Insight
Lynx was launching its new body spray ‘Apollo’ into a category already saturated with strong competition. Lynx knew that in order to grab attention and ensure success of the Apollo launch it needed to do something big. This was even more important given it had aggressive sales targets to achieve within 10 weeks of the launch. Early success is imperative in order to ensure support and confidence from retail partners and avoid any threat of early deletion.
There is nothing bigger than ‘outer space’. So in a very bold move Lynx decided to run a promotion to send a lucky consumer to space. That’s right, actually sending a consumer to outer space.
The Lynx Apollo competition is a global initiative that will see 22 winners from around the world (four from Australia) winning the chance to qualify for the Lynx Space Academy challenge weekend where they will face physical and mental NASA-style tests. The four best candidates will then be flown to Orlando Florida to compete in a final series of challenges. One winner will go to space in 2014.
Mindshare’s mission therefore was to amplify this promotion making sure consumers in Australia were aware and engaged with the competition and subsequently buying the new Apollo. And, not technically a KPI but a secret wish of the agency’s was that Australia had the best possible entrants and that an Aussie would win the ultimate prize of going to space.
Strategy
Mindshare found itself in a dream position – a big global promotion that would excite and garner attention. As Lynx puts it: ‘All women want heroes. Grab their attention with the legendary scent of Lynx Apollo fragrance body spray. Leave a man, come back a hero’.
Insight: There was however one significant challenge, after speaking with the male 13-24 year old audience and that is whilst the prize was incredible the only concern was that the prize could seem almost too out of this world, hard to believe it was real and not accessible enough. This is further exacerbated when you live in Australia and it’s easy to feel removed from the rest of the world.
Strategy: Mindshare’s media strategy revolved around bringing this campaign back to earth so to speak. Effectively bringing space to the consumer and ensuring they could get up close and personal with the promotion and the new Apollo product.
Mobile front and centre – feeding its audience’s love of technology. Leveraging cool technology was central to the digital strategy. And so in its bid to ensure the campaign was accessible and part of their world, the agency focused the campaign around the key channel they see as most accessible and most part of their world – their mobile.
The agency put together a comprehensive mobile media plan to ensure we could involve our Lynx guys in the Apollo competition through their most personal device. The strategy took into account not only the social nature of the audience, but also their predilection for consuming video content and crucially, their love of gaming!
Communications spanned multiple mobile touch-points including Facebook’s mobile newsfeed, YouTube’s mobile homepage, as well as the syndication of a new mobile game – the Lynx Lunar Racer.
Execution
The campaign kicked off with a takeover of YouTube’s mobile homepage, ensuring the brand’s high-impact presence in an environment that is visited daily by content-snacking Lynx guys. The audience also live and breathe social media. Knowing that Facebook’s mobile newsfeed is the stickiest page on the web, Mindshare rolled out an engaging social content calendar and amplified messaging through a mixture of Facebook Premium and Self-Serve media. Facebook’s targeting capabilities plus the social environment provided the opportunity for it to really drive buzz and conversation around the competition to both current fans and also to a new audience.
Lynx guys are heavy consumers of mobile internet and are browsing the mobile web on a daily basis. The plan drove further reach and traffic to the competition site through highly targeted mobile display banners, across m-sites but also in-app. The Lynx Lunar Racer mobile game was created by Lynx’s digital creative partner with success being determined by how well Mindshare could ensure the media drove interactivity with the game.
Lynx guys love mobile gaming, and they especially love racing games. Therefore the Lunar Racer mobile game was developed with the core audience in mind. To ensure the game hit the market with a bang, Mindshare leveraged Facebook’s App Install product (a Unilever first) and seeded the game out into Facebook’s mobile newsfeed. We also drove traffic to the app store using our targeted mobile display banners.
Results
• 25 million mobile impressions resulted in around 195,000 clicks being driven to the competition site or the game
• 2.5 million people reached with Apollo mobile social content
• 130,000+ mobile game downloads (IOS & Android)
• Reached #2 in Racing and #8 Games in the Australian App Store
• Average game session time of 23+ minutes
• Over one million games played in the first month
• 200,000+ video content views for total campaign
• 238,000 visits to the Lynx Apollo site total
• 22,000 entries into the promotion total
• The game received an average 4 star rating on IOS and Android and a mobile FWA award.
• Lunar Racer has now been rolled out across five other Lynx/Axe regions.
And most importantly: sales of Lynx Apollo reached 10 week target in first three weeks. And this just in – Tim Gibson will now be the very first Australian ever to go to space thanks to Lynx Apollo! News NineMSN: ‘A Brisbane man will become the first Australian citizen in space after winning an astronaut competition held by men's grooming company Lynx.’