#winnerspotlight

[effieworldwide]

Winner Spotlight: Transbank & Leche, “Trilogía Solistas Redcompra”

January 7, 2016

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When Transbank, a Chilean credit and debit card administrator, sought to create a new ad campaign in 2014, their needs were multifaceted. Transbank’s payment service, Redcompra, is in a highly competitive category, and the company needed to keep the brand top of mind. Transbank set a goal to increase sales by 18% overall, but needed to deliver several targeted messages about product benefits to their audience.

To achieve this, Transbank and agency partner, Leche, focused on a universal interest: music. The team launched “Trilogía Soloistas Redcompra,” a series of three campaigns connected by the central theme of music. Three hit songs by popular Latino solo artists were chosen to highlight Redcompra’s services: Ricky Martin’s "Back,” Chayanne’s "Provócame,” and Luis Miguel’s "Now You Can Go.” The campaign featured lookalikes for the artists that performed parody versions of their well-known songs, which had updated lyrics that linked back to Transbank’s product. Each song had a specially targeted strategy that served to promote a different aspect of Redcompra. Watch all three videos here.

The effort ultimately exceeded sales expectations by 111%, and helped Redcompra regain the lead top-of-mind awareness in the category. “Trilogía Solistas Redcompra” took home the Grand Effie at the 2015 Effie Awards Chile gala. The campaign was also awarded a Gold Effie in the Financial Services category. 

The team celebrates at the 25th anniversary Effie Awards Chile Gala. (via)

Read on to hear from Sebastián Arteaga, Chief Creative Officer and Partner at Leche, as he shares his perspective on his team’s Effie-winning work.

Tell us a bit about your Effie-winning effort, “Trilogía Solistas Redcompra.” What was the key insight that led to the big idea? How did you get to that insight?  

SA: Redcompra is the most loved means of payment in Chile. Studies support this view. And if there was something in particular which inspired our publicity campaign it was just that, love. This is our key insight. The big idea was to find the most powerful cultural icons with regard to love. And they are precisely those romantic ballad singers. They are the voices of love. We got thinking and we had a lot of fun.

How did this effort tap into the emotional power of music? Can you elaborate on the decision to include the three songs and artists that were ultimately selected for this campaign?

SA: We're a small agency and something which unites us is our love of music, from the Stones to Ricky Martin. Any sort of music can be useful to us. We believe in the communicative power of music. To be honest, all of our campaigns use this resource.

What challenges did your team face when bringing this idea to life? How did you overcome those challenges?

SA: The biggest challenge is reinventing an already successful narrative. Redcompra has 11 Effies in 15 years of life. The question is ¿how do we break a successful mould to make it even better? This was the big challenge that I charged the team with.

What is the biggest learning you’ve taken away from this effort?

SA: We learned that brands have a particular tone and style, but if they don't communicate something which is relevant to their audiences their efforts are just a rash and impulsive waste of money. "Trilogías de Solistas" is comprised of four key ingredients: relevance, humour, truth and pertinence. For example, the hard cash crisis which struck in Chile sparked the idea of our Ricky Martin singing "Pide Vuelto" (Ask for cash back), a song about the novelty when Redcompra started offering cashback as part of the transaction. This is truth, relevance, pertinence, delivered with humour.

For updates on the Effie Awards Chile program, visit www.effie.cl.

[effieworldwide]

Winner Spotlight: Kenco & J. Walter Thompson London, “Coffee vs. Gangs”

December 17, 2015

Over the past decade, Kenco, a Mondelēz brand, has built a strong reputation for ethical, sustainable coffee production and distribution. Still, as these values became increasingly important to consumers, the number of competitors taking the same brand position continued to rise. Kenco needed to reaffirm its commitment to ethical and sustainable processes.

The brand, along with agency partner, J. Walter Thompson London, introduced Coffee vs Gangs, an ambitious social initiative that gave young people in Honduras the opportunity to build a brighter future for themselves. 

The campaign featured TV ads that dramatized Kenco’s efforts in Honduras, and also drove traffic to a dedicated website that allowed people to track the progress of Coffee vs Gangs participants throughout the year-long program.  

“Coffee vs. Gangs” by J. Walter Thompson London and Kenco (Mondelēz) won a Silver Effie in the Brand Revitalization category at the 2015 Euro Effie Awards Gala. 

Read on to hear from Paul Kirkley, Global Partner at J. Walter Thompson London, as he explains the insight behind “Coffee vs. Gangs,” and shares advice for other companies working to incorporate corporate social responsibility efforts into their communications strategy.

