TE+A served as the agency of record for the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) for over five years. TE+A served in this capacity through the IPO process and subsequent sale to the CME. When first engaged, the CBOT seat was under 200k and upon the sale to the CME was valued over 3 million.
The primary objective was to reorganize the structure of the CBOT’s marketing and advertising systems. TE+A determined that the CBOT’s advertising would require the development of an overall layout structure, and designed a system with a format that allowed for the rotation of unit/product messaging while keeping key branding components standard. Also, TE+A developed a CBOT Brand Standards guide for advertising, determining logo usage and signature, color palettes, fonts and graphics/layout usage across all advertisements.
The e-Gold Campaign:
A short time later TE+A was charged with developing a campaign to support CBOT’s efforts to gain market share for a new CBOT-based electronic platform from a rival US-based exchange that was trading metals on the floor. Our agency created an FCM partnership program to solicit support from brokerages while increasing media budgets two-fold, and developed a web portal featuring interactive educational components and direct mail campaigns targeting brokerages, trading desks and prop shops. The result represented an unprecedented shift in CBOT market share – an electronic platform that moved enough trading from a floor-based product to capture over 60% of the volume and build enough liquidity to be considered a relevant marketplace. The CBOT also garnered enormous profits due to its higher-priced contract, and thus built upon the campaign’s success even further.
