Güd, pronounced ‘good’, is a line of products that spans eight personal care product categories and represents a shift from the parent brand Burt’s Bees earth-friendly natural skincare products. Güd products are aimed at a young demographic and incorporate scents with youth- friendly names, such as Pearanormal Activity, Orange Petalooza, Floral Cherry Nova and Vanilla Flame.
To introduce the brand, Güd developed an integrated marketing campaign comprising a major in-store programme, couponing and a college campus tour. To reach the target 18-29 year-old demographic, social media played a large role. Promotions went out on Twitter (@gudhappens), on Facebook, via email, and at gudhappens.com.
Güd products are lower priced than typical natural products, and are intended to attract younger, less ‘earthy’, more contemporary consumers to the category. Research by the agency revealed that fragrance was particularly important in driving this type of customer to purchase.
With this in mind, the brand distributed around 2.6 million scratch-n-sniff cards before posting a 90-second scratch-n- sniff-along animated video on Facebook. In the animation, a young woman starts her journey to work after applying Güd body lotion.
At key moments, viewers were prompted to scratch and sniff one of six corresponding aromas beginning with Orange Petalooza Body Lotion, then moving to diesel fumes (from a refuse truck), candy floss, a dirty subway, flowers and strawberries. The tagline ‘Wherever Güd goes, Güd happens’ hung the campaign together. Throughout March and April, guerrilla teams also handed out the same card at five state college campuses: the University of North Carolina, the University of Florida, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkley.
In addition, Güd featured QR codes on product packaging, which, when scanned, released more information about products and scents as well as coupons, samples, mobile wallpapers and ringtones. Full-page print ads, including the scratch-n-sniff card and a $1-off coupon, appeared in the March issues of Allure and Lucky magazines. In stores, QR codes on all Güd packages linked to a mobile-adapted scent video site accompanied by 24 different ‘floral aphorisms’ with slightly offbeat Güd thoughts, such as ‘It’s like moisturising your skin with 72 degrees and sunny’.
“Engagement is a word that gets thrown around a
lot about social media, but it’s really about creating experiences,” said David Baldwin, founder of agency Baldwin&, which handled the programme. “We know that these women love sensory experiences, so the idea was to bring it to life in as interesting a way as possible. It’s a challenge to bring scent to the world in advertising.”
Results
Within the first few weeks of promotion, Güd recruited more than 200,000 Facebook fans, which puts it third in the category on the social networking site