Insight
With the changing market scenario, and emergence of online as one of the fastest growing media platform globally, advertisers and marketers alike demand greater understanding and want visibility on results and effectiveness. IPG Mediabrands’ Analytics offers businesses an opportunity to understand their campaign effectiveness easily, and know what actually helps their business, and drives sales.
The challenge it faced was how to communicate IPG Mediabrands Analytics services and solution to its potential market, which comprises of CEOs, Marketing Directors, Strategy Heads and various other industry leaders. We all know that this group of people is the most difficult to target and by far the most expensive ones if traditional media approach is taken.
Strategy
In advertising, industry awards are a critical benchmark of a campaign’s creativity effectiveness, and marketers claim to fame. Be it local awards or the coveted international awards held in the French valley, every marketer wants to win, and with results being the key benchmark of a successful campaign, sometimes they may be exaggerated.
Award juries are painfully aware of this apparently innocuous exaggeration, from obscure parameters like “Number of Engagements” to more subjective ones like “Consumer were more happier”, are claimed to be the reason why a particular campaign deserves to win.
IPG saw award judging as a unique and hitherto unexplored media platform. It had all the essential ingredients that it needed to communicate its product offering. The jury comprised of industry head honchos who understood the significance and necessity of accurate results and measurement. Above all it was highly contextual for it to target jury members, they would be going through several case studies to determine which ones deserve to win, and IPG’s message would hit home. So it decided to infiltrate the award judging day itself in a never before done guerilla activity.
Execution
The agency chose prominent awards functions like Effies, Kancils etc, where all the entries videos were showcased for judging. It disguised its message as a campaign case study entry itself, with a case video with just 3 frames, which read:
1. “Tired of Exaggerated Results?”
2. “Your Campaigns Deserve Better Accuracy”
3. Followed by Mediabrands Analytics logo and official website details.
This would have been played in random in between the stream of actual case studies and it managed to convert a non-advertising platform into its message board, and addressed the exact target segment in a contextual and unhindered manner.
Results
IPG Mediabrands’ Analytics has submitted its “ENTRY” across the region for Effies & 4A’s advertising awards. It reached its target segment with just entry fee of an award submission, the cost of which was 1/20th of placing an advertisement in a C suite relevant print publication.
The number of enquiries to its analytics team increased and the year 2014 looks promising as it expects to increase its client portfolio and revenues by 300%. It can further tell you some unknown result parameter like the “number of smiles” generated amongst a bored jury group, but all it would like to say is that business is growing strong and fast!