Yesterday I attended 'A Contagious Conversation' with Richard Pinder, Paul Kemp-Robertson and Jess Greenwood. It was one of the highlights of the festival so far. The guys spoke about the importance of creating tangible value and gave some great examples of creating conversation.
Durex Play – From protection to pleasure
Needed a fundamental shift in position.
High brand loyalty of 16-24yrs but as they got older they had no need for the brand anymore. So they created a whole new range of products that were all about pleasure.
They commissioned a survey all about sex and sexual behaviour. They wanted to liberate sexuality and make I mainstream – ie sit next to cosmetics on the supermarket shelf.
Women helped design products for women.
A zero base to $43million revenue in the first 4 years.
The case study from contagious.
- Ignite the conversation
- Own the conversation
- Confront the conversation
- Subvert the conversation
Ignite the conversation
Pepsi refresh project.
A consumer generated project that allowed Pepsi to create its own voice. People voted for funding against different community projects. The campaign prioritised engagement over reach and understood the brand rather than just sat there aware of it.
VW – the fun theory
They wanted to be less automotive and more about change and the great things in life. It was about changing the conversation around their brand from
Throw rubbish in the bin because its fun – noise was activated when the rubbish was put in the bin and 72kg of rubbish were collected on day 1 compared to 42kg in a nearby bin.
The outcome – fun can change behaviour for the better.
Check out the reel here.
Lurpak – Bake Club
Insight: British people do not cook at home like they used to
Pride never came out of a ready meal.
A communal cook off where people cook the same thing at the sme time and interact online about it.
Own the conversation
Advertisers felt they could own the conversation by yelling at people over and over again. The real way to own the conversation is to involve people in it.
Gatorade – Replay. No small games.
Gatorade flipped the tables and went for the cult of the amateur.
Insight: Everyone’s got one of those games where something went wrong.
Idea: Rivalry is scaleable. Provide what every athlete hopes for, a second chance.
Replayed old highschool football game to decide the real winner. Original coaches, cheerleaders, band members were there. Gatorade designed a training program strating 2 months out and the journey was recorded and broadcast throughout.
10K tickets sold out in 90mins.
No major injuries, broken bones or torn muscles – the ultimate product demonstration.
Hollywood has shown interest in creating a film out of the concept and the TV show will run again next year.
The no media engagement metric – without media, would people still choose to engage with your content. Gatorade took a product demonstration and turned it into a Hollywood movie.
Dulux – Let’s Colour – Own the concept
They wanted to own the concept of colour but take it a lot further. It was about transforming the look and feel of impoverished communities with different coloured paints.
A team of cultural bloggers followed the project and used the web as a global tv set.
Nike/Livestrong – Chalkbot – post-digital thinking
People chalk messages on the side of the road during the tour de france to send messages of support to the cyclists.
Nike arranged for messages via twitter, sms or yellow.com told the chalkbot to spray the message on the road. It then took a photo and sent a message back to the messenger with gps coordinates so that they could see it.
It changed something digital into something physical whih makes it much more emotional and real. The way people react to something changes once it becomes physical/tangible.
Confront the conversation
Domino’s – Pizza Turnaround – Transparent Takeway
Negativity around the brand heightened when a video of employees being disgusting went viral.
700k views on pizzaturnaround.com
80,000 more fans on facebook (1 fan = $3 of earned media)
Same store traffic increased by 14%
Marmite – The Marmarati
You either love it or you hate it. They realised they couldn’t get the haters to buy it but they could get the lovers to buy loads of it.
They used the top 20% of the lovers on facebook to become part of a marmite secret society and then use them to launch a limited edition product.
Subvert the conversation
Uniqlo – Lucky Switch – Digital hijack
You need to be brave and you need to do something that gives back to people.
They took banners – the most common and ubiquitous digital advertising platform and made them interesting and useful. They created a never seen before banner ad campaign. I don't know the technical details but basically you downloaded a plugin that was activated when you licked on a uniqlo banner. It then replaced all other advertising with uniqlo ads. The motivation to do this was essentially a treasure hunt/promotion where people could win items of clothing.
Essentially, it turned the banner ad into a piece of content that people wanted to interact with. Clicking on the banner didn't take you away from the site it just added value to the site you were on.
Charmin – sit or squat – public services
They wanted to subvert the conversation about going to the toilet. If parents are out and about with kids, kids give no warning at all, they just look for the nearest toilet.
Sit or Squat App. Essentially a toilet locator using gps tracking and consumer reviewed star ratings.
1600 downloads prior to the partnership and afterwards a 1million.
Love Jozi – Luv Jozi – Problem/Solution
This is an example of what happens when you focus on the problem not on the spend.
No awareness issues – everyone in the know knew about jozi but what about the other people that couldn’t afford jozi.
They faked their own brand. Sold them in flea markets, street vendors & distributed to more ‘mainstream’ wearers.
The fakes were then faked.
After two years of running the campaign, they brand revealed that they were behind the fakes.
Luv Jozi now makes up 75% of the brands revenue and they successfully made a cheaper derivative of the brand without cheapening the brand.
Check out more at www.publiciscontagiousconversations.com