ZDF : Bus becomes Batmobile

BRAND OWNER:ZDF
CATEGORY:Entertainment
REGION:Germany
DATE:Dec 2008 - Jan 2008


Public TV channel Zweites Deutsches Fernehen (ZDF) wanted to communicate its strong movie programming, specifically with the airing of Batman Returns.

ZDF decided to target Hamburg commuters on their way to or from work. It signed a deal with bus companies to place a sticky overlay on the windows with details about when Batman Returns would be shown on the channel.

Then small Batman figurines hanging on flexible wires were attached to the outside of the buses with small suction pads. When the bus was stationary, the figurines hung down, out of sight of passengers inside the bus. As the buses built up speed, the airstream would cause Batman to rise up into the air as if flying.

Many passengers documented the campaign with their cameras, which caused the campaign to spread virally online.

Email Optimization: How Simple Changes Increase Open Rates, Clickthrough, Response, and Average Order Size

Published on April 14, 2009

Email marketing is likely your most effective tool for improving customer relationships, building brand awareness, and generating sales. It is also the most abused one.

Practitioners of knee-jerk planning rely on emails to bolster a sagging month or fill in the holes left when other marketing techniques miss their mark. Even though it works (which is why it is abused), there is a price to be paid.

Customers become disenchanted when they receive numerous emails promoting one sale after another or one product over and over. Everyone's threshold is different. Some may opt out after a week, others a month, and still others a year or more. (Note: there tends to be a jump in opt outs at the start of the New Year. People want to start fresh, so they do some housekeeping. If you saw a jump in opt outs in January, then you desperately need to review your email strategy.)

The best way to avoid a mass exodus from your subscriber list is to have an email strategy that works with the rest of your marketing.

Because developing a comprehensive plan can take weeks of planning and is beyond the scope of an article, let's start with simple items that have immediate results. In addition to giving a boost to sales, they will help sell the idea of an overall strategy to the naysayers in your organization.

Four steps from sending the email to completing the sale

1. Getting Past the Spaminators
Your email has to make it to the inbox before your recipient can act on it. There are three spaminators blocking the way.

The first is your Internet service provider (ISP). In an effort to protect his clients from alien spammers, the dreaded ISP blocks anything that appears to be spam. He is a "take no prisoners" type of guy. If your email looks like spam, smells like spam, or acts like spam, it is rejected. No questions asked. If you send too many emails that might be spam, then you are terminated. Your emails are permanently blocked.

To avoid this spaminator, avoid all spam triggers. They include specific words and characters in the subject line, low text-to-graphic ratios, and repetition of target words within the body of the email.

Once you have navigated past ISP, then you are faced with the second spaminator, Junk Box Filter (JBF).

Your recipients can control JBF. Unfortunately, all too often, he is in default status and left to his own devices. He errs on the side of caution, sending innocent emails to the dreaded junk file. He can be avoided if your email address is white-listed (flagged as "not junk") by your recipient. If you want that to happen, you have to ask the recipient to add you to her safe list—and you have to provide quality content. Otherwise, the third spaminator will eliminate you.

That third spaminator has complete power and must be handled very carefully. He or she is the recipient of your emails, AKA customer or prospect. Let's call these people MNIs (much-needed individuals). After all, without them, your business doesn't have a chance. They are your toughest spaminators. Your survival depends on your ability to entertain, engage, and enlighten them. If you fail in any of these items, a few clicks by them on the keyboard and you relegated to the dustbin of history.

2. Getting Your Emails Opened
It doesn't matter how eloquent your copy is, how appealing your graphics are, or how wonderful your offer is, if your MNIs don't open the email, you won't have sales.

Statistics show that most emails fail to motivate their recipients to read the message. A recent report from Constant Contact shows an overall open rate for retail companies as 17.9%! Not all email readers provide open information, so the actual number may be higher. Even so, just 17.9%?

