Join the Hunt

17/03/2009

The days of rushing round the garden to find a sadly melted and slightly disfigured Easter Egg could be numbered thanks to a a highly addictive online Easter Egg hunt. M&Ms Speck-tacular Eggs encourages mums as well as young children to ‘Join the Hunt’ at http://www.jointhehunt.ca/, on commercials and on pack promotions and via banner ads.The campaign is a collaboration effort between Proximity, Canada, BBDO Toronto and Firstborn, New York. Players complete games, search the website for Easter eggs, follow links to other sites connected to the campaign and discover pin codes in banner ads and on packaging to collect points for their online profiles.The more points gained, the higher the chance of winning some of the prizes on offer which include family holidays to New York, LA and Orlando. The campaign’s strategy was conceived by Proximity, with a planning process that lasted 18 months. Jon Webber, associate creative director at Proximity Canada told Contagious: ‘One of the key drivers for the campaign was to make sure it all came from one place’. He describes the online egg hunt idea as a ‘natural extension of the brief, to raise the awareness and purchase frequency of the speck-tacular eggs’.

The campaign also includes two TV ads that drive to the website, one of which (Join the Hunt) was developed by Firstborn, which had already produced the impressive 3D animations of the Red and Yellow M&Ms characters for the website. Dan LaCivita, executive creative director at Firstborn explains: ‘Proximity had the whole concept worked out from the pin numbers in packages to the hunt online, and we worked on the site and concept development’. He adds ‘By using the assets from the website in the TV spot we were able to save the client time and money’.The campaign is beautifully simplistic and compulsive, and the overwhelming idea is that the eggs you’re looking for could be anywhere. Christine Parent-Inch, brand director at Mars Canada concurs: ‘The virtual egg hunt was an extraordinary idea for the brand that builds on multiple platforms to engage the consumer. The entire campaign encourages participants to experience the brand through a virtual world that they can explore and tap into in a multitude of ways.’The campaign’s development through agency collaboration and its distribution across multiple platforms is impressive. LaCivita concludes: ‘We are trying to push clients to start with digital; we can find so many different ways to leverage content across multiple channels.’ www.jointhehunt.ca