No Canadians were among those awarded Media Lions at the 50th International Advertising Festival in Cannes last month. But that doesn’t mean we can’t win next year. To get those creative juices flowing, Strategy MEDIA cast its roving eyes to the plans that did win.
Inferno! In real time…
Most people don’t know that a small kitchen fire can turn into a raging inferno in just three minutes. Saatchi & Saatchi of New Zealand used the typical three-minute commercial break and a real-time clock to convey to New Zealanders the scary reality that 90% of fire deaths happen in people’s homes.
The media team, on behalf of the New Zealand Fire Service, conceived the idea of running six executions of a fire engulfing a home in real time and running it in intervals during a three-minute commercial break. Needless to say, this required negotiations with networks to time commercials around the creative and assurances that the break would last exactly three minutes. The resulting campaign, titled ‘Speed of Fire,’ may sound like the latest Jean-Claude Van Damme flick, but it was a media-buying first.
The media buy as performance art
From the same agency that begat ‘Speed of Fire,’ Saatchi New Zealand’s ‘Bruised Ambassadors’ stunt had 30 women made up to appear as if they had large facial bruises and go about their daily business to bring attention to the issue of domestic violence among the upper ranks of New Zealand women.
The women held prominent jobs (one was the mayor of Wellington, another the GM of Starbucks NZ), went to work as usual, and were told to answer inquiries about their facial injuries with rebuttals like ‘I walked into a door.’ Rumour and chatter were rampant, but the talk was put to an end when the women sent out e-mails alerting their co-workers to the truth. The stunt made the 6 p.m. news on both major New Zealand networks and raised the profile of the Women’s Refuge Annual Appeal – resulting in 20% more donations over the previous year.
‘I didn’t buckle my seat belt either’
To encourage Chileans to fasten their seatbelts, agency Tropa Grey hired disabled people and had them distribute flyers at several traffic lights in Santiago.
During red lights, people with crutches and in wheelchairs handed out flyers to those not wearing their seat belts. The flyers read: ‘I didn’t buckle my seat belt either’ followed by the tagline ‘Just buckle it!’ The result? Nine out of 10 people approached with the flyers buckled up right away and the campaign reached about half a million drivers overall. Not bad for a low-budget initiative, especially since previous campaigns to promote seat belt use in the region flat-out failed.
That’s a wrap
Just because a historic landmark is covered up and under restoration doesn’t mean you can’t advertise on it. At least, not without a little finagling. Deutsche Telekom enlisted German agency Springer & Jacoby Media to use the canvas that covered Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate during its two-year restoration as the backdrop for outdoor ads touting the mobile phone service.
This pleased not only the client, but also the Berlin senate. The agency got the go-ahead by promising to paint an image of what the restored gate would look like on the canvas behind the ads. So, even while the tourist destination was being restored, it could still be ‘seen.’ Said one of the media planners: ‘If it is hidden anyway, why not use it for our purposes?’
