WEEE/RoHS Don't Get Locked Out of Europe Case Study

When AOMC started work for TUV Rheinland of North America, we identified a need to promote the company’s WEEE/RoHS services, an area of significant growth potential but one they had not been promoting in the past. The Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directives were set to go into effect in 2005 and 2006 in the European Union and required companies to file recycling plans for products and to build products without the use of a number of hazardous substances. Because of the complexity of the directives and the wide-ranging impact they would have on American companies that wanted to export to Europe, the market was ripe for a resource to translate the directives into simple English.

TUV Rheinland’s Geoffrey Bock is an excellent resource on the WEEE/RoHS topic. We wrote an article outlining the basic points of WEEE/RoHS and why American companies needed to be in compliance. During the pitching process of the article, we suggested to editors and reporters that Geoffrey could be as a resource for any future articles on WEEE/RoHS and was available for comments at any time.

Summary of Results
Immediately after the release was sent out, we received pickups in key target publications like Test & Measurement World and manufacturing publications like Springs, Frontline Solutions, and Automatic Machining. Reporters continued to call us after the initial wave of articles because there were not many experts who were willing to comment on WEEE/RoHS. Reporters kept our release and continued to use Geoffrey Bock as a resource for stories they were writing on the directives. The most significant pickup was a major article that was published in BusinessWeek.com.

Geoffrey was also asked to speak at a number of conferences due to the pickups. He gave a presentation about WEEE/RoHS at National Manufacturing Week and was well received at the Northeast Product Safety Society’s conference. Bock was asked to speak in Hong Kong on the subject and was identified by the organizer there as “one of the top 20 world renowned speakers” on the subject. A compliment that made everyone at TUV Rheinland smile.

But the most important development from the release and subsequent placements was TUV Rheinland was able to close numerous contracts for WEEE/RoHS services with new clients. Bock says, “The recognition from the release and subsequent published articles and speaking engagements has been key to the marketing strategy we needed for WEEE/RoHS.”

Click here to view full story in PDF format.