations around the world. "In addition to the conference and seminars, over 100 of our engineers and marketers scouted the exhibition and reported back on the latest trends. We got a lot of good information from this exercise." In conclusion, Bjorn confirms that Aquatech exceeds other shows in terms of its international appeal. "Aquatech really is the place to be because of the international scope of the business. All the commercial activities related to the gold sponsorship definitely helped frame our presence and further increase awareness of our activities. It was an excellent show."