Based on the retail emails I receive, I doubt that the number is much higher. The overwhelming majority of the emails are promoting sales. I like a good deal as much as the next person, but continuously promoting sales is lazy marketing. It is time to create emails that your MNIs want to read.

Start by segmenting your email file based on your customers' buying patterns. You may choose to segment by product category, seasonality, original source, a custom selection, or any combination of those. Choose your top pattern and create an email personalized for the people in the group. Test it against your next general email and measure the results. If you have targeted your customers well, there will be an increase in opens, clicks—and most importantly, sales.

While content and relevance are extremely important, other items reduce open rates. Your return address is the first flag. It signals "Open Me Now," "I Can Wait," or "Delete." Use a real email address that customers can click "reply" and send a message to. If you think you are too busy to answer all the emails, don't worry. Before long, you will have plenty of time on your hands. Seriously, what can possibly be more important than communicating with your customers?

The second motivator is the subject line. If you don't capture interest by the third word, you have lost the immediate open. When your open is delayed, your email is often forgotten and later deleted. Invest your time in writing and testing subject lines. The payoff will be increased opens, which lead to increased clicks, which lead to increased sales, which lead to a happier you.

3. Click Here, Click Now. Please. Pretty Please!
Effective emails are a call to action. They motivate the recipients to visit the site, store, or catalog. Since that is the objective, many emails start out screaming "Shop Now!"—which is akin to the guy in the gorilla suit standing on the street corner pointing at a store.

Your MNI's first thought is "Why?"

If you want your MNIs to do something, give them a reason. Explain to them the who, what, where, when, why, and how. Do it well, and they will be compelled to click to see your site.
Start with a short personal note. Your first sentence has a purpose—to get them to read the second sentence. The second sentence moves them on to the third. By the fourth sentence, your reader should be hooked into reading the complete email. If not, you missed the mark this time (it happens). Next time will be better.

After the email is read, there is nothing left to do except click, close, or delete. Use a call-to-action statement to encourage the click. A soft landing to more information generates a higher clickthrough than the harder "Order Now." Test to see which one works best for you. Some businesses find that having both in the same email works well. It gives the recipient a choice between "Yes" or "Yes."

4. Getting From Hmmmm, Maybe... to Gotta Have NOW!
We are almost there. You have passed the Spaminators, jumped the open hurdle, and motivated a click-now response. All you have to do now is close the sale. Your email created an interest that evolved into an action. The next step is to continue the movement to a completed shopping cart.
When your customers click on an email link, there is an expectation waiting to be fulfilled. Be sure that the landing page matches the copy. For example, if it is a "click here for more information" about a specific product link, land on that page. Don't take your customers to your homepage and expect them to navigate to the page they want. They are looking for an express route.

This doesn't mean that you can't upsell them. Create landing pages filled with information about the promoted items, including accessories and add-ons. Once they make their first selection, offer complimentary items. The upselling can continue until the final check out as long as it is a soft sell. American Girl does this well with a blurb that reminds shoppers that they can purchase $XX.XX more and pay the same shipping.

Be creative with your promotions and you will increase your average order. You have a lot of latitude as long as you remember to send your customers to the right landing page.
There is a bonus, too: If your emails are engaging, your customers will look forward to them and even pass them along to their friends. A small investment in time can result in astronomical growth in loyalty, branding, and sales.

Test, Test, Test
The best email strategy isn't created, it evolves. Test something with every mailing. You will continuously improve your email program.
All of the information included in the article has been tested repeatedly for results. One thing that is consistently true: The strategy that works best for one company will perform differently for another. Even if they are in the same industry and selling the same products to many of the same people, the variance appears.

The only way you will know the best strategy for your organization is to test. Let's get started!

Your Quick-Start Guide
Test 1
With your next email, split your file in half for an A/B test. Send your "A" names the original email. Make the following changes for your "B" names.
If you normally send your emails with a generic from address like companyx@companyx.com, replace it with personalname@companyx.com. Use the name most customers know (owner, founder, president, etc.)

