I thought I’d take a look at the most significant campaigns of the month, before we become overrun by festive Christmas campaigns. October was a pretty significant month for adland, with a lot of interesting and buzz generating campaigns. It was a difficult choice, but these are what I feel to be the 5 most noteworthy campaigns of the month:
1. T-Mobile ‘Welcome Home’
Saatchi & Saatchi’s latest ad for the T-Mobile’s ‘Life’s for Sharing’ campaign saw passengers returning to Heathrow’s Terminal 5 recieving a welcome home they’ll never forget! Unsuspecting passengers were greeted by hundreds of people, including T-Mobile staff and customers, bursting into travel-related song. Impressively, no musical instruments were used- the ad was shot using a ‘vocal orchestra’ performing songs chosen specifically to welcome passengers returning home, including ‘At Last’ by Etta James and ‘Comin’ Home Baby’ by Mel Torme. Saatchi & Saatchi shot the film on the 27th October 2010 and the ad was edited and broadcast in less than 48 hours- an impressive feat.
The ad had my house-mate welling up, and within minutes my Facebooks newsfeed was inundated with ‘Love the T-Mobile ad!’ statuses, so in terms of continuing to build emotional associations between the brand and its customer the ad is spot on. I think the main talking point for this campaign is its media planning – on Friday 29th October the ad was broadcast in the first ad break of all programming between 10pm and 10.30pm, on over 80 digital and terrestrial channels, and was launched on all major social networking sites, making it difficult to miss!
For me the ad didn’t top the brand’s ‘Dance’ advert set in Liverpool Street Station in January this year. Although, saying that they did set the bar pretty high. Perhaps they’ve lost the shock factor – viewers have seen it all before and agencies need to start thinking of new ways to get people talking about their ads.
2. Cadbury ‘Spots V Stripes’
It pains me to say this about a Fallon London campaign, but this feels like a good idea poorly followed through. The concept has the makings of a fantastic campaign - associating the brand with the excitement surrounding the 2012 Olympics and getting people involved with the brand. The TV ad is well executed in typical Fallon style, the Spots and Stripes Facebook pages are great (although I feel that they haven’t utilized them to their full effect), the website is fantastic and many of the games are worth a play. However, despite its use of digital media the campaign seems overly traditional – Cadburys wants to maintain control ensuring that all consumers play their games, in the way they want them to be played. I can’t help but feel that by running this campaign Fallon is ignoring the trend which sees the power shift back into the power of the consumer, who is no longer willing to be a passive participant in the communications process but wants to be able to interact with branded content in a way that suits them.
Would it perhaps have been better to allow consumers to support a team and win points for them playing the games that they like to play? Perhaps even to win games for local rugby tournaments, even Angry Birds high scores? I think the main problem with the campaign is that it expects consumers to go out of their way to interact with the campaign, rather than the campaign understanding the consumer and moulding itself to meet their needs. I’d really like to see Fallon run something more interactive in the future, and show us that it still has its sparkle.
Update: Spots V Stripes has informed me that consumers are indeed able to win points for winning any game as long as they defeat a stripe and register their points online. However, this raises the issue of whether this fact has been successfully communicated to the target audience- there seems to be a lot of confusion about how the games work. Consumers must visit the Spots V Stripes website to find out more about how the games run, and I wonder whether consumers would have been quicker to catch on if the TV ad had been more informative, perhaps sacrificing some style for a bit of substance?
Either way, with two years until the end of the campaign, Fallon has plenty of time to correct this and I’m interested to see how they plan to keep excitement levels up until 2012.
3. Yeo Valley Rap by BBH
This Yeo Valley (or Yo! Valley) ad by BBH ran a two minute spot during the first X Factor live show. The ad is undeniably cheesy but begins to cross the boundary to ‘so bad its good’. The song is memorable and again the campaign’s good media planning was vital to its success. Love it or hate it the ad definitely generated word of mouth, the next day at Uni the ad was a key topic of discussion and my Twitter feed was instantly bombarded with tweets about ‘the Yeo Valley ad’.
4. GHD ‘Cinderella’
I was a bit disappointed by this latest ad by RKCR/Y&R. When I heard that RKCR was launching a record label and that their record label’s first signing was to be featured in the new GHD ad I thought this was pretty exciting stuff. However, after seeing the ad I can’t help but feel a little let down – yes, the ad is beautiful and well shot and is very on brand but lacks the wit of past ads from the GHD ‘Twisted Fairytales’ campaign. Saying that, this is by no means a bad ad, it’s simply missing the ‘wow factor’ that I was expecting.
5. Skoda
Last but by no means least is the Skoda ‘Made of Meaner Stuff’ campaign, also by Fallon. I’m not sure about the music and the ad doesn’t appeal to me but then again I’m not exactly in the target audience. I like the way Fallon have taken the original concept and turned it around to create a fresh proposition whilst drawing upon the success of the previous campaign. Again, this ad doesn’t top the original for me, but the slogan ‘Made of Meaner Stuff’ is fantastic and shows a real understanding of the target audience and what they want from a car.