Tell us a bit about your Effie-winning effort, “Coffee vs. Gangs.” What was the insight that led to the big idea? How did you get to that insight?

PK: Kenco had always lead the way in sustainability, but by 2013 other players in the category had caught up, and this no longer offered a point of difference. We knew we needed to reassert Kenco’s ethical leadership in a market which had become saturated. The insight lay in our product itself: coffee. We found an injustice at the origin of coffee in violent gangs and created an educational programme to give young people in Honduras the opportunity, training and financial and emotional support they needed to leave their dangerous lives behind them and become coffee farmers (one of the few honest and lucrative professions left in Honduras), providing them - for the first time - with a choice in life.

What the role of the marketer (or marketing) in driving Kenco’s social and environmental sustainability impact?

PK: A fundamental and integral one. With Coffee vs Gangs, our advertising strategy didn’t just play in the traditional sphere of communications, but reached into the strategy and behavior of the company itself. Marketing reframed what a coffee brand could achieve and has hopefully encouraged other marketers to look at how their work can impact social and environmental change at its core.  This was an amazing team effort.  We had ambitious, visionary clients who had the courage and passion to do something incredible.  

What advice would you offer other companies working to incorporate corporate social responsibility efforts into their communications strategy?

PK: Make sure that your social responsibility efforts are authentic and true to your brand and offering. It’s important that CSR isn’t seen is a separate entity, but is truly and wholeheartedly baked into the idea and application of your communications strategy.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in bringing this project to life? How did you overcome that challenge?

PK: Accepting and facing new levels of risk involved in setting up an idea such as this was our biggest challenge. From finding the right NGO partner to help us set up a scheme in one of the most dangerous places in the world, attempting to hold simultaneous Skype chats with participants whose internet was powered by an unreliable generator, to ensuring the Honduran government were on board are all challenges that were definitely outside the normal remit!

The first class of “Coffee vs. Gangs” entrepreneurs recently graduated. How has the effort evolved since it was launched? What’s coming next for the “Coffee vs. Gangs” project?  

PK: The original participants have now been given the seed money from Kenco to help them see their business plans come to life – from coffee farms, to coffee shops and nail bars. The scheme is continuing: we’ve now recruited the second wave of participants, who are now beginning their journey and receiving the training, education and support to become coffee famers. Watch this space.

Is there anything else we should know about the “Coffee vs. Gangs” campaign?

PK: Not only has the campaign won many marketing accolades (including a shortlist for Cannes PR, Best Integrated Cross Channel Cross Media campaign for the Drum Content Awards, FAB award for Branded Content, and of course a Euro Effie) but we’ve also seen a dramatic improvement in business results. Within the first 3 months of the campaign we saw a 27% increase in YOY volume sales and a 14% increase in YOY value share. Kenco brand loyalty also increased by 4% and the perception of Kenco as an ethical brand doubled. Furthermore, the total ROMI of the campaign was an impressive 1:1.45.  The campaign was very well received, and we generated an additional 209 million opportunities to see via earned media. Most importantly our participants have completed their first year and are not only successfully beginning to build their own businesses, but also a life away from gangs.

Call For Entries for the 20th anniversary edition of the Euro Effie Awards is now open. Entry deadlines run April 13 - May 13, 2016. Learn more and enter at www.euro-effie.com. 

All images courtesy of JWT London. 

[effieworldwide]

Winner Spotlight: Gillette & Grey London, “Gillette BODY”

December 10, 2015

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Trends in male grooming have changed many times in the decades since Gillette, a Procter & Gamble company, first launched in 1901. In recent years, a new trend has been quietly on the rise in Europe: body grooming. 

In response to this, Gillette developed the first razor specifically “built for the male terrain” - the Gillette BODY razor. While the market for this tool was large and still growing, research showed that many men were embarrassed by what they perceived as niche behavior. For the Gillette BODY product launch to be a success, Gillette needed to normalize the practice of body shaving among their target audience.

Enter “100 Years of Hair,” a time-lapse video by Gillette (Procter & Gamble) and agency partner, Grey London, which showcased a century of men’s grooming trends in under a minute. Iconic trends from each era were brought to life with changing backgrounds, clothing, music, and hair styles, culminating in the introduction of the Gillette BODY razor. 