If there isn't a known name, introduce one. Include a brief note in the introduction about who is writing and why the customer is appreciated. I am not suggesting that you use the personal inbox for this person (although most of my clients do). Creating a separate email for responses is fine. (Note: Don't forget to remove the "Do not reply to this email because no one will read it" blurb.)

Start your email with a brief (3-5 sentences) personal note from the sender that begins with a salutation that includes the customer's name and ends with a signature. Change the keycodes associated with this email. Keep everything else the same.

Compare your open, click through, and response rates for the two emails.

Test 2
When you are ready to mail again, choose 5,000 customers who have ordered from one of your top product categories. Create a unique email that focuses on the product line. Make it primarily informational. (Think "How to use this item more effectively" instead of "Buy More Now" content.) Include some promotional items to motivate the clickthrough. Use the personal return email and note suggestions from test 1. Mail the rest of your customers the regular promotional email. Compare your open, clickthrough, and response rates for the two emails.

Test 3
Use the information gathered in the previous two tests to design your own test. You are on your way to an effective email strategy.

Engaging Today's Fickle Customers: How to Become 'Their Brand'

Published on April 14, 2009

Marketers today understand that consumers think, feel, and react in ways different from June Cleaver some 50 years ago. We use descriptors like fickle, indecisive, and disloyal to describe the modern consumer.

Just what do these terms mean? Mainly, they mean that consumers have too many choices—multiple brands, brand extensions, and sub-brands—and too much stimulation, especially online, making it nearly impossible to predict their next move.

And yet, marketers continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on segmentation analysis and other research, hoping to understand and predict the behavior of these fickle consumers.

Rather than predicting a consumer's next move—which is not only imprecise but also impractical—marketers should focus on forming meaningful brand relationships by listening to and actively engaging consumers as they negotiate the major changes in society and their lives.
Identity Crisis
That no two consumers are exactly alike is a given in marketing. And now, marketers are starting to realize that individual consumers bring with them a whole new set of complexities:

Each person has several identities that shift with context. They may, for example, represent themselves one way in the LinkedIn business network, and another, very different way on Facebook with friends.

Each of those identities has its own idiosyncrasies and behaviors, so when they are in one context—e.g., a busy mom chatting on onechicmama.com—they're more receptive to some brands, perhaps recipes from Kraft, and totally closed to others that don't appeal to that persona.

Let's consider the busy mom further. A typical mom has sub-personas that may include "household manager," concerned with efficiency and convenience, and "gracious homemaker," focused on entertaining friends in Martha Stewart style. These two personas—efficient manager and elegant homemaker—can and must coexist dynamically, even though they may clash on a daily basis. And those are just two of many personas a busy mom might have.

So what's the secret to understanding our modern June Cleaver, she of multiple personas, morphing from context to context? The answer is simple: Listen to her.

Listening is critical for a more meaningful relationship between brands and consumers. First, however, brands must embrace today's epic cultural shift toward more open, flexible, and adaptive communications across the social Web.

What Won't Work
Traditional research—what may have once helped identify, segment, and target June Cleaver—just isn't well-suited to understanding and engaging consumers on the open, flexible Web. To build relationships with ever-evolving, persona-shifting consumers, marketers need new strategies and approaches that are built around listening. Not just once, but continuously and programmatically.

For companies getting started, it pays to rethink how and when to approach consumers. The short answer is continuously. But how can a company sustain continuous connections to customers? Would a purpose-built social network or public online community work? What about an integrated marketing campaign that uses state-of the-art Web and site analytics along with newsletters and customized email?

While those approaches have merit and can be part of a larger marketing effort, they can't help brands truly understand, engage, and sustain long-term relationships with today's dynamic, multi-contextual consumer.

What Does Work
If you want to understand, engage, and sustain, you'll need to embrace three tenets of new consumerism: listening, relationship-building, and empowerment.

Relationship-building, as a process, is misunderstood by many marketers. Too often we confuse willingness to buy as evidence of a relationship. It's not. Brands must earn the right to have meaningful relationships with their consumers, and that isn't accomplished by special offers and personalization alone. Like personal relationships, brand relationships are built on trust that is earned over multiple exchanges and eventually feels natural instead of contrived.

