Our judges couldn’t get enough of last year’s Silver winner, Toronto-based Ogilvy & Mather. Zulu Alpha Kilo founder and president Zak Mroueh called the faux Diamond Shreddies relaunch campaign ‘simply a brilliant, textbook marketing idea,’ while Dory Advertising CD Donna McCarthy said Dove’s Pro-Age work was ‘just so good.’
MAXWELL HOUSE
Kraft wanted to tout its new 100% Arabica formulation, grow volume – a daunting goal as the price of coffee beans was going through the roof – and engage consumers in a meaningful dialogue.
Ogilvy brought to life a new North American platform, ‘Brew some good,’ in the local market, kicking things off with a $100,000 donation to Habitat for Humanity.
On ‘On the House Day,’ startled commuters got free coffee, subway tokens and performances from Chantal Kreviazuk and Pascale Picard. Free copies of Maclean’s featured the first-ever print ad on the popular ‘good news/bad news’ page.
Rather than spend the $200,000 TV budget on an ad, Ogilvy used $19,000 for a bare-bones production and asked consumers where to spend the rest by nominating groups on brewsomegood.ca. While online, people could subscribe to an RSS feed to receive some good news each morning. Every piece of communication was harmonized with the redesigned can, created in collaboration with the agency.
Results were strong, with 1,848 nominations in the first three months. Share increased in April, May and June, despite a price increase right before launch. Web visits tracked 20% to 50% above the anticipated range, and PR resulted in over a million audience impressions and 203 stories – including 66 television news segments. The ‘Regent Park’ spot (showcasing one of the chosen charities) was a finalist at Cannes.
HONEYCOMB
Last year Kraft Canada launched Ogilvy’s ‘The boy raised by bees’ campaign for Honeycomb with outstanding results. So when they faced pressure to harmonize with a U.S. campaign, they responded by pitching an evolution of the Beeboy for the American market.
The U.S. division wasn’t convinced at first that the Canadian work fit its target. So Ogilvy pushed the storyline forward, moving from the discovery of the Beeboy to his adventures in the world. With more online activity and more opportunity to show a quirky personality, the campaign was better aligned with the American brand character.
TV drove to beeboy.org, which was packed with original content and layered with a three-level game, new videos with higher production values and more sophisticated storylines the tween target could see themselves in. YTV promotions online also drove to the site.
Beeboy and Honeycomb are a big hit with Canadian kids, and the U.S. recently picked up the campaign and changed the packaging. Based on IP addresses, kids are viewing beeboy.org from school and sharing viral videos with their friends. Beeboy ads were uploaded to YouTube, YTV generated eight million impressions and Canada will continue to lead on future creative work.
DOVE
The idea that beauty has no age limit was central to the launch of the Pro-Age line of products for mature women. Ogilvy was asked to ‘develop a breakthrough activation program that inspires women to embrace pro-aging.’
Research showed that women over 50 felt invisible in the media. Ogilvy tapped into their desire to lift the societal curse by sparking frank, positive discussion. The result: Body & Soul, an original play inspired by women’s stories.
A multi-faceted program was developed around the play, from an audition kit available either as a boxed game or as a download from doveplay.ca to promotional print and OOH materials, PR and strategic partnerships to drive awareness and participation.
All 10 performances sold out, and the site garnered over 90,000 visits. CBC aired a documentary in September. Unilever hopes to continue the momentum with spinoffs for community theatres, distributing DVD copies of the documentary with product and a U.S. stage production.
WINNERS
Ogilvy’s challenge was to create a campaign to get occasional Winners shoppers into the store at least once more per year by convincing them they wouldn’t leave empty-handed. They needed to display a lot of product without dropping brand names, showing the stores or alienating consumers with skinny models.
Research revealed that Winners shoppers believed shipments only come to stores on certain days; in fact, fresh merchandise arrives every day.
The resulting campaign platform was ‘Fresh Goods Daily,’ which evoked a stylized world where well-dressed Winners employees of all shapes, ethnicities and sizes collect, grow and hunt down fresh finds. These items were then packaged and delivered daily to Winners stores by unusual means – putting a twist on fashion advertising conventions. TV covered seasons, while radio focused on sales of specific items such as boots or beauty products.
The campaign saw positive improvement of brand tracking measures for the key themes of relevance and intention to shop, with numbers up over last year. Ultimately, on impact (intention to buy), the fall spot scored 50% vs. the previous fall’s 27%, and the holiday creative received 34% compared to the previous year’s 22%.
DIAMOND SHREDDIES
Research showed that Canadians loved Shreddies but had forgotten about them. Since the brand had last spoken to consumers in 2002, the category had changed dramatically, with a proliferation of new products and highly successful line extensions. To grow awareness and volume, ‘Make people think about Shreddies again’ became Ogilvy’s communications mission.
The answer came out of an invitation from Post to redesign the back of the cereal box: a faux ‘line extension’ that simply turned the squares 45 degrees. This fun package idea became the nucleus of a complete communications plan that was implemented with a straight face. TV drove to diamondshreddies.com for recipes, a contest, an interactive game and videos of actual focus groups testing the product. At shelf, shoppers found limited-edition boxes of Diamond Shreddies.
Huge debate ensued, with endless blog postings and videos on YouTube including rants and parodies. A fan even put ‘the last square Shreddie’ for sale on eBay, leading to a three-page article in Maclean’s.
The campaign had phenomenal breakthrough. On brand communication recall, Shreddies scored over 50% higher than key competitors. Sales in the months following the campaign’s airing continued to show baseline increases vs. the prior year. In its first four months, it surpassed all industry standards with 54 million audience impressions, 265 stories and awards including Gold and Grand Clios, Young Guns Gold, D&AD, One Show Bronze Pencil and a Titanium Cannes Jury Special Mention.
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