The horror of milkshake

Milkshake brand Frijj looks to highlight its “unique thickness” via a film contest that plays on the classic horror movies.A series of virals show Four Ridges, a fictional 1950s town, being terrorized by a little girl called Martha.

These drive consumers to a website where they are encouraged to upload their own scary movies featuring Frijj. The brand has also extended the horror metric to cinema with a ticket giveaway that offers purchasers the chance to watch classic horror movies as part of a film festival.

Puma dials up the football

BRAND:Puma
BRAND OWNER:Puma
CATEGORY:Accessories/ Clothing/ Footwear
REGION:European
DATE:May 2008 - Jun 2008
MEDIA AGENCY:ZenithOptimedia

The European Championships in Austria and Switzerland set a particular challenge for Puma. Budgets were significantly down on the World Cup of 2006 while rivals such as Nike and Adidas were expected to keep their spend high.The brand knew that watching big football games was about community – the reason why fans watch matches in groups be it at home, bars, cafes and pubs. The challenge for Puma would be to enhance this sense of togetherness.Together Everywhere was all about achieving this. Consumers would be able to sign up to a mobile message that highlighted their patriotism, put them in touch with Puma stars and also enabled them to talk to their own community.Consumers who signed via to the mobile WAP portal would be able to hear a relevant celebration football chant every time their team scored. When the goal hits the back of the net, the ringtone would be heard and consumers would hear a pre-recorded message from a Puma player before being put into a conference call with the people they had registered on the WAP portal. After the call fans were encouraged to upload images of their celebrations to to pumafootball.com.The aim was to associated Puma with that moment of joy and bring the good news to fans who were unable to watch the match at a time when no other brand would be part of their lives.
The activity was promoted via SMS, online ads and via pumafootball.com as well as via press and outdoor.

Lamb with your tennis?

Meat and Livestock Australia became part of the Australian tennis open

It's often said that the best TV ads are as good as the programmes that separate them. Meat and Livestock Australia's ads are so good that viewers now actively look forward to its lamb promotion each January.

In 2008 it took advantage of this fact and turned the tables on broadcasters. Instead of booking a standard schedule it asked broadcasters what they would do to win access to its content. The result was unprecedented integration

Meat and Livestock Australia Australia 2008

DEMONSTRATING GPS

Nokia arrived in China with a new gadget, the country’s first GPS enabled mobile. Its mission was to convince upscale consumers that once they had GPS they would never go back.The solution was to demonstrate the navigational benefits of GPS by creating a contest to identify those citizens with the best and worst sense of direction

Nokia N6110 China 2007

The city furniture gets made to measure outfits in Zurich

SHIRTS THAT FIT

A bespoke tailoring specialist has dressed up Zurich and in particular the streets near high paying financial services firms to boost demand for its products. A key element of the campaign has been the fact that Artesanos offers a made to fit service for consumers with non-standard body shapes.

Among the items of street furniture getting a makeover were a tree and a lamp post while pricing tags on these unusual made-to-measure items provided a discount for new customers.