If all you're doing with customers is surveying them periodically, you'll never build trust or a relationship. But if you establish some intimacy with your customers—providing an ongoing, intimate forum to dig deeper and share the many facets of their different personas—you're entitled to ask more of the relationship. You've earned that.

Listening—real listening—is one of the most powerful and often misunderstood "disciplines" of marketing. Social-media monitoring, for example, is a great early warning system, but it isn't really listening. Effective listening can't be keyword-driven alone; it must be done with sensitivity to nuances and with a finely tuned ear for discovering unexpected insights.

One way to effectively listen to customers is through private online communities where brands can begin to understand how customers negotiate changes in their lives. Through communities, brands have the means—like never before—to be with consumers over time, building relationships and being present so that they can really listen. The trick is to isolate the multidimensional voices of the consumer, nurture them individually, and channel what you're hearing into meaningful changes that send a clear message: "We're listening."

Empowerment is the final, misunderstood tenet of new consumerism. Giving consumers a public forum to voice, vent, or vindicate—perhaps a public social network or your blog—seems like empowerment, but it's not. When you master listening and build a relationship with a consumer, you owe them something in return. And, contrary to conventional wisdom, what they want isn't coupons, free stuff, or other remuneration; they want to see the impact they're having on your brand and hear their own voices in new products and promotion. That's real empowerment for today's consumer.

In the end, consumers are most engaged when they realize that a brand—perhaps yours—is actively helping them negotiate the changes in their complex lives, from how and where they communicate to what they consume. Give them that, and they'll be empowered to dig deeper and explore more on your behalf. Moreover, eventually you'll offer more than simply a product or service to them: You'll become "their brand."

Smart::: Creating shorter links

BRAND OWNER:Mercedes Benz
CATEGORY:Automotive
REGION:Belgium
DATE:Apr 2009 - Dec 2008

The Smart car’s key selling point is the fact that it can be manoeuvred into tiny parking spaces – perfect for city living. Measuring just 2.69 metres long, it can even be parked sideways in most road-side spaces.

In order to highlight this fact online, Smart has created a URL shortening service. Akin to services such as http://www.tinyurl.com/ and is.gd, the service transforms a long URL such as those from Google Maps, into a very short one.

Visitors to http://url.so-smart.be/ are able to ‘navigate swiftly through the busy online traffic’ and ‘park large URLs into tiny spaces’. Visitors can enter a long URL, for example: http://advertiser-in-arabia.blogspot.com/ and it will be transformed into a shorter ‘smart’ URL such as http://so-smart.be/~ns21n4 .

This shorter URL takes up fewer characters on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, which has a 140 character message limit. Any links shortened with this service automatically become micro ads because of the ‘so-smart.be’ prefix.

Visitors to http://www.so-smart.be/ will find a site called “Smart & the City”, charting the love affair that the car has with the city and featuring information about the vehicle including specifications, carbon emission levels, and the option to request a brochure or a showroom visit.

Fast-Food Research Shows McDonald's Still Number One

McDonald’s and Burger King remain America’s #1 and #2 most preferred fast-food chains, while Subway unseated Wendy’s in 2008 to nab the #3 spot, according to research on the quick-service restaurant (QSR) industry from Experian Simmons.

Other major chains in the top-10 rankings, which show preference trends over five years (2004-2008), are Taco Bell - which reclaimed its #4 spot after dropping to #5 in 2007, Wendy’s, which dropped from #3 to #5, KFC, Pizza Hut, Arby’s and Dairy Queen.

The proliferation of QSR chains in the US also has caused “others” (an aggregation of the many smaller chains) to hold a significant market share as well, the research found.

