Category: Marketing Strategies

The mystery of the escaping shopping carts

Saatchi & Saatchi Milan, in support of Carrefour Italy’s project to launch 106 new Carrefour Markets in Lazio developed a truly integrated campaign. The campaign stemmed from the new international positioning of the Carrefour brand, “Positive every day”.

A communication project was developed that, for the first time for an Italian retailer, involved use of various media both synergistically and simultaneously. The supporting creative idea around which the project was articulated was the “appeal of value for money” that no one is able to resist, starting from the supermarket own protagonists: the shopping carts.

Belgian TV prank on Mobistar

Mobistar is Belgium’s leading mobile operator and largest advertiser. Over time they have become known for their lousy customer service. So VRT Television from Belgium decided to prank Mobistar on January 10, 2011. After which the prank was broadcasted on their new “Basta comedy show”. Mathieu, the security guard from Mobistar became a folk hero overnight for his friendly demeanor.

The modern consumers are tired of brands running overpromising brand messages through advertising. Their needs are very simple and straightforward. Therefore brands should first use more of their budgets to improve their products and (customer) services and then later deliver advertising campaigns that bring out their outstanding brand experience.

KLM Surprise

KLM launched a great Social Media Customer Engagement campaign which involved monitoring people who check in via foursquare for flights or tweet about waiting to board the next KLM service, and they called it “KLM Surprise” as their aim was to bring random surprises and happiness to the boring wait for flights.

Once the customer was chosen for the KLM Surprise, the team would then come up with the perfect (small) gift based on the customers various social networking profiles. The gift would then be hand delivered to the surprised customer at the airport gates.

Greeting your customers and thanking them for visiting your business after they’ve checked in is, of course, a best practice for any company using foursquare, but KLM Surprise takes it to a whole new level. The personal touch that’s exhibited through each of the interactions shows that the KLM team is really looking to make peoples days while they’re traveling, and that goes a long way to “spreading happiness”.

12 second strip

Renault UK and ad agency Publicis London, set up a challenge that saw loads of people stripping off their clothes in the hope of winning the brand new Renault Wind Roadster.

The challenge involved people stripping down to one layer of clothing in just 12 seconds, which is the same amount of time it takes Renault’s new Wind Roadster to drop its top. To participate people had to post their fun and tasteful strip videos on Youtube.

For more videos visit www.12secondstrip.co.uk.

Kern Precision Scales Stationery


Click to enlarge.

Kern calibrates and distributes some of the most accurate scales in the world. Wunderman London therefore needed to dramatise the extraordinary precision of these products and start a compeling conversation between Kern and its audience of scientists, engineers and pharmacists – all with a lightweight budget.

In a market full of functional and bland communications, Wunderman London created a campaign that dramatised the precision of Kern scales by weighing every element. It encompassed a new stationery range (where even the weight of the ink was specified) to a DM pack, which included a tipped on feather. This invited prospects online to guess the weight of the feather along with other lightweight objects, in return for credit to spend with Kern.

Kern got a 45% response rate with 20 new resellers signing up and 50,000 euros of additional revenue being generated after just one month (500% ROI). The new resellers are expected to generate 1 million euros (each reseller typically results in 50,000 euros a year).

Probably the best ad in the world…

You can debate the effectiveness of magazine advertising all day long, but this Carlsberg ad from Belgian ad agency Duval Guillaume is undeniably useful. The advertisement appeared in Men’s Magazine Menzo and if you follow its instructions, then you can use the flimsy piece of paper to open a bottle of Carlsberg!

Try it out yourself by downloading the advertisement from: www.probablythebestadintheworld.be.

BUT does it make this “probably the best ad in the world”? Not if you consider the likely inspiration – this YouTube video (1.8 million views) showing a guy using a piece of paper to open a bottle of Carlsberg. 🙂

The Schweppes Facebook Profile App

Recently Facebook released new improvements to the Facebook profile which makes it even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends. Shortly after the release a French artist took advantage of the new profile design to express himself. After which many other creative minds have also played around with their profiles.

This in turn inspired Schweppes to develop the Schweppes Profile App on Facebook, which helps anybody who doesn’t have Photoshop skills and much time to get a great new profile as well.

A great strategic play by Schweppes, as it provides a service that will be increasingly popular as the trend catches on. Click here to check out the app.

Ringtowns

Claro is one of the leading telecommunications companies in Guatemala and it faces a constant struggle to combat negative perceptions of their network coverage. So Ogilvy Guatemala created a campaign to counter these perceptions and communicate the wide coverage of Claro by involving consumers through their cellphones.

Imitating the sound of the traditional ringtones they communicated the names of towns and remote communities in the country. The campaign “Ringtowns” was based on local realities in Guatemala to create a strong sense of identity and pride, while communicating the wide coverage of Claro in an innovative manner.

Over 32 “Ringtowns” were downloadable from the Claro website or by text message, thus making each call into an advertisement for Claro.

Giant Phone

The mission for ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors Sweden was to launch Tele2’s latest product i.e. fixed telephony through the mobile net. The product sounded quite technical and advanced. So the focus was to show how easy it was to use and how close it was to a traditional fixed phone. And the best way was to just let the people try it.

So they built giant working phones in Swedens three biggest cities. This way all passers could try the product by calling whoever they wanted for free. The giant phones, of course, were hard to ignore. And loads of people used them to call a friend, a taxi or whoever they could think of.

There was even a competition…every now and then Tele2 called up the giant phones, and whoever answered won a great prize.