Gillette Venus| Tag The Weather Gillette Venus

Insight

GILLETTE’S PROBLEM: WHEN WOMEN ARE SHIVERING, THEY’RE NOT SHAVING!

Sweden gets very cold in winter. For five months of the year, sub-zero temperatures engulf the region, and darkness and snow force people to stay indoors. As a result, Swedes don’t shave much. After all, why should they bother when they have to swaddle themselves in coats, thermal underwear and tights just to leave the house?

This is bad news for Gillette, whose Venus ladies shaving range suffers from a double-digit sales slump every winter.

Gillette realised that during the colder months, the brand’s biggest challenge is not rival razor products - it’s the weather.

While Gillette’s female target like to regularly shave and show off their legs in the summer, that routine becomes less and less frequent in the winter. The brand's key insight was that it needed to re-programme this behaviour to boost frequency of shaving and increase sales of Gillette Venus.

Gillette’s major problem, of course, was that it couldn’t change the weather, but could it help its target dream about sunnier climates, imagine long hot days, remember what summer feels like?

And, if Gillette could get them thinking warm - if it could really bring that dream warm weather to life - perhaps Gillette could fire up their summer shaving routine.

Strategy

GILLETTE’S STRATEGY: SHARING SOMEONE ELSE’S SUMMER WOULD STOP WOMEN SHIVERING AND START THEM SHAVING AGAIN!

Gillette couldn’t change the weather, but it could change the mind-set of its audience. If Gillette could remind them of summer – by helping them share and swap stories and pictures with women in warmer climates – Gillette could emotionally engage them with their summer shaving routine.

Gillette needed to start that process early to remain relevant during the cold season. It knew its target was increasingly mobile and smartphone dependent, spending hours plugged in to social networks and online photo-sharing platforms. In Sweden, women use Instagram twice as much as men and 39% use it on a daily basis.

Gillette would give women the chance to win a trip somewhere warmer, by entering Gillette’s photo contest on Instagram. For the chance to win, women would have to submit photos of the coldest places in Sweden, labelling them with Gillette’s #venuscompetition hashtag. This would be great content to share – while painfully cold, there’s nothing prettier than a sparkling blanket of snow. Gillette’s snap-happy women wouldn’t be able to resist.

A specially selected jury of female bloggers from sunny Florida, Brazil and Australia, would comment on the pictures and select daily favourites – giving Gillette’s photographers social fame and moving them closer to the holiday.

Keeping shaving on women’s mind, Gillette would offer a discount on Venus products to anyone posting a picture. Uniquely, this discount would be based on the weather conditions at their GPS-stamped location. The colder the weather, the bigger the discount. A partnership with an online retail brand would make purchase just a tap away.

Top fashion bloggers would also spread the word about Sweden’s weather – by showing sun-worshipping local Miami residents just how cold it was in Stockholm. Gillette would use their reactions – and photos – to create more sharable content on Facebook and the Venus website. 

Execution

SHARING PHOTOS AND STORIES LED TO SAVINGS ON SHAVING! 

In January 2013, in the middle of the Swedish winter, Gillette launched the Gillette Venus ‘Tag the Weather’ competition website and made the tough climate conditions work in its favor. 

To win a holiday to Miami, consumers took photos of their winter weather and published them on Instagram; the campaign site automatically found them thanks to the hashtag used. Each photo was instantly given a bad weather score. Based on geo-location, the colder the conditions recorded (based on historical weather data) the higher the score.  

Consumers could convert this into a dynamic discount for the Venus Proskin Sensitive. The lower the temperature, the bigger the discount. Gillette’s unique partnership with Halens, the region’s biggest online fashion and personal care retailer, meant that purchase was always just a click away. 

Gillette’s message combined display, video and blog partnerships on mobile and web. Tag the Weather appeared on blog portal Devote.se and fashion blogs such as Tyras.se. It created videos showing Swedes talking to Americans in Miami about their weather and asking if they wanted to swap locations. They were hosted on YouTube, Facebook, female blogs and the campaign site.

Above-the-line ads invited women to show off their everyday weather to a unique jury of sun-spoiled bloggers (Steffi from Miami, Alana from Rio, Chrystal from Sydney), who also wrote about the competition and extreme weather in Sweden.

Wherever possible Gillette’s shivering target was exposed to the warmer weather being enjoyed by women elsewhere. 