The Gillette BODY campaign took home a Gold Effie in the Small Budget category, and a Silver Effie in the Product/Service Launch category at the 2015 Euro Effie Awards Gala, where Grey Group EMEA was named Agency of the Year. Of the Gillette BODY launch, the Euro Effie team said, “This campaign had a great strategy to overcome the category decline and managed to have impressive sales, but what really impressed the jurors is how the strategy and creative idea were brought to life!”

We asked Alix Toothman, Senior Planner at Grey London, to share her perspective on how this successful campaign, driven by a viral video, was brought to life. 

Tell us a bit about your Effie-winning effort, “Gillette BODY: 100 Years of Hair.” What was the key insight that led to the big idea? How did you get to that insight?

AT: We considered several approaches to the brief in the early planning process, but we got most excited about an insight relating to generational differences. While combing through some of the research data, we realized how different body grooming rates were between younger men and older men (roughly Millennials and Boomers). While culturally body grooming still seemed a little taboo, amongst younger men, it was actually the norm with almost 80% body grooming vs. 30% of Boomers. This led us to realize that body grooming wasn’t really inherently weirder than other grooming and style trends – it was just a newer trend that younger men were adopting first. So that led to a brief around putting body grooming into context of all the other style and grooming trends that have come before it.

The primary objectives of the Gillette BODY product launch were to create awareness and drive sales. What were your KPIs against these objectives? How did you know you had been successful?

AT: As with any P&G launch, there were clear sales goals in the key launch markets which we were aware of, because fundamentally we always try to tie the marketing objectives back to business objectives. Our marketing objectives were based on trial of existing body groomers, although we quickly realized that even men who were already body grooming were reluctant to actively acknowledge the behavior – which is what is required to buy a second razor specifically for body grooming!

We had a feeling we had met these KPIs even before the hard sales numbers came back because a few retailers like Amazon Germany actually sold out, and the view rates on the creative were very high. Our success was confirmed when we got the actual sales reports back from Gillette.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in bringing your idea to life? How did you overcome that challenge?

AT: The biggest challenge was to find a way of normalizing a behavior that was still embarrassing to acknowledge for most of our potential consumers. We couldn’t just tell our men there was a better tool for the job they were already doing. We had to make them feel good or at least normal about the behavior first.

What was the biggest learning you took away from this effort?

AT: It may sound obvious, but it’s always easy to focus on the attributes of the product. This razor was objectively better designed for body grooming and had received great results in research. But rational messaging wasn’t going to overcome the emotional reluctance that still lingered around the behavior. We had to understand the wider context around using our product to unlock a powerful emotional entry point for creative.

Call For Entries for the 20th Anniversary of the Euro Effie Awards will launch on December 14, 2015. Visit www.euro-effie.com for updates.

[effieworldwide]

Winner Spotlight: Deutsche Telekom & DDB Berlin, “Travel & Surf”

December 3, 2015

(via)

Have you ever wasted an inordinate amount of time on vacation searching for a Wi-Fi connection, only to spend even more time worrying about exorbitant roaming charges?

It’s a struggle many people can relate to, especially when traveling internationally. To help with this common problem, Deutsche Telekom offers “Travel & Surf” data roaming packages, which allow travelers to use mobile internet at a fixed price. Despite the obvious benefit, the company was challenged to convince consumers to overcome their fear of unexpected charges and change their roaming behavior.

Deutsche Telekom and agency partner, DDB Berlin, introduced “Wi-Fi Dogs,” a humorous mockumentary-style video that tells the story of José, a cheeky entrepreneur who trains dogs to sniff out Wi-Fi and leases them to vacationers. The video pokes lighthearted fun at the lengths we will go to to find internet abroad, encouraging travelers to try Travel & Surf and reclaim their vacation time.

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The campaign, which generated wide-reaching engagement and grew Deutsche Telekom’s user base, won Grand at this year’s Euro Effie Awards competition. Of this year’s top winner, the Euro Effie team commented, “The jurors all agreed that this was a solid, well written case mentioning all the needed results to assess its effectiveness. It was a great all-round case: creativity, insight, strategy.”

We asked DDB Berlin's Alice Bottaro, Creative Director, and Bianca Dordea, International Business Director, to share their perspective on their team’s successful campaign.

Tell us a bit about your Grand Effie-winning effort, Travel & Surf. What was the key insight that led to the big idea? How did you get to that insight?