Niche Chains on the Rise
The rankings also show that three QSR chains - Chipotle , Jamba Juice, and Panera Bread - are relative new comers to the market, yet have become an important force in the QSR market by carving out a specialized niche with their offerings. Chipotle has risen from #57 in 2004 to #26 in 2008, while Jamba Juice has jumped #58 to #38 and Panera Bread has climbed steadily from #29 to #18 in the same time period.

Dramatic Jump in QSR Visits
The average number of visits Americans make to quick service restaurants, which has held steady at approximately seven since 2004, substantially increased to 11 between 2007 and 2008. This, Experian Simmons suggests, may be caused by the current economic crisis.

Midwesterners Frequent QSRs Most
Overall, Midwesterners are most likely to eat at quick service restaurants, the research found.
The following table lists the likelihood of people in each of four US regions (Northeast, Midwest, South and West) to eat at the 13 fast food chains Experian Simmons reviewed. The table on the right illustrates the percentage of each region’s residents that eat at the quick service restaurants. Overall, Midwesterners have the highest percentage of visits to McDonald’s and several other major chains, while Northeasterners score highest with Burger King and Wendy’s.

Westerners frequent Taco Bell and “other” QSRs more than those in other regions. One reason they are more likely to eat at “other fast food restaurants” may be because the Western region has a number of quick service restaurants that aren’t present ?in other regions, said Experian Simmons.
Additional survey findings:
Men (115 Index) are more likely than women (87) to eat alone at a fast food restaurant.
Women are more likely to take their children below age 12 to a fast food chain during lunch than any other meal time (126).
Hispanic Americans are more likely than non-Hispanic Americans to go to a fast food chain with children during all meal times.
Americans aged 18-24 are three times more likely than older Americans to snack at a fast food chain with friends/co-workers.

Other research from the NPD Group finds that kids and young adults are visiting restaurants less because of the high cost and because of a perceived availability of less healthy choices. The study also finds that Baby Boomers’ restaurant use is increasing.

About the research: Data analysis is based on results from the Experian Simmons National Consumer Study/National Hispanic Consumer Studies conducted in the Fall of 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, as well as the 2008 Full Year study.

An additional report that discusses the impact of the recession on family dining and QSRs also is available from Experian Simmons.

ÖBB Austria Railways – HOW OH! (Austria)

Agency name: PKP proximity
Client name: ÖBB Austria Railways
Category: Integrated Communication

BACKGROUND
Travelling by train is not hip among young Austrians.
The campaign target: to motivate young people to travel by train in their summer holidays and to sell 120,000 summer-tickets (+5% vs 2006).
The ÖBB summer-ticket is a special holiday-offer from the Austrian Railway company ÖBB for unlimited train use for € 19 (age <20)>
OBJECTIVES
To motivate young Austrians to travel by train in their summer holidays.
To promote the ÖBB summer-ticket.To sell 120,000 ÖBB summer-tickets.

STRATEGY
Taking the train is not the transport of first choice with young Austrians. But for most of them taking the train is their only realistic opportunity to travel in their holidays. We needed something or someone who would have credibility with the target group, and could say “'move your ass' and go out in summer! It's easy... With the lowest train-fares from ÖBB (Austrian Railways)”.

We created a new hero: the Canadian Indian „Howling Heoro Keese”. He became a real character with his own online platform, TV-show and events.

To approach young people in their own language two linked campaigns were set up:

• a viral campaign to introduce the Indian
• four weeks after the viral teaser campaign the TV-, Print- and Billboard campaign started with details of the offer and reservations on

www.inmotion.oebb.at
OTHER COMMUNICATION
Viral Campaign, My Space Site, GO TV, Print, Billboard, Citylights, TV Spot, Online,

CREATIVE STRATEGY
The viral campaign was started by sticking cryptic yellow posters and stickers to walls and places where young people come together.

“The ear” as a symbol for the “hearing Indian” was created and myspace.com/how_oh went online.
On the website people learned about the “Free Culture Network” of a Canadian Indian called Howling Hearo Keese who knows everything about the 'in' places (cause he's “all-hearing”).
Basic Message: HOW OH! “Iroquois” meaning something in between “Get lost!” and meaning in Austrian dialect “get out of here!”