Results

SHARING PICTURES LED TO SALES HEATING UP BY 570%

In just two weeks Gillette attracted more than 5,800 Instagram photos – the highest number ever in Sweden. Overall, Gillette reached 444,500 Instagram users earning nearly 130,000 likes. The campaign site attracted more than 160,000 unique visitors – 80% via a mobile device.

In total, Gillette reached three million unique mobile devices across the region, while Facebook and Instagram activity reached 91% of all Swedish women 18-35. 

Gillette’s response-led tactic generated incredible sales. The impact on sales of was incredible. During the campaign online sales of Venus Proskin Sensitive increased 570% and blades were up 100%. While in-store sales were boosted by 36%.

BRAND:

Gillette Venus

BRAND OWNER:

Procter & Gamble

CATEGORY:

Toiletries/Cosmetics

REGION:

Sweden

DATE:

2013

AGENCIES:

MediaCom

Saatchi & Saatchi

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Digital,Mobile,Online

Quaker Oats | Havrecrunch | Yellowstone Diet

Insight

Turning the negative into a positive. Every day seems to bring us new information about what is good for us, what we should eat, how we should look, new extreme diets and new forms of exercise. They can range from the practical to the absurd. We know that people want to look and feel good, but the barrage of mixed messages combined with an increased focus on looks and lifestyle in society meant that our audience were being negatively affected rather than feeling positive about who they are. The beginning of any new year was particularly full of these messages as people focused more on their lifestyle and eating at this time of year.

With the launch of the Havrecrunch, Quaker Oats set out to challenge this negative trend, there is more to life than the next diet fad and it wanted to remind consumers of this. OMD needed to come up with an idea targeted specifically at this audience to get their attention, entertain them while also enlightening them about what leading a healthier lifestyle actually means.

The marketing challenge was to create awareness for the new Havrecrunch product by creating a meaningful connection with the target audience based on insights on their conscious living and eating habits.

Strategy

There is no miracle cure, but everyone claims their new product to be one, which is where the grizzly berries come into the picture.

The Yellowstone berry was considered a super-food for bears and it had recently become famous and a discussion point in social media forums. The Yellowstone berry helps bears get through the winter hibernation period and had recently become almost extinct before an initiative by Yellowstone Park bought the berry back to life.

With the berry background story in place, OMD would create fake commercials for a diet called “The Yellowstone Diet”. This diet was to come from these wild berries that scientists had supposedly been researching the last eight years. By harnessing the credibility of the story and armed with the knowledge that previous campaigns which had used humorous content were a success, the Yellowstone berry diet campaign was born.

Video content was created in an exaggerated and funny way to get people’s attention and have those wondering if this was real or not. The agency would release the ‘fake commercials’ on several social platforms that the audience uses to research, discuss and share new trends and diets. OMD’s strategy was to get the target group’s attention and use them to spread the Yellowstone diet themselves through social media. It would then move to mainstream channels such as print and out-of-home to reveal that the diet was about conscious living and encouraging people to eat healthily, rather than just chasing the next big fad.

Quaker believes that “There is no miracle cures – eat healthy and use your common sense”. With its brand story at the heart of the campaign it would set out to challenge the negative trend in body consciousness in an entertaining and irreverent tone of voice.

Execution

Knowing that being online and having credible buzz around a product was the key to attracting its audience, OMD recruited key ambassadors to promote the Diet and seeded 10 fake diet videos on blogs and forums. The videos consisted of two energetic people in gym gear discussing the diet and explaining the berry in an infomercial style. This included an introduction and demonstrations of the related products such as a Hibernation patch that works while you sleep, by inserting the berries into your nose, and personal favourite the Belly-berries patch for everyday use.

The content was seeded onto sites that contained news about health, fitness and lifestyle; OMD bought premium placements in trustworthy environments. Four Bloggers wrote 10 editorials about their experiences and expectations of the Grizzly Berries. #Yellowstone on Twitter would be track the chatter about the diet. All this was over five weeks alongside the bought placements.

The agency also rolled out budget display placements and cryptic search ads, to mirror the massive amount of ridiculous advertising for getting abs and losing weight in minutes in “untrustworthy environments” to also achieve a cheap TV-shop-feel in several contexts.

As the campaign got more and more ridiculous, OMD finally rolled out on all digital platforms, the BeOn network; Twitter, blogs, display, RTB, GDN, Search, YouTube and Facebook with a reveal, that it was all a part of a campaign highlighting bad diets and that the focus should be on healthy living and breakfasts, with Havrecrunch.