Artesanos Camiseros Switzerland 2007

How to cope with aging brands

Joseph Gelman
Prophet

The story of brands getting old is a story of relevance. Individual brands, or even whole categories, that were once important for a particular consumer segment, become irrelevant as society evolves and tastes change.
In the past, one of the most common situations in which “brands aged badly” revolved around strong associations with national pride. Many brands, such as US automakers Ford and GM, once successfully owned this space. Over time, however, the kind of brand attributes that they were associated with lost their importance as purchase drivers. This was due to a diverse set of realities. More relevant attributes emerged such as the rise of the Japanese manufacturer Toyota’s reputation for quality in the US, the lack of relevance in national pride to new generations of consumers and even the emergence of a “global” mindset in which consumers were willing to try new things from other markets. The rise of new generations of consumers with new ideas and evolving needs and wants, meant that although these “legacy - national pride associated” brands retained their distinguishing characteristics from their competitors, their attributes were no longer relevant. This situation has been faced by a lot of European brands in categories such as retail, air travel, telecommunications and many others in which strong brands differentiated themselves by emphasizing their origin and roots: brands like France Telecom, British Airways or Marks & Spencer. A current example of this situation is observed at Waitrose, the upscale UK grocery retailer. With the credit crunch, mainstream consumer segments are moving away from premium price products as they recognize that acceptable quality exists elsewhere. The ethical and “British grown” part of the equity of Waitrose is not relevant enough to consumers, who are switching to cheaper and even to “foreign” brands such as the European hard discount retailers, Aldi and Lidl, that are performing quite strongly in the UK market. Brands such as Waitrose now face a tough question: Should I completely lose my current brand equity association so I can become relevant to new consumers? The answer to this question is usually “no”. Brands need to evolve their legacy to make sure the things that differentiate them from their competitors are complemented by more relevant purchase drivers. They need to upgrade the different touch points of the business, create new product brands, eliminate others and launch new product lines.
Recent corporate history is littered with examples of brands needing to adjust their brand image to cope with new scenarios and a new generation of consumers. When telecommunications companies evolved from public-sector businesses to multi-service providers, first expanding into mobile telephony, they created new brands. These were not completely independent from the “traditional fixed line operator” branding but incorporated new attributes that were relevant to this new line of business. Again, the beneficial aspects of the legacy of the ‘aging’ brand which provided scale, reliability and trust were complemented by the personality of the “new mobile brand”. This meant that old fixed telephony brands were able to compete with strong “young” attacker brands. One of the most successful examples of this was the launch and consolidation of Telefónica’s Movistar brand in Spain and Latin America. The Telefónica brand had a strong trust in its core Spain and Latin American markets, and it leveraged on its equity as the “big, traditional and Spanish” national incumbent. The “Spanish” side of this equation lost relevance in Spain and even became negative in Latin America, where the company wanted to move away from a perception of “here comes the Spanish colonialism again”.
Also, the emergence of mobile communications required it to have a more emotional relationship with consumers. In this context, Telefónica evolved its legacy brand to dial up the aspects of its equity that were relevant to residential and corporate consumers, such as quality, innovation, and any other magnitude related attributes that would build trust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjMwnWNzq4U
An ad for Telefónica's Movistar brand, featuring footballer Lionel Messi, of Barcelona and Argentina

Also, its “Spanish roots” were shifted into emphasizing its corporate “spirit of progress” essence, which highlighted the positive impact that the company had in developing the economy in emerging markets. In parallel, it developed the “younger” Movistar brand. This brand would be supported by the equity of Telefónica but would allow communication with consumers in a language that was more relevant in the mobile business.
But the problem of aging brands is not limited to those with a patriotic tradition, as can be seen from the example of Burger King. Burger King was an “old” brand that consistently underperformed its category. The essence of its message was “We make better burgers, have them your way”, and this became irrelevant to its consumer base worldwide, who felt much closer to the more emotional approach to the fast food consumption experience that McDonalds was communicating. It took Burger King time, and multiple changes to its ownership structure, advertising campaigns, management teams and go-to market strategies before it finally understood that its brand had become irrelevant to 18-35 years old males. After it recognised this, and took appropriate action, the fast food giant never looked back. It reshaped its brand, tapping into its roots and embracing innovation across the four Ps - Product, Price, Promotion and Place.

Burger King’s brand evolved its “better quality burger” approach into a rule-breaking, politically incorrect positioning in which it almost tells the consumer, “Yes, we know it is fast food, we know it is red meat, but this is what you like, you like our big and greasy burgers, and nobody needs to tell you what is and isn’t good for you.” Coupled with bold advertising and innovative social media campaigns, this put Burger King back on the map with more than 13 straight quarters of sales growth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGLHlvb8skQ

Burger King's "I Am Man" spot

In the UK, we have recently observed how complete “product lines” at aging brands have died and then reinvented themselves. This situation is quite different from the previous scenarios outlined above because it assumes that the equity that existed needs to be completely wiped out before a brand is able to become relevant to a different segment of consumers. This is probably the reasoning behind the radical branding shift visible at the retail chain from Virgin Megastores to Zavvi. Management of the CD-retailer-turned-video-game-shop thought that its strong legacy brand, Virgin, was not appropriate for the new directions they wanted for the business. This is quite interesting as it implies that the irreverent/Richard Branson part of the equity of Virgin, that has worked so well in expanding the brand into new territories, was no longer relevant for the new consumer segment that the chain wanted to target. In this context, they completely wiped out all the brand equity and develop a new brand and a new mark. Not all cases are necessary so dramatic. Sometimes brands just need innovation-driven tactical solutions to rejuvenate themselves and become relevant. For example, the alcohol industry noticed that consumers loved to drink from martini glasses, so you had Sex and the City’s cosmopolitan, bringing vodka and triple sec back on to the scene; or how about putting some Baileys on your coffee? From these examples, we can see the different directions that companies with aging brands can take. Telefónica kept its stronger functional attributes and developed a new brand that benefits from it but that can talk to consumers in a more relevant language; Burger King made its brand edgier around its core quality attributes and invested across the four Ps to reshape its image; and Zavvi became a completely different brand with little leverage on its legacy brand (Virgin). To make these decisions, all these companies needed to understand the purchase drivers of their consumers and which parts of their legacy brands, if any, were still relevant and differentiated them from rivals. Brands aging (badly) is a reality in multiple industries. Once the company acknowledges the need for change, which is often difficult given their legacy and strong brand equity, the most important decision is to decide which part of the old equity (if any) can evolve, or whether a completely new brand is need. With the right decisions on these points, most brands can live long and healthy lives.