Key Visuals: “The ear” and Howling Hearo Keese
Only four weeks after the viral teaser campaign the TV-, Print- and Billboard campaign started with details of the offer and reservations on www.inmotion.oebb.at.THE STAR & HEROE: Howlin hero Keese

ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONS
An outstanding hero, connecting all media-channels (incl. direct marketing, viral, classic & guerilla) and a slogan as a new word-creation (HOW OH!) that's now in the mind of every young Austrian.

Pedigree::: Adoption Drive

BRAND OWNER:Mars
CATEGORY:Pet Care
REGION:Germany
DATE:Mar 2008 - Jul 2008

Pedigree was facing a huge problem, since the dog food market was being polarized between own label and premium brands. Pedigree was somewhere in the middle and did not have clear differentiating brand attributes.

The opportunity was to tell consumers, that Pedigree cares more about every single dog than any other manufacturer. In order to prove this, it created the Pedigree Adoption Drive and raised Awareness for dogs living in animal shelters.

The idea was to activate dog lovers to get them to become part of the Adoption Drive and create a dog rescue movement. Dog Lovers could become part of the movement, by donating money or by adopting a dog.
The first stage saw various rescue dogs profiled in all the big German newspapers, along with a telephone number for more information. Posters at gas stations on the freeway – notorious dumping grounds for unwanted pets – reminded people about the dogs’ plight. This was supported by TV ads.

The second step was to activate consumers to become a part of the movement, largely at point of sale. Images of local animal shelter dogs were displayed along with the message that with every purchase from Pedigree they support these dogs. People were driven to Pedigree.de in an online drive and there were many cases of editorial integration including reports of dogs who had found new homes. All of these homed dogs were shown on the Pedigree site.



The campaign achieved a short term sales growth of 8,6%.

Also the penetration of the brand increased about 4,8% for the first time in three years and remained on a higher level also after the campaign period.

Finally the target to donate €250k to animal shelters was smashed with a donation of €400k and the adoption rate increased about 20% during the period of the campaign.

X-Men::: The Wolverine Buddy Poke

BRAND OWNER:Fox Films
CATEGORY:Entertainment
REGION:Brazil
DATE:Mar 2009 - Apr 2009

To promote the premiere of Fox Film’s new film X Men Origins, the film studio wanted to take advantage of the popularity of social networking site Orkut.

One of the most popular applications on Orkut is The Buddy Poke. The Buddy Poke is essentially a greeting delivered by an avatar from one friend to another. Users can express themselves via the character.
For the purpose of the movie promotion, an avatar of Wolverine was created – the first time the application has been used by an advertiser. Users of the Wolverine Buddy Poke can be select two options – either “claws out” or “ask to respond” – to send to friends.

Having selected the greeting, their own avatar gets personalized to look more like wolverine – complete with huge claws and side burns.

Then a small animation of the newly wolfish avatar can be sent to a friend. The Buddy Poke is not branded with the name of the film at all – the idea is simply to make a subtle association with the film, which launches at the end of April.
The movie charts the violent and romantic past of Wolverine, from his complex relationship with

Audi::: Progressive vanguards

BRAND OWNER:Volkswagen
CATEGORY:Automotive
REGION:China
DATE:Mar 2008 - Dec 2008

High brand awareness for the Audi A8L was failing to convert into sales in China. Consumer research revealed that the Audi brand was perceived as old, conservative and government-related.

The car brand needed to communicate its new positioning of “Progressive Vanguards” to a niche audience of sophisticated business executives and hence boost sales.

We knew that this target market were confident in their own beliefs and ideals but conversely they were also keen to learn from other people’s success.

The solution was to create Audi’s own list of “Progressive Vanguards” and put their stories at the heart of the campaign.

Audi teamed up with leading business newspapers and periodicals to create Audi branded content where 24 leading businessmen from China and abroad would talk about the secrets of their success.