Results

“It’s the fake diet you don’t want to miss!” Havrecrunch delivered on its brand story and message that there is no miracle cure, just simply to eat healthy and use your common sense.

Awareness during the campaign increased the sales index to 334. While the buzz and chatter around the fake diet went crazy throughout the campaign on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, with comments such as: “This is great, where can I get it” to “This is the funniest parody of diet advertising ever seen.

After two weeks of advertising, Quaker Oats had + 27,000 visitors on the website, and + 50,000 views on YouTube, generating approximately +200,000 views spread over 10 videos. Phase 1 achieved an aggregated viewing time of 4,215 hours, equivalent to over 201 days of video consumption. Facebook reached a total of +70,000,000 impressions, while Twitter reached 216,000 impressions and 17,176 engagements, which meant a stunning 7.92% engagement rate.

A highlight of the campaign was an official invitation to have a stand at the 2014 Health and Beauty Conference, where Havrecrunch was invited to demonstrate the Grizzly Berries.

BRAND:

Havrecrunch

BRAND OWNER:

Quaker Oats

CATEGORY:

Food

REGION:

Denmark

Sweden

DATE:

February - May 2014

AGENCY:

OMD

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Online,Out-of-Home,PR,Print

Cxense | Cxense boosts hyperlocal targeting capabilities

Insight

Widespread use of centralised web traffic hubs in the Nordic region has traditionally limited the value of advertising geotargeting technologies in the area. Leading ad serving technology provider, Cxense, is now breaking the mould, using an IP geotargeting solution from Digital Element to improve granularity by over 110% and eliminate holes in coverage – resulting in significantly higher revenues for its customers’ ad campaigns.

Online geotargeting in the Nordic region is notoriously difficult due to the common practice of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) routing large numbers of IP addresses through centralised hubs, a practice known as ‘backhauling’. Unsophisticated geolocation methodologies can be misled by this practice, resulting in a disproportionate number of IP address locations being incorrectly geolocated to a centralised hub, rather than the location where the device actually connects to the publicly-routable internet.

For Cxense, ad serving technology provider, the issue of tracing an IP address back from the centralised hub to the ISP end-point was not completely resolved with their previous IP geolocation provider. Cxense, which handles more than 45 billion ad impressions per month, recognised that, with improved data granularity and city-level accuracy, it could serve more relevant ads and generate higher Click-Through Rates (CTRs) and revenue for its advertising clients.

Strategy

After an extensive evaluation process of several IP geolocation solutions, Cxense chose Digital Element’s NetAcuity Edge technology for its hyperlocal targeting capabilities.

Execution

By integrating the NetAcuity Edge technology into its ad serving platform, Cxense is able to address the challenges associated with online ad geotargeting in the Nordics. While less sophisticated IP targeting techniques rely on routing infrastructure analysis and are degraded by backhauled traffic, NetAcuity Edge combines traditional infrastructure analysis with anonymous insight gleaned from a network of global commercial partners to provide a more granular and accurate response at a hyperlocal level (city and postcode), while still maintaining user anonymity and complying with the highest standards of end-user privacy. Now publishers, using EmediateAd from the Cxense Advertising suite, can assure its advertisers that it is utilising the most accurate and granular hyperlocal dataset available and that their ads are reaching users in the right geographic locations throughout the entire Nordic region and beyond.

Results

By deploying Digital Element’s IP geolocation technology, Cxense’s local advertising capabilities have become significantly more precise, and the company now delivers the Nordic region’s most granular and accurate geotargeted ads. With a rate of 100% country-level accuracy, 98% region-level accuracy and 97% city-level accuracy, Cxense’s geotargeting solution delivers fewer blank spots, more impressions, higher CTRs and, ultimately, increased revenues for its customers’ ad campaigns.

To measure the success of the deployment, Cxense compared before and after geotargeting data* across four different countries – Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland – with staggering results: 

Denmark:
- Average increase in cities identified: 114%
- Average decrease in ad impressions served to visitors in unknown locations: 99.6%
- Average decrease in inventory delivered to unknown locations: 99.3%

Sweden:
- Average increase in cities identified: 146%
- Average decrease in ad impressions served to visitors in unknown locations: 99.1%
- Average decrease in inventory delivered to unknown locations: 99.9%

Norway:
- Average increase in cities identified: 131%
- Average decrease in ad impressions served to visitors in unknown locations: 98.1%
- Average decrease in inventory delivered to unknown locations: 97%

Finland:
- Average increase in cities identified: 157%
- Average decrease in ad impressions served to visitors in unknown locations: 97.8%
- Average decrease in inventory delivered to unknown locations: 97.6%

Percentage change in geotargeting data accuracy by country

By deploying Digital Element’s NetAcuity Edge geotargeting technology within its leading-edge advertising platform, Cxense is charting new ground for the future of successful advertising campaigns across the Nordics.   