Precious brands: loyalty unlimited

Andrew Doyle
There's a new hero for marketers to worship. His name is Peter Thomas and he's an insurance worker from Brighton in England. Or rather he was called Peter Thomas. Today his legal name is Honey Monster and he is perhaps the most extreme case around of brand love. He just adores Sugar Puffs and their Honey Monster character.
If only consumers of all our brands loved them so much that they decided to do what Peter (sorry, Honey) has done! Sadly most brands don't inspire this kind of fanaticism, but there are some that do get close to us. We become emotionally attached to them. They become loved objects, irrespective of what they do or what they cost. In fact being loved, being 'precious', is the ultimate achievement for any brand.
For example, ask a designer anywhere in the world what they think of Apple and you're likely to be pinned against a wall for hours while they wax lyrical about their brand.
Or, how about getting a woman in her twenties to talk about Zara? I'm told that for her it's like going into a candy store – because there's always something new to excite and entice her. And no other clothes retailer seems to inspire like this Spanish retailer.
Then there's Tic Tac. Anyone who has recently seen the movie Juno will remember the heroine's boyfriend, who always has his orange Tic Tacs by him. That's why Juno demonstrates her love by filling his mailbox with hundreds of packets of this precious confectionery.
What is it about these brands that make so many people love them? What makes them precious? It goes beyond the product. It goes beyond packaging or advertising. It certainly goes beyond the rational.
Oh dear, it goes beyond the rational. That's a pity because the rational is the way we mostly handle our brand marketing, isn't it? For example, it's rational isn't it that if you offer a better product, people will buy it? At least that's the theory behind the wave of premium products that have appeared on the market. But this strategy doesn't do anything to make people love them. Premium simply becomes the next level of threshold values expected by shoppers from products. And as I have recently seen in research, consumers lump all the premium own-label brands from supermarkets together and see them as one thing, rather than discriminating between them.
This kind of push marketing doesn't work anymore. We are all expecting a lot more from the brands we buy. Something more than just knowing we have bought something better.
And that's where preciousness comes in. Preciousness translates into unswerving loyalty and that in turn converts into guaranteed income. But how do you get there? In my journey to find the answer, I uncovered some clues, which seem to work. But before letting you hear what I learnt, you truly must switch off your rational 'push' marketing mindset and really enter the emotional world of the consumer.
EMOTION
If you look at brands that are clearly precious, say Innocent, Tods or Gü, it's intriguing to see that they are all first-generation brands – that is, the people who created them are still directly involved in the business. And none of them went into business on purely rational grounds. Talk to any entrepreneur and passion oozes out of their pores. It is emotion that has driven each of them.
I remember hearing how the founder of the Campbell Soup-owned bakery Pepperidge Farm started her business. Margaret Rudkin had a sick, asthmatic son who had severe food allergies. To help pep him up, she decided to replace the highly processed food she had been feeding him with, among other things, her own all-natural home-baked loaves. And yes, I know it sounds cheesy, but the bread was wonderful and friends and neighbours did start asking her to bake for them. A huge business built on the emotions of a worried mum.
And this sort of emotion clearly infuses the products of these first-generation brands and rubs off on consumers. But how do they get this emotional content across to consumers? Certainly it's not by talking about gap analysis or positioning theory. They do it by having a story. And that seems to be the next component in building a precious brand.
THE STORY
I'm looking at a watch I bought this week in Zurich. It wasn't expensive. And it wasn't a Swatch. But it looks nice and gets compliments around the studio here. The great thing is that when I get asked about it, I can tell the story about its origins – how its look is based on the clocks used on Swiss railway station platforms.
The point is that this story tells something about me. I hate to admit it but it enables me to say look, I'm different, I'm discerning, I'm curious. And so the story not only brings the brand to life, it also brings me to life in the eyes of others.
I picked up on stories some years ago, and we often talk in our company about how design is the art of symbolising brand stories. But I was lost for a while trying to figure out how to take a brand's story and make it relevant for consumers. And that led me on to a brilliant discovery – a book by two Americans, Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson, called The Hero and the Outlaw (1). They helped me realise that precious brands are those that have a story personifying the product as a specific type of hero. And that brings us to the next part of making a precious brand (2).
MOTIVATION
So precious brands trigger emotion in consumers through their use of the story. But how should that story be pitched? Mark and Pearson point to motivational theory and Jung.
No, don't get worried. It's not that complicated. Apparently we're all driven at different times by four key drives: belonging, independence, stability and risk. And they are certainly present when we're buying things in the supermarket. So if your brand story fits snugly with one of these needs, you may find it becoming precious – because it moves your brand from being just an inanimate object to a support for the shopper's particular motivation.
Of course it gets a bit more complicated, because within each of these four motivation areas there are different types of stories that could be told to reflect different aspects or nuances of the motivational area – what Mark and Pearson call archetypes. The thing that really impressed me about all this though was that there seemed to be a direct correlation between precious brands and the clarity with which they fit human motivation.
