Insight
Media Markt is famous for its loud, humorous and sometimes wacky campaigns and is always looking for groundbreaking new ways of communication, sale promotions and PR. It is the brand’s mission to bring people pure pleasure and fun.
UM saw the opportunity to raise the brief to a content-driven live marketing sports event of revolutionary proportions that is not just another promotion, but gives people all over Germany something they actually want to watch, talk about, share and participate in.
Strategy
Customers tend to go for the cheapest price and do not care much about the retailer brand behind the prices. Furthermore, playing games is part of human nature. The greater the chances of winning, the higher the motivation to participate.
This activation focuses on this playful instinct. In Germany it is a widespread belief, especially among kids, that the Easter bunnies are delivering treats.
The bold hypothesis: Playful live entertainment in advertising sells better – particularly during Easter time, especially when cute bunnies are involved.
The idea: To broadcast a live sports event on TV and online, where 10 bunnies are competing in a race. The receipt of every Media Markt customer becomes a betting slip. Instead of giving everybody a boring discount, every 10th could win 50% money back, if the rabbit with his receipt number wins.
The agency wanted to create the desire to interact with Media Markt, to be entertained by its highly attractive branded content and to develop a feeling of involvement and emotional bonding towards the brand that stimulates a buzz about the campaign and Media Markt itself.
Execution
To turn a small sale promotion into the biggest live marketing event in Germany, it had to make the impossible possible: convincing nine of the biggest private TV stations in Germany to broadcast a 120 second live signal at primetime simultaneously.
This live marketing event was shown live on TV and online on YouTube, Bild.de (website of Germany's biggest newspaper) and MediaMarkt.de. It brought the news, online and offline magazines and bloggers together for a well attuned PR partnership.
At Easter, three rabbit races were broadcasted as two minute live shows from out of a specially built TV arena, anchored by a famous German sports commentator and framed with five minutes of reports, press conferences and behind the scenes material before and after the race, as well as clips of exclusive background stories about each of the bunnies.
Already a week before the race, the animal “athletes” were introduced on Facebook. Two days before the race UM increased instant attention and tension by teaser ads on TV, online video, cinema, and digital billboards. To create the maximum sales activation and reach, the secret of the rabbits was revealed only one day before the race with a big bang on TV, online, radio, print, in-store, flyer, social and owned channels.
During the promotional period of four days the agency increased the excitement for the next race constantly through paid media as well as owned and social channels.
Results
The Rabbit Race turned Media Markt from biggest German electronic retailer to biggest German entertainer overnight, creating a never seen before and revolutionary live marketing event that Media Markt’s target audience enjoyed to watch, follow and share.
This major sports event directly activated customers all over Germany to shop at Media Markt first, then drew them (by the chance to win) in front of their TV screen to get fascinated by the highly attractive branded content. In case of a win, customers had to collect their voucher at the store, creating another need for a purchase. The whole campaign held a lot of PR value and created multiple activational impulses on three different occasions in just one stroke.
• 21 million live viewers (63 million German population 14+).
• +250 million overall campaign reach.
• 86% aided recall for Media Markt as originator of the campaign.
• 92% liked the live event, 90% stated to have been entertained.
• +250% interaction and +40% more followers on Facebook.
• 1.2 million YouTube views.
• #OsterhasenRasen 6.3 million twitter impressions.
• Just under 14 million net reach of PR measures in the print and online sectors.
• +18.2% customer increase.
• +25% sales conversion in stationary market.