Sunday, August 15, 2010

If You Build a Web Series Around It, Will They Come?

The Southwest Porch at Bryant Park


Agency: Civic Entertainment Group
Client: Southwest Airlines

Southwest Porch

Southwest Airlines entered the highly competitive New York market in 2009 and needed to build awareness among New York business travelers. The airline was looking for a way to bring the unique Southwest experience to business travelers rather than making the travelers without making the travelers come to them.

But with just one gate and eight flights at LaGuardia Airport, Southwest didn’t have a lot of marketing dollars to show New Yorkers that Southwest was a friendly place where they could relax anytime. Since New Yorkers don’t have their own porches for socializing, Southwest decided to build them one.

The airline took over Bryant Park in New York’s busy business district and created the Southwest Porch in the southwest corner of the park -- a “lounge” style seating area designed by architect Nancy Thiel with Adirondack chairs, rocking chairs, porch swings, wi-fi, recharging stations, a beverage/snack service by Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio and service delivered by Southwest employees. The experience had to familiarize visitors with the brand without interrupting the park environment.


An opening night party was hosted by Colicchio and Tim Zagat. Partnerships with social networking sites and elite bloggers created events for young professionals, including Tweet Ups, networking parties and reunions.
 
Overall, the brand interacted with 125,200 Porch visitors. The event drove a 35% increase in ticket sales; traffic to Southwest.com jumped 19%; the Porch generated $4 million in marketing value and 100 million media impressions.

Make-A-Messterpiece Brought to You by Bounty


Agency: Gigunda Group, Inc.
Client: Bounty, a Procter & Gamble Brand

The makers of Bounty wanted to inspire creativity by emphasizing that messes should not be avoided, but rather, embraced and cultivated. For a brand that makes its living cleaning up messes, the marketing team for Bounty realized that messes were at the very core of creativity, and without messes, there would be nothing to clean up.

Bounty Make a Messterpiece
They wanted to create an event fostering messes that would generate at least 250 million media impressions, be a self-sustaining business and increase brand equity. They translated these goals into Make-A-Messterpiece … a creative studio in Glenview, Ill.

Thirty creative stations touched on a variety of mediums, sensory building skills and educational benefits. Staff was chosen based on their early childhood education background and dedication to the arts, among other skills. 

Bounty Make a Messterpiece

Make-A-Messterpiece also included a “Mess Boutique” which sold creatively-driven items; two private birthday party rooms; and Club M, a relaxing waiting room for parents that included free wi-fi, books, magazines, refreshments and closed circuit TV of each activity area.

Clean-up began with staff suiting up in kid-sized smocks and ended with hand washing at four Bounty branded clean-up stations built in the shape of oversized Bounty paper towel rolls with two motion-sensored sinks and soap dispensers and Bounty paper towels. 

Bounty Make a Messterpiece

The fun resulted in exceeding media impression goals by 256% (640 million); the studio has received more than 53,330 visitors to date; and Bounty sales have increased 47% since Make-A-Messterpiece opened in September 2009. 

Bounty Make a Messterpiece
Bounty Make a Messterpiece
 

Charmin NYC Restrooms

Aug 3, 2010 3:45 PM 

Best Use of Public Relations in a Promotion Campaign
& Most Innovative Communication Strategy

Agency: Gigunda Group, Inc.
Client: Charmin, a Procter & Gamble brand
 
For three years, Charmin has been successfully addressing a point that people everywhere agree is an issue: lack of clean public restrooms. Now, having generated worldwide acclaim for their public restroom in Times Square during the holiday shopping season, the question in 2009 became, How do you improve upon such a successful program?

Gigunda Group developed a four-pronged approach that would inject excitement into the event and keep media momentum at full tilt for the event’s six-week run. It started with an American Idol-style casting call for the “most enthusiastic toilet goer.” Five people were selected to be social media activists live from the Restrooms for a pay of $10,000 each for six weeks of blogging. With the economy at an all-time low, the turnout was phenomenal.


On November 23rd, Charmin returned to Broadway with a new campaign: “Enjoy the Go.” Television personality Mario Lopez was knighted King of the Throne as master of opening day ceremonies. He performed the ceremonial toilet tissue cutting and first flush. In addition, the “Go” was introduced and the social media campaign officially kicked off.

On December 17, celebrities Mario Cantone, Mario Lopez, Martina McBride and Sherri Shepherd designed toilet seat covers. For each flush, Charmin donated a dollar to the artist’s charity of choice, up to $50,000 each. The star-studded seats, ranging from boxing to disco themes, were on display.

December 29th, Bathrooms Over Broadway, Broadway’s first ever bathroom musical, was performed live at the Charmin NYC Restrooms. Through a donation from Charmin, non-profit Broadway Cares created the 15-minute “cheeky” musical that featured Broadway performers including Christopher Sieber, star of “Shrek the Musical.”
This year’s performance far surpassed media impression goals, achieving 3.7 billion total media impressions. 


Fiesta Movement

Aug 3, 2010 3:59 PM 

Most Innovative Communication Strategy
& Best Web-Based Promotion

Agency: Team Detroit
Client: Ford

Ford created the Fiesta – a small car that was perfect for young city dwellers who didn’t have a lot of space. But the brand, known for trucks and SUVs, lacked credibility in this market. Gigunda Group was charged with building early awareness, interest and excitement for the vehicle, which would hit the market in 12 months.

The problem was, urban Gen Y’ers didn’t consider Ford to be a brand for their demographic. Ford needed to get their peers to tout the car. So, Team Detroit created The Fiesta Movement and  provided a European Fiesta, gas and insurance to 100 influencers for six months. 


More than 4,000 submissions were received. The finalists were chosen based on their ability to command an audience and create and spread content. They all came together for delivery, and a sense of friendly competition developed, with required monthly video submissions turning into Tweets, Facebook postings, Flickr photo uploads, blog posts, and, in some cases, local TV interviews. In addition, people and media were watching and commenting.

In exchange for the cars, the agents had to participate in a monthly mission and post one additional piece of content. All of the content was posted in their own online spaces and then pulled into the fiestamovement.com site through a unique hash tag. Ford did not put any restrictions on what the agents could say, nor edit any posted content.

At the end of the six months, the agents gathered in Los Angeles for a post event celebration where consumers could tune in and watch the 2011 Fiesta revealed for the first time on national television through Current TV.

After two full quarters in-market and the voice of just 100 users, 2009 third quarter metrics showed brand familiarity of Fiesta at 58% among the target market.