They included Steve Jobs from Apple, Ma Yun from Alibaba and Li Yan- Hong of Baidu. Readers were directed to their stories via eye- catching banners on the front page.

Special events and business conferences added another layer to the communication, encouraging readers to take a test drive.

Sales of the Audi A8L rose 35% year on year with a saving of 45% on a regular media buy.

Coca Cola:::Free yourself with a song

BRAND OWNER: The Coca Cola Company
CATEGORY:Drinks (non-alcoholic)
REGION:Malaysia
DATE:Jul 2008 - Aug 2008

Coca-Cola’s popularity among Malaysia youth was waning because of an explosion of healthier beverages and the fact that its advertising was being drowned out by the jumbo budgets of telecoms companies.

2008 was a tough year, with a deepening recession and a youthful rebellion against the ruling party. Coke needed to find a way of tapping into the stubbornly optimistic youth and establish itself as the drink that truly expressed the national mood.
2008 had seen the rise of two youth icons that had captivated the imagination of the country.

The first was Shila, an everyday girl from a small town, who rose from the streets to win the largest reality singing show on TV.

The second was Alam, the village underdog who won the biggest dance show. Coca Cola took the two icons, and signed up an iconic lyricist to create a music video –Free Yourself (or Bebaskan-lah in Malay) – where Coke was integrated as the fuel of refreshing liberation and positivity. Coke’s jingle was also laced into the fabric of the song.

The major advertising element was a TV commercial, but it also brought in radio and online. The video became self-propagating, with friends forwarding it to friends, posting it on blogs and on YouTube, colleagues showing it to each other and on-air requests creating a pull-mechanism. Bebaskan-lah! became the anthem of the times by plugging into and giving expression to the spirit of the period in a language that truly connected with youth – in a way that was so very uniquely Coca-Cola.

The campaign was hugely successful in sales terms, achieving a volume growth of 280,000 unit cases. Coca-Cola’s preference score hit a record five-year high, rising 177% across the year, overwhelming all other brands in the category put together. - The song itself reached No. 1 within 2 weeks and was also made a theme song for a popular local youth drama, A Story of Hope.

Axe:::Cheesegirls

BRAND OWNER:Unilever
CATEGORY:Toiletries/ Cosmetics
REGION:South Africa
DATE:Jun 2008 - Nov 2008


Axe was worried its market share would remain static unless it targeted untapped demographics, including urban black youth aged 18-25. The problem was that Axe hadn’t spoken to this segment for 5 years and even then, the urban black youth didn’t relate to the Axe communication.

Axe needed to engage with this target group in a meaningful way without alienating current users. Axe realized that urban black youth didn’t identify with the Axe promise of ‘getting the girl’, because they were far more experienced. However, they would identify with getting the girl who everyone is afraid of approaching, the rich girl, aka the cheese-girl.

Axe decided to create a band called The Cheesegirls, who would release two songs. The first song trashed ghetto guys (known as Kasi). The second video paid tribute to Kasi guys because they have been wearing Axe and are therefore irresistible.

The activation was focused on radio (a key channel for the target), used PR as the hook and then changed the traditional role of TV. The track was launched through the sponsorship of an annual DJ conference and on radio. Listeners were invited to vote for their favourite mixed Cheesegirl track from the DJ conference.

The Cheesgirls were marketed as if they were a genuine pop sensation, getting interviews in music magazines and on TV. Axe was never linked to the band.

A PR set up saw the lead singer of the Cheesgirls ‘busted’ dating a Kasi guy. The band then organized ‘apology interviews’ which saw the band openly apologize and promise to re-write the lyrics for the infamous track 'Kasi No No'. The second track was then launched and played across 3 key stations, along with the music video which finally revealed the Axe link to The Cheesegirls.

As a result, the first rack received 504mins of free radio exposure over the first 8 weeks. Track 2 yielded 441mins of free radio exposure over the 7 weeks.

The campaign also smashed through the 10% share barrier target, one year ahead of schedule.