BRAND:

Cxense

CATEGORY:

Internet

REGION:

Norway

DATE:

1

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Online

Ahlgrens bilar | Fruit Hatchback - The All-New (Edible) Swedish Car

Insight

Established candy and confectionary brands have a stranglehold on the Swedish market and new brands, even from traditional candy makers, have a tough time entering the market. Ahlgrens bilar (“Ahlgren’s cars”) is one of Sweden’s oldest candy brands and built alongside the strong connection that Swedes have with automobiles. Its newest candy is called The Fruit Hatchback but was faced with intense competition and increased price pressure from the recent market recession, making the goal of standing out from the crowd even tougher.

Starcom MediaVest's task was to create a pre-launch campaign that garnered enough interest to gain the new flavour a foothold in the stores and make it competitive in the fiercely contested and traditionally conservative Swedish candy market. Swedes like to stick with what they know, and while they know cars, they don’t know what a Fruit Hatchback is. The challenge was how to create buzz and involvement around a low interest product with a very limited budget – SEK 1,000,000 ($156,000) including production costs.

Strategy

Generations of Swedes have taken great pride in the fact that a small country like Sweden has produced two world-class car manufacturers: Saab and Volvo. But with the former bankrupt and the latter sold to China, the national automotive ego had taken a bit of a battering in the 2000s. Not only that but gearheads’ favorite program, “Trafikmagasinet” (“Traffic Magazine”; equivalent of Top Gear), went off the air as its creator, Carl-Ingemar Perstad and its network faced a series of infamous legal and budget woes.

With Swede’s automobile pride at its lowest point, Starcom wondered if it could give them a little bit of good news and excitement. Starcom knew it couldn’t market Fruit Hatchback as just another new flavor of a well-known sweet. Which got them thinking… What if it could inject some good news (and humour) into the Swede’s dismal automotive sector, by introducing a new Swedish car! It wanted to sell the Fruit Hatchback, not as a candy, but as a new, “real” car.

Execution 

When “Trafikmagasinet” went off the air, its finale was so abrupt that fans received no closure and created a cult following that only grew as time went by. The idea was to bring the format, the host and the passion back to Swedish consumers by launching the updated “Bilmagasinet” (the Car Magazine) and have Mr. Perstad “leak” the news of a new Swedish car – The Fruit Hatchback.

As the first of four shows aired on YouTube, the speculation from Twitter and blogs like automotorsport.se and vk.se immediately started as to what this new vehicle could be. Simultaneously they recruited “test drivers” for the new car via Facebook and even arranged for an official unveiling of the “Fruit Hatchback” at the Stockholm Lifestyle Motor Show! And finally news spread about the new Swedish car – Fruit Hatchback – on digital screens in all central stations in Sweden.

Results 

The car magazine topped the ‘Unruly Viral Chart Sweden’ in February 2013 and got 524,000 views on YouTube – remarkable for a country as small as Sweden. The limited test driver spots (10,000) were quickly booked with each driver rewarded with a sample bag.

As the fourth part of “Bilmagasinet” aired, and the cat was out of the bag, Ahlgrens bilar’s Facebook page became one of Sweden’s fastest growing, with a fan base growth of 65%. As the campaign culminated, Ahlgrens bilar became the most talked about fast moving consumable brand on Swedish Facebook and achieved a “talking about this” percentage of an astonishing 31% - a great measure of how deeply involved people became in the campaign.

The true success of this campaign however was shown when the subsequent store introduction surpassed any previous Ahlgrens introduction. Fruit Hatchback has become the third most popular candy in Swedish service stores and has taken the number six spot in grocery stores.

BRAND:

Ahlgrens bilar

CATEGORY:

Confectionery/Snacks

REGION:

Sweden

DATE:

January - February 2013

AGENCY:

Starcom Mediavest

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Digital,Events,Online

Coca Cola| the “Land of Smiles”

Insight

The soft drinks market is fiercely competitive in Thailand.  Coke was a stagnant number two at 24%, well behind Pepsi which was at 40%.  In addition, a newcomer “Big Cola” has managed to grab 10% in just 5 years, growing faster than Coke. Coke was not even on top of mind amongst core target drinkers and consumer relevancy was on the wane.