AB: We noticed immediately that data roaming had a really bad reputation and everyone preferred to rely on Wi-Fi. What was really interesting, though, was the resulting change in our holiday behaviour: we were suddenly doing the most ridiculous things to find free Wi-Fi abroad. People were sneaking into the neighbour hotel or spending hours in a Starbucks instead of being at the beach. It seemed like a relevant topic for travellers and a story that no one had told yet. The challenge was to tell it in a way that would make people smile about themselves, without the brand seeming judgmental or preachy.

For this project to be effective, you needed to get consumers to overcome the habit of turning off their data roaming out of fear of expensive charges. What was the most challenging aspect of this, and how did you overcome it? 

AB: Data roaming causes a sort of Pavlovian response, because people have learned that the only safe thing to do is to switch it off. The tricky part is that to make a Travel&Surf pass work, you have to turn your data roaming on. If you look at our campaign, however, we didn’t address this issue directly. Instead of trying to convince everyone that data roaming is amazing, we showed how absurd it is to waste precious holiday time looking for Wi-Fi. This made our product more relevant and our message credible, because it related to people’s experiences.

What was the biggest learning you took away from this project?

AB: It was fun and fascinating to work on such a “Zeitgeist” brief. Also, this campaign shows how creativity and effectiveness are connected and benefit from each other. Being awarded at the Euro Effies and also at festivals like Cannes and the D&AD is a great result: it proves again that “creativity is the most powerful force in business,” as a wise man once said.

What is your key to a successful client-agency relationship?

BD: The successful long-term relationship between DDB and Deutsche Telekom is based on transparency and trust. Both sides have very high creative standards for their products and in the last years they have been setting benchmarks for creating successful branded advertising content and storytelling with campaigns such as “Familie Heins” or “Wi-Fi Dogs.”

Call For Entries for the 20th Anniversary of the Euro Effie Awards will launch on December 14, 2015. Visit www.euro-effie.com for updates.

[effieworldwide]

Effie Winner Spotlight: Anna Russell on Audi of America’s “Stay Uncompromised”

This week’s Effie Winner Spotlight takes a closer look at the insight and teamwork that drove the success of Audi of America’s “Stay Uncompromised” campaign.

Keen Strategy’s Alan Hart sat down with with Anna Russell, General Manager, Brand Marketing at Audi of America Inc., to discuss how the Audi brand team, along with lead creative partner, Venables Bell & Partners, successfully launched the A3, Audi’s first entry-level luxury sedan, in the United States.

Key consumer insights revealed that millennials, Audi’s target audience for the launch, shared something with the designers of the A3 - a refusal to settle. This uncompromising spirit became a rallying cry for the brand, and the cornerstone of this fully integrated campaign. In addition to telling the stories of carefully selected brand ambassadors in TV spots, consumers were invited to share their own stories of perseverance using #paidmydues. The top 15 personal stories were turned into works of art, and later auctioned for charity. The arrival of the A3 was celebrated with an “Uncompromised Launch Day,” which engaged Audi dealerships nationwide.

“Stay Uncompromised,” by Audi of America, Inc. and Venables Bell & Partners, took home a Silver Effie in the Automotive - Vehicles category of the 2015 North American Effie Awards.

Watch Ms. Russell’s interview to hear her perspective on the two most pivotal decisions behind the “Stay Uncompromised” campaign, and why comedian Ricky Gervais was an ideal ambassador for the A3 launch.

To watch the full interview, click here.

For more information about the North American Effie Awards and latest updates on the 2016 competition, visit Effie.org.

To subscribe to the Effie Case Database, click here.

[effieworldwide]

Effie Winner Spotlight: Chris Stamper on TD Bank Canada’s “#TDThanksYou”

This week’s Effie Winner Spotlight features Chris Stamper, SVP Corporate Marketing at TD Bank Canada, discussing the creative and moving way his team expressed their gratitude to TD customers.

Keen Strategy’s Alan Hart caught up with Mr. Stamper to find out more about how TD and their agency partners, Diamond Integrated Marketing and Leo Burnett Toronto, turned ATMs into “automated thanking machines.”

Using branch employees’ extensive customer knowledge, TD customers were surprised with hyper-personalized gifts as a thank you from the bank. Interactions with the “automated thanking machine” were captured by a hidden camera and shared in a YouTube video that garnered more than 17 million views.

“#TDThanksYou” by TD Bank Canada, Diamond Integrated Marketing, and Leo Burnett Toronto, took home a Bronze Effie in the Finance category of the 2015 North American Effie Awards.

