Jas Business Blog

‘Below the Line’ (BTL) campaigns are always dear to my heart as they show how innovative the brand manager can get. With so many virals, TVC, print media blasts, the idea of a fresh campaign surely makes one notice the brand with a concentrated attention. And compared to an advertisement, a campaign is based largely on a strategy and needs more planning and prediction.

Baci Perugina, an Italian chocolate brand, has been branding itself on love and romance to make its offering get associated with sweet, romantic and tempting (word Baci means ‘kisses’ in Italian). In its integrated campaign, the chocolate brand decided to sell some sentiments, unleashing an unusual love story. Target of the campaign was to capitalize on Baci Perugina’s awareness during Valentine day period. The company spun a story of one shy Giovanni who has fallen in love with his beautiful neighbor Gaia and went to its target audience – youth, via social media and then SMS.

On 4th Feb, a YouTube video came online uploaded by a guy called Giovanni telling viewers that he is in love with his neighbor, Gaia. He explains that he keeps asking her out but she is not interested. Now finally she has presented a yummy, unique offer to Giovanni- she will kiss him, if 50,000 people would ask her to do so. So that is why Giovanni has made the video, loaded it on YouTube and even then he opens a group on Facebook asking for help. Two days later on 6th Feb, the brand Baci Perugina comes into the scene  as an “independent supporter” of Giovanni’s initiative. They create a page on their website  where people can mail their request.

9th Feb – 3rd video is uploaded on YouTube where Gia tells audience that 20,000 mails have arrived and in case 50,000 mails come, she would kiss this guy.

Meanwhile outdoor campaign starts, videos are plated in a busy plazza asking for people to help the guy by SMSing their request.

On 12 Feb – Giovanni uploads a video thanking people for the 20,000 mails and says if 50,000 mails come he can kiss on Valentine Day (and public goes bersek). Finally on 13th Gia uploads a video saying the guy got 50,000 mails so she will kiss the guy the next day.

On 14th Februaru there is a big event in Piazza Duomo (italy) where the campaign details are unvieled. A video is uploaded on website showing the kiss being ‘delivered’. People realise it was an advertising campaign.

Performance/ Results:

The campaign was planned on different media: viral videos, the community engagement through YouTube, Facebook and the Perugina community, an interactive outdoor and a local event. People soon became fond of the story. In 10 days it recorded more than 50,000 mails; 151,841 visitors to the Baci Perugina site; 26,678 contacts on YouTube and 5,400,000 impressions on MSN. Sales went up by 11% in an A-8 market. Giovanni’s story was spontaneously talked about on TG1, the most important national TV news (italy).

Credits:

Advertising Agency: ARMANDO TESTA Turin, ITALY

Media Agency: MAXUS Milan, ITALY

About Company/Brand : Baci Perugina is one of the most important brands of chocolate in Italy, belonging to the Nestlè Group. It is also famous gift on Vday.

Most of the ads are supposed to lure the customer or a decision maker towards the product. But then there are other advertisements where the intended effect is negative, the intended recipient of advertisement need to be taken away from a product. Mostly these will be done by the social groups and non profitable associations. An example would be adverts warning people against use of tobacco or urging women to not ignore the symptoms of breast cancer.

After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of cancer in women. Although the shocking death of Jade Goody has had an impact with many women taking notice from their slumber about the silent arrival of cancer in their lives even at the young age. But still most of the women remain oblivious of the danger. Hence the need for adverts that should not only communicate the dangers, but should also kick them out of the slumber by introducing the feeling of fear or concern in them.

About ninety percent of the women in the world suffer from this ailment and  still ignore it due to sheer negligence. I am very sure no woman would want to face this trauma at any age. The thing with this ailment is that age is not a factor. It can happen at any age and as for the causes; research is still on. An estimated more than 1 million cases will be identified this year, and about 510,000 new and existing patients will die from the disease. In the U.S., breast cancer will be diagnosed in 1 in 8 women. in most other emerging economies, breast cancer is a relatively new concern, something that both patients and doctors are only haltingly learning how to treat. Previously a malady that mostly afflicted white, affluent women in the industrial hubs of North America and Western Europe, breast cancer is everywhere. Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America have all seen their caseloads spike. By 2020, 70% of all breast-cancer cases worldwide will be in developing countries. The incidence of breast cancer in India is on the rise and is rapidly becoming the number one cancer in females pushing the cervical cancer to the second spot. It is reported that one in 22 women in India is likely to suffer from breast cancer during her lifetime.

As the challenge remains to make women keep checking regularly using self examination, most of adverts are only successful in making women getting concerned but do not evoke a self responsibility to do self examination regularly. This particular ad campaign is worth showering accolades for raising awareness about importance of self-exams.

Anti Stress Balls
You don’t see breast cancer. You feel it

Stress balls have been used as a marketing tool for quite some time now, but this was very innovative campaign. The briefing for the ad agency (and the challenge) was to create a simple low-cost action to raise  awareness among women about the importance of self-exams and thus help them detect breast nodules or lumps. Simple and revealing, just like the self-exam.

The agency created an anti-stress ball with a deformed stone inside (see pic below), simulating a tumor. On squeezing the ball, the women feels a foreign object which raises her curiosity. The ball has the text that reads, “You don’t see breast cancer. You feel it. Do the self-exam”. 50,000 balls and a flyer – explaining the correct way of doing the self-exam were produced and distributed to women on the street, at companies, hospitals and at theme-related events.

Result was that during the action period, records showed a 22% increase in mammography exams and a 28% rise in hospital consultations. Bravo!