To add insult to injury, Coke sales were heavily affected at the end of 2011 from some of the worst floods in Thailand’s history, isolating two thirds of the population and submerging buildings and factories under water. Bangkok was paralyzed and Coke ran out of stock as manufacturing was brought to a halt.  70 million Thais were plunged into crisis.

Right after the crisis, Coke’s biggest selling opportunity is to provide refreshment during the hot, dry summers in Thailand. The global communication platform of Coke is “Happiness” which is localized as “Summer Fun” during peak sales season.  However, given that the country is just recovering from one of the worst floods in recent history, “Summer Fun” was terribly inappropriate. We had to find a new way to connect Coke with its consumers to revitalize its brand image and sales.

Strategy

Thailand is known, for good reason, as the “Land of Smiles” but these floods in Thailand just added to the many crises the country has had to endure in recent years and pushed the nation to the edge. Thais became overly cautious about the future.  For the national psyche, the floods really were a watershed.

Although only two-thirds of Thais were directly affected by the floods, everyone was emotionally affected such that Thailand’s Gross Domestic Happiness plunged almost 10% to its lowest point yet after the floods in January 2012.
For more than 65 years, Coke has been the ambassador of “Happiness” in Thailand so we wanted to bring Smiles back to the Land and give Thai people a boost to their confidence, taking the lead in moving the country forward again.

As the crisis unfolded, millions of people were relying heavily on TV and the internet to get minute-by-minute updates both from official news outlets and social media. News spread far and wide across the country, increasing the ratings by 16% for news programs on TV.  Digital media became the real time crisis center. We noticed that during the first day when the floods hit, the number of twitter messages soared to 3.3 million tweets, the highest tweets ever in a day for Thailand. 

Media was oversaturated by news of the disaster, adding to gloomy mood of the country.  Thus, to reverse the tide of bad news, we needed to inject as many positive stories & messages to uplift the country’s mood.  Coke initiated the “Million Reasons to Believe in Thailand” campaign, aimed at recharging the people’s confidence in these difficult times.  We encouraged all Thais to become our happiness ambassadors by sharing encouraging messages and good news to their countrymen directly affected by this disaster.

Execution

Initiative set up the first and largest 4D interactive illumination display, integrating light, sound, animation and effects on one of the tallest buildings in the heart of Bangkok to serve as a beacon of hope that could be seen across the entire city.  Consumers were invited to send their stories how they overcame their personal tragedy and send encouraging messages that appeared on the building in real time.

National pride picked up.  Everyone felt a sense of belonging as they shared their stories and messages on social network sites, becoming an online phenomenon.  A total of 137 million engagements transpired over the Coke Facebook page, which became the central storage of happiness stories.

The trend to replace bad news with stories of hope attracted mass attention that was further reinforced into a partnership with evening news programs on the 2 biggest TV stations, top national cable TV and radio channels by making daily good news into a permanent feature on their news programs.

At the end of the campaign period, the Hall of Happiness was built, an exhibit in the Digital Gateway Mall whose roof was wrapped to resemble the iconic Coke bottle, essentially creating the biggest Coke bottle on the planet.  The exhibit featured every message shared by every Thai on the Facebook page and previously flashed on the giant display to show the world that Thailand has never been stronger and ready to move forward via a giant Coke bottle filled with “millions of happiness stories.”

Results

- More than 1 million Thais shared their happiness through the campaign
- 137 million engagements with the campaign through Coke and social network sites
- Awareness of the “Million Reasons to Believe in Thailand” reached 92% of Thais
- Even as Thailand GDP stands at a minus 4.2%, Coke sales hit an all-time high of 29 million unit cases sold for the month of March 2012
- Coke market share increased from 24% to 30% through this social relevance campaign, narrowing the gap against Pepsi whose market share dropped from 40% to 32%

At the end, there are so many reasons to believe that Thailand is a country of opportunity, creativity and prosperity. There are no prizes to be won for participating in this campaign just simply the well-wishing messages coming from the heart of every Thai. 

As the happiness ambassador, Coke's utmost achievement is to proudly say it made “Thailand, The Land of Smile” once again. (Thailand’s Gross Domestic Happiness went up from 66% to 75% at the end of the campaign – ABAC POLL)

BRAND:

Coca Cola

CATEGORIES:

Drinks (non-alcoholic)

FMCG

REGION:

Thailand

DATE:

March - May 2012

AGENCY:

Initiative Thailand

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Experiential,Out-of-Home