Watch Mr. Stamper’s interview to learn his thoughts on TD’s agency partners, the importance of authenticity, and the gift that stood out to him the most.  

To watch the full interview, click here.

For more information about the North American Effie Awards and latest updates on the 2016 competition, visit Effie.org.

To subscribe to the Effie Case Database, click here.

[effieworldwide]

Effie Winner Spotlight: Alex Ho on American Greetings and Mullen Lowe’s “The World’s Toughest Job”

Effie Worldwide has partnered with Keen Strategy to provide a closer look at some of this year’s best North American Effie-winning work.  Over the coming months, we will be spotlighting interviews with industry experts responsible for the effective work from American Greetings, Audi, TD Bank, GE Capital, and Oscar Insurance Corporation.

Kicking off the series, hear from Alex Ho, Executive Director, Marketing at American Greetings, as he reflects on the work behind this year’s North American Grand Effie winner, “The World’s Toughest Job.”

In addition to the Grand Effie, American Greetings and Mullen Lowe took home three Gold Effies for this campaign in the 2015 North American Effie Awards competition.

Alan Hart, Managing Partner at Keen Strategy, sat down with Mr. Ho to talk about the inspiration behind ”The World’s Toughest Job,” dealing with uncertainty, and whether or not those job applicants were in on the stunt. 

To watch the full interview, click here. 

For more information about the North American Effie Awards and latest updates on the 2016 competition, visit Effie.org.

To subscribe to the Effie Case Database, click here.

[effieworldwide]

Effie Winner Spotlight: New Museum & Droga5’s “Recalling 1993”

   The New Museum was launching NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, a new exhibit featuring art from early 1990s New York City - a pivotal social and cultural period in recent NYC history.  With museum attendance at a record low and a small budget to draw crowds into the museum, the New Museum and agency partner Droga5 launched Recalling 1993, an interactive marketing campaign that captured the culture, heart and soul of this memorable year by taking the exhibit to the streets and allowing New Yorkers to step back in time.

The team built a database containing every Manhattan pay phone number, turning 5,000 pay phones across all corners of Manhattan into time machines back to 1993. Through a toll-free number, users could listen to over 150 neighborhood-specific stories from influential New Yorkers that captured the state and sentiments of the city at that time. 

Recalling 1993 took home an Effie Award in the Culture & Arts and Small Budgets categories at the 2014 North American Effie Awards.

Case Summary: It’s not easy getting visitors through the door of an art museum in 2013: attendance in the US recently reached its lowest point in three decades. In New York, dozens of world-class art museums use big names and big budgets to draw crowds. For the New Museum’s “NYC 1993," we had neither. Our objective was to drive buzz that would lead to higher attendance to the museum compared to one year prior. With no paid media, “Recalling 1993” generated over 210 million earned media impressions and boosted attendance 31% year-on-year.

We spoke with Matthew Gardner, Director of Brand Influence at Droga5, to learn more about how his team pulled this effective guerilla campaign off. 

In one sentence, how do you define effective marketing?

MG: Effective marketing is an idea so powerful that great numbers of people can’t help but be moved – moved to change their behavior, moved to rethink their surroundings, or just moved into a museum.

What was the insight that led to the “big idea” behind Recalling 1993? 

MG: To feel and understand how much the year 1993 shaped the New York City of today, we’d have to transport New Yorkers back in time. 

What was the biggest challenge you faced in bringing your idea to life?

MG: Making sure we had enough stories to cover every inch of Manhattan. I’m into history and the city, so uncovering forgotten gems from far-flung neighborhoods was fascinating. Who knew Chinatown had a 20,000 square-foot shantytown called The Hill near the Manhattan Bridge? It was demolished in 1993. 

What was the key to getting the brand influencers and younger demographic you were targeting to not only pick up the phone, but also get them in the door of the New Museum?

MG: The key to making this an idea that people loved was the content. We dug deep into the cultural fabric of 1993 NYC and interviewed hundreds of the coolest, most fascinating figures from the time. These are icons of a disappearing New York and some of their stories had never been told. The audio we got from them is compelling, personal and could only be heard during Recalling 1993. Just like so much of NYC from 1993, it was here and if you missed it you’re too late. 

What about the Recalling 1993 campaign are you most proud of?

MG: I’m most proud of the story of G.G. Allin’s last show and death told by Johnny Puke that managed to make it into pay phones around Avenue B and E 2nd St.

To read more about "Recalling 1993," visit the Effie Case Database. 

All images courtesy of Droga5.