Let me bring this alive with some examples. What motivates people to fall in love with Zara? How about the fact that its incredible business system allows for lightning-fast changes in merchandise. Not much to fall in love with there, surely? But think about the consumer value of this rapid turnaround of clothing. For someone who wants to dress differently, it is the place to go; there's always something new and inspiring on the racks. It helps people express their individuality and it really hits home for those motivated to explore – to be different.
I love the recent UK Carling beer campaign 'Belong'. It actually uses one of the four core human motivations as the copy line. Guys in their late teens and early twenties are strongly driven by a desire to belong to a gang or group. And Carling, their lager, really latches on to this need.
Some years ago I tested a range of ready meals across Europe for a multinational company. We presented the products in different forms of packaging and I was astonished when the results came in. All the products hit pretty well the motivation to be in control. They were convenient after all. But one pack did so much better than any of the others.
It was a ready meal steamed in a paper bag. And it drew out of Europeans an amazing nostalgia for that particular cooking style used by their mums and grandmas decades ago. It touched strongly on a desire for simpler times, a return to innocence, a search for paradise.
One of my precious brands is Post-its. Not the little ones sitting on your desk but the big flip-chart versions. They cost a fortune but I can't run a workshop without them. They stay on the wall, you don't need tape, and they look neat and tidy. They hit my need to feel safe in a workshop environment. They give me control.
We've even been able to bring this preciousness into the corporate world. When we begin working on a corporate identity, we use an A4 page with 24 famous faces on it – 12 men and 12 women. Each has been chosen to represent different facets of the four types of motivation, guided by the work of Mark and Pearson.
We give the sheets to company staff and ask them to choose one of these faces as the personification of their organisation. I can't tell you how spooky it is when the sheets are handed back in. There is always amazing consistency within an organisation. The same face appears on answer after answer, and helps us really get to grips with the underlying meaning or motivation behind the client's corporate brand.
STYLE
Something that really stands out with precious brands is style. I don't mean beauty, although some have it. No, it's more that they all are confident enough to have their own look. Red Bull is a great example. Absolut is another. As are Tic Tac and Heinz Ketchup.
An ownable style actually brings together many of the points already made about precious brands. The first-generation brand owners can find an outlet for their emotional attachment to their 'baby' by using a design style that flamboyantly says to the world 'I have arrived'. Style enables the creator to tell the brand story symbolically, and style can be a consumer's signal to all around them that says 'this is what I'm like'.
It's also very enlightening to observe that many precious brands actually have style guardians. I remember at Pepperidge Farm many years ago watching its style guardian pass or reject designs. Some of the rejects looked pretty good to me, but when I made that observation, the reply was that they weren't the Pepperidge Farm way of doing things – the product shots were too perfect and lacked the excessive dribbles of chocolate their style of cake would have.
Indeed, you could sort of argue that rejecting a design because of its lack of excessive chocolate dribbles is a form of precious brand zero tolerance. If a brand management will get hot under the collar about the exterior style, then imagine how difficult they will be about the product inside or the ingredients being used.
RITUAL
Style doesn't just need to be about the precious brands' look. It can also be about the way in which we use the brand. When I open my Danone yoghurt, I unconsciously lick the inside of the foil lid. When I grab the Heinz Ketchup, I always give it a hefty shake. When I want to drink a Leffe, I grab the right glass and sluice it under the cold tap before pouring in my precious beer. And I always leave my Weetabix soaking in the milk for three minutes before spooning it up.
Just as with style, you could also say that a precious brand often has rituals associated with it. They reinforce the specialness of the brand. And of course the brand owner can help ensure those rituals are created. I just bought some Ecco shoes. They came with a soft bag to hold them in and a very stylish matt black shoehorn. So now, whereas my other shoes get scant attention, the black Eccos go through a special ritual when being put on or taken off. And end up being more precious.
WORSHIP
While I am not about to claim that precious brands are the new religion, by worship I mean the set of attitudes that assign to the 'precious object' the status of being worthy of idolatry. Think Nike and teenagers and you'll get a clear indication of what this sort of worship is all about.
We did some brilliant research with 300 teenagers across Europe using our CLICK research method. This gave them cameras and asked them to answer all our questions using pictures. One key question was 'What is the most important object in your life?' The answer from most was a picture of their trainers. So maybe we should see Niketown as a church for the worship by devotees of their precious brand.
Worship is when the object practically owns the owner. It is a subtle, yet very powerful trigger. Worshipped brands are the ones consumers want to talk about. The ones they want to convert others to. The consumer becomes the brand's missionary.
CONCLUSIONS
We all want our brands to be precious – to be loved beyond reason, to be bought without a second thought, to be cherished as an old friend. It seems those brands that are precious combine the emotion of the founder, the expression of that emotion in a story, the grounding of its story in one of four deep-seated human motivations; they have their own unique style, are often handled in a ritualistic way and, yes, get close to being worshipped.
One final thought. I wrote this in the first person, because these are my thoughts. And it occurs to me that precious brands are always first-person brands. So if you want your brand to be precious stop calling it 'it' and start calling it 'me' or 'us'.
1.McGraw-Hill, 2001.
2. See, for example, J Howard-Spink: Who is your brand? And what is its story? Admap 443, October 2003.