Advertising Agency: McCann Erickson,

A fine hue of capitalist color palette was seen in a surprising and unusual cause-marketing push by KFC. It offered to help in tackling the pothole problem in Louisville, Ky. in exchange for stamping the fresh pavement with “Re-freshed by KFC,” in a chalky stencil.

Col Sanders filling potholes

“This program is a perfect example of that rare and optimal occurrence when a company can creatively market itself and help local governments and everyday Americans across the country,” said Javier Benito, exec VP-marketing and food innovation at KFC. Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson noted in a statement that budgets are tight for cities across the country, and finding funding for road repairs is a dirty job. “It’s great to have a concerned corporation like KFC create innovative private/public partnerships like this pothole refresh program.”

The KFC program appears to be part of a growing body of consumer-service marketing that connects in a meaningful way. This past holiday season, Charmin provided a public restroom in Times Square for the third year running. The company has also developed an application for iPhone and BlackBerry that helps consumers find toilets when the need arises. Samsung has installed electrical charging stations in many major airports to help travelers stay connected while in limbo.

Creating goodwill
KFC has for long been accused by animal rights people of using inhuman ways to kill chicken or using modified chicken for prepration, am not sure if these accusations are correct or not but they dont help the brand in any good way. Filling potholes may not entice people to wat more KFC chicken burgers but surely can create a goowill and hence increasing sales, decressing guilt inside consumers filling the potholes of KFC’s reputation.

More from: Adage

To know what is best for your eyes, come to Magrabi.

These guerrilla campaigns never fail to amaze me; the latest has been by Fortune Promoseven advertising agency of Oman. Established as the first private specialized facility in the Middle East and North Africa, Magrabi has gone to become largest medical care network in Middle East. And as I have written before, the guerrilla works either to please loyalists or to create a new buzz, breaking the mental block created due to advertising noise.

One must appreciate that it was a completely novel idea of using the carrots in supermart to attract one’s attention to eye care. Carrots, known well for its high Vit A content are taken to be best natural source for healthy eyesight. But to comment on ad’s effectiveness I would like to know about the class to which the store was catering to. Point is that guerilla campaign has to be very customer specific. The place of execution should be one where you will find lot of intended customers. Now to define the intended customers for a private eye hospital, I would say that it has to be SEC A and B; with disposable income high enough to take care of normal family expenses. As Maslow pointed out, your basic needs need to be taken care of before you delve in these issues present on higher side of ladder.

At the same time I feel that the campaign could have been more vocal. Just asking one to come to hospital for knowing what is good for eyes may not move one to go for a check up or catch information from doctors, who are anyway busy enough to sit with you and discuss the good, bad and ugly stuff for eyes! They could have offered a free eye check up or could have arranged for an eye camp and advertised for it. We must not forget that a normal healthy person would not ideally want to gofor check up as there is a kind of cognitive dissonance there, its not the desired state as we all want to be see ourselves fit and believe that bad wont happen.

Advertising Agency: Fortune Promoseven, Oman
Copywriter: Vikramaditya Maity
Illustrator: Renjith pillai
Released: November 2007

Via: Ads of the world

Website: http://www.whopperfreakout.com/

The issue came to light last week when Susan Pagan’s daughter, Cathy, a fourth-grader at Red Bug Elementary School, brought home her report card and wanted to get a free Happy Meal because she earned good grades.Pagen told her daughter, “Our family does not eat at fast food chains,” Pagan said. “And, now I’m the bad guy.”

Pagan said she complained to school officials in an e-mail about the advertising and received a telephone call from Superintendent Bill Vogel. She said he told her that she was the only person who complained and he noted that McDonald’s offers some healthy alternatives.

Last few years have seen a huge rise in innovative BTL campaigns; companies have also been engaging advertising marshals as Ogilvy, Saatchi and Saatchi and likes to come up with innovative guerrilla campaigns in developed as well as developing countries. The stress has been on the innovation, going away from the trodden path to engage the intended consumer. With the new age media, this has already taken another giant lead. This July’s first Friday saw Adobe launching its eye catching outdoor advertising campaign for Creative Suite 3 (CS3) at Union Square, New York.

The ad, placed on a 7 feet high and 15 feet wide wall, showcases to the pedestrians the unbounded creative ability of CS3. As pedestrians walk past the wall, infrared sensors locks on to the person closest to the wall; as he/she continues walking and moves the slider along, randomly-generated, colorful animation and music will springs ‘out of the wall’, developing or receding at the pace that the person advances or retreats. When each selected pedestrian reaches the end of the wall, “their” design reaches its full blossom, above the campaign’s message: “Creative license: take as much as you want.”

The ad is a part of online campaign that was launched last month, with similar sliders coming up in online ads. This ad effort took (rightly) six months of development and was done with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The agency, which is part of the Omnicom Group, has been working with Adobe since 2001. The ad is supposedly made by using all of the Adobe CS3 tools.

The campaign had few tough tasks to be taken care of. Major being that the majority of these Adobe products are the amateurs and not professionals, so the campaign had to talk to the normal public. Especially after the rise of social networking websites and platforms wherein anyone can come and express him/herself, the avenues of these products have increased exponentially. Many Adobe users, claims International Herald Tribune, are amateurs who use Photoshop to spruce up their Facebook photos or Premier Express to edit their YouTube videos. So the campaign looks at individual’s unique expression on the wall.

The wall was designed to switch its attention, and the control of the slider, to anyone who gets closest to it – but even the activity and movement of people in the background was designed to affect some of the incidental animation. That’s what the producers of campaign call making the wall “a single and multi-user experience simultaneously”.

Also Creative Suite 3 brings together the earlier Adobe CS products along with the acquired Macromedia biggies like Dreamweaver, Flash etc. The success of the suite and the impact on Adobe’s share prices will be a thing to watch this quarter.