ad:tech New York: the digital strategies of IBM

Telling the IBM story
The idea of online "mini-mentaries" providing support for more traditional media is at play in a new Ogilvy effort for IBM. "IBM solves some of the world's toughest, most significant problems. And that's not something that's told easily in 30 seconds," Lazarus said. "Digital media is not constrained by pre-determined commercial lengths."
The IBM series includes work in support of the New York Police Department, pandemics, mapping DNA, and "Hollywood Comes to Galway," the tale of one-to-one entrepreneurial intelligence told on a global stage:

IBM's business of innovation now plays out on iTunes, in podcasts, and on YouTube. Some 23 million people have come to the IBM web site to hear the tales. "In the context of what you usually find on the web site of a technology company, it's refreshing," Lazarus said. "We're using story-telling in its most wonderful form."
Ogilvy, Lazarus continued, was the agency that was intuitive enough to use Craig's List (cost $0.00) when the client asked the agency to produce a series of newspaper and radio ads to support an anniversary ticket give-away of 45,000 free passes. The ticket supply was exhausted in just 45 minutes and the cost? $0.00. Almost as cost-efficient was a Hellman's mayonnaise "real food" consumer-centric series that appeared on Yahoo Food. "The program more than doubled sales coast to coast," Lazarus claimed, "and offered Unilever the highest ROI [250%] in its history."
And, of course, Ogilvy most likely will be globally famous forever for the $50,000 "Evolution" video it shot for Dove.
To date, more than 500 million viewers have witnessed the aging sequence that was inspired by a workshop for 12-year-old Canadian girls and became the first Cannes double-winner for film and interactive video.
"When he shot it, the creative director used his girlfriend," Lazarus said. "He told her, 'No one's going to see it. It's just going on the Internet.'
"They're not together anymore."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBr5clzbCYU

ad:tech New York: the digital strategies of Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton: digitizing luxury
Digital media, of course, are not just a bunch of stunts and tricks that can revive fading products - a case Lazarus made with new Ogilvy/Paris work for Louis Vuitton. "Ten years ago, we would have come up with the most gorgeous print ads you've ever seen," the Ogilvy chairman/ceo noted. And, so they did with the most recent execution for the brand, with lush, engaging, evocative Annie Liebowitz photographs of Catherine Deneuve, Keith Richards, Mikhail Gorbachev, Andre Agassi/Steffi Graf, and this one - two-filmaking Copploas-in-one-image: Francis Ford and Sofia:
In each case, Louis Vuitton products - featured ever-so-elegantly - somehow eased their transit as, said Lazarus, "we offered a deeper exploration of their personal journeys."
But unlike the print programs of just a decade ago, Ogilvy built the new campaign to last, to reinforce, and to build the brand even more powerfully. Gorbachev takes YouTubers on a visit of Moscow. Deneuve does Paris. And Keith Richards goes inside his London in a series of nine videos, including this trailer:

"Each of the Louis Vuitton people take us to places they love," Lazarus said. Keith Richards' love for Shepherd's Pie may not play to an association with one of the world's great luxury brands, but, Lazarus explained, "You experience life the way celebrities find it." Consumers who come to the Louis Vuitton site spend an average of 16 minutes viewing different video executions.
"The brand turns to experience," she added. "And that translates to public-relations impressions and blog impressions" that never could have been part of a pure-print campaign in the 1990s. "And we're driving double-digit growth in shop visits and growth."
While Lazarus recognized "it's impossible to know what will happen in the face of an economic downturn," the campaign will continue, with the next subject 78-year-old Sean Connery featured over the copyline, "There are journeys that turn into legends."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54QslBU1bK0

Capri Sun:::the digital strategies of,

Capri Sun: refreshing a refreshment brand
"It's what you can do with an idea that's different," Lazarus said. Yet another original idea centered around much the same challenge of breathing new life into a tired product. Capri Sun is a beverage with very different packaging - not a bottle, not a jar, but a 200 ml. foil/plastic pouch. The tropical-themed refreshment was popular in the '80s, Lazarus explained, but "had not done much since then."
It's original consumers had long since moved onto coffee, and there was a target audience of six-to-11-year-old children who were being underserved - a "buzzworthy and respectable group," Lazarus called them.
To start kids talking - and, more specifically, spreading the word about Capri Sun - Ogilvy created a series of 30-second spots with identical set-ups but different ends. "They were sort of irreverent commercials that showed what happened when children didn't respect the pouch. They had an element of suspense. And they invited parody.


http://www.kraftbrands.com/caprisun/ "Six-to-11-year-old boys love playing games," Lazarus reported. And, because Web 2.0 is as familiar to this demographic as tap water, they fulfilled their viral promise with a series of imitative spots:
The agency, in kind, returned the fire with video games and a "Rayman Raving Rabbids" Wii game planned for launch in time for the Christmas 2008 season.
Lazarus' bottom line to the campaign was the same she used to describe the Obama effort: "If you think it, you can do it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SesasYdKVI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YRigdFPeLg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Gy0_ncqlM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGfS7zJ0ek0

ad:tech New York: the digital strategies of Shreddies

Shreddies: from one to many
Momentum, in fact, was a powerful driver in an Ogilvy/Toronto campaign that started with an intern in the creative department and ended up as a viral video with 800,000 views ("a lot for Canada," said Lazarus.)
Shreddies was a 67-year-old cereal that needed a brand refresher. "You've all heard it before and, in fact, you all can probably write the brief," Lazarus told the ad:tech audience. "We needed to do something interesting. And we had to do it in a fresh, unique way."
Enter a summer intern who was handed the assignment of taking a look at the box copy. And who, in fact, failed in that assignment by taking the assignment a step further by rotating the even-sided breakfast on its end - converting a square into a diamond.
"It became an immediate hit," Lazarus continued. The agency's creative team immediately recognized an idea bigger than box copy and ran with it. Diamond Shreddies were launched in much the same way that the agency would introduce a new product.
The agency posted a viral video of a supposed focus-group session (in fact, the moderator was a sponsor) while billboards echoed the idea of "Diamond Shreddies." The brand's president posted his own video addressing the controversy between the traditional square-shaped product and the upstart diamonds.
"Can you have more fun?" Lazarus asked. "It captured the imagination of the whole country. There were newspaper reviews of Diamond Shreddies. 81 Facebook groups popped up. The company got hundreds of letters, some of them asking how it managed to come up with such great new ideas. Someone actually wrote to complain that his box of Diamond Shreddies only contained 50 percent of the new design."
Supported by a word-of-mouth frenzy, sales for the brand jumped 20 percent in a matter of weeks. "A 67-year-old brand seemed an unlikely candidate for a viral campaign," Lazarus continued. "But this seemed to strike a chord. Or maybe a funny bone."
Digital tools brought to bear by a traditional agency resulted in a major marketing innovation for a brand that had held little consumer interest for decades. And, what about that unhappy customer who griped that he only got half his fair share of Diamond Shreddies? From the Ogilvy new-product development team, yet another launch: The Combo Pack.