Boots No 7 "Protects & Perfects" the nation’s women!
Nothing drives women into a frenzy of ‘want’ more than the elusive goal of eternal youth. And what a frenzy Boots managed to kick-off with the launch of their No 7 Protect and Perfect Face serum via a £200k magazine campaign. With both editors and consumers raving, word soon travelled from the pages of magazines to the screens of BBC’s Horizon programme and then onto the streets …… in a big way!The product was a sell-out. Sales increased by 2000%. Frantic customers queued outside Boots stores around the country to try and get their hands on limited stocks. Protect & Perfect appeared on e-Bay for hundreds of pounds over the £16.75 retail price. Boots had a hero product proven to deliver genuine results (facially) and massive results (financially) ……. the speed and ferocity of WOM drove conversations in print, on TV and on online forums across the world.
Boots knew that the credibility and advice inherently offered by magazines was the way to kick-start and drive this campaign. Protect & Perfect became the ‘must-have’ part of any women’s beauty regime and this initial explosion onto the market enabled Boot to easily position the rest of the P&P range at the forefront of consumers’ minds (and make-up bags) in a cluttered market. What’s more, the readership of magazines over time guaranteed longevity for a campaign which TV was only able to spark momentarily.Rejuvenating awareness with “new news” in magazines was the best way to activate Boot’s beauty conscious audience to spread the word. Proof that they did just that can be found on numerous websites, where audiences felt compelled to shout about the products in blogs and forums.
Enyi Nwosu - Partner, CHI and Partners
Harvey Nichols .... getting the fashionable talking.
We know that catwalk shows deliberately provoke controversy, sending the media and chattering classes into outpourings of delight and disapproval in equal measure.By and large however fashion advertising is different, with the category largely working within formulaic, idealistic and aspirational boundaries. This creates desire and lots of ‘have you seen this?’ discussion but what’s rarer is for the advertising in the sector to create catwalk levels of buzz.
Harvey Nichols however has continually delivered this and never more so than with Balloon.It’s so different and yet very simple. You get it straight away but I’ve lost count of the number of discussions I’ve had about whether it’s empowering or sexist.
The brilliance of the idea and execution means it is one of the handful of ads you remember and discuss a year after they run. It only ran in four magazine titles and yet punched way above this media weight. The execution is a huge part of this, but the medium's ability to target key influencers in the industry has an equally crucial effect. The community of journalists, fashion buyers and vociferous consumers are inspired to discuss it at length. The ability to go back again and again to check what you’ve seen, make sure you haven’t missed anything and confirm it is saying what you thought it was is another key reason why the medium drives ongoing discussion.Guerrillas and Cogs are more famous. For me however I don’t think any other campaign has created so many informed and relevant discussions quite so effectively.
Mark Bauer – Partner, Rise Communications
Lego – What’s that Dad?
In these digitally orientated times, there’s often a tendency to over-elaborate. Creating intricate journeys in the hope of capturing a disproportionate share of consumer’s time. Well sometimes less is more. Sometimes the product proposition is so simple that to over complicate its sell is to miss the point. Lego is an interesting case in point.
Take the kids to Legoland to see some jaw-dropping, adult built, scale models of The Houses of Parliament and they’ll be impressed. But will it even cross their minds to put it on their birthday wish list so they can reproduce it? Not on your Nelly.
However, let them lose with a bucket of odds and sods and their imagination will run wild. This insight is beautifully captured in these magazine executions from Blattner Brunner. I love the simplicity. It stirs nostalgia and acts as a reminder to parents of Lego’s ability to draw out a child’s creativity. Crucially, as I’ve seen at first hand, it also has the power to stimulate all important conversations. What’s that Dad? Can we make one of those? Will you make us one of those? It’s the best thing I’ve been asked to do all day.This is magazine advertising at its brilliant best. Simple, impactful, relevant and with the ability to start discussions and in doing so change behaviour.
10 comments:
What seems clear from all of these examples is that magazines are great at reaching "influentials" in certain product categories, and that it's these people advertisers need to reach if they want to generate word of mouth or "buzz" around their ad or product.
Magazines are good at targeting the right people and the most active in any market and so I accept that they target 'influencers'. Would be interesting to look at any 'rules' on how to create buzz in a campaign.
We've had clients suggesting that PR in Magazines is more cost efficient than display at activating WOM. However, most have found and agree when pushed that the inability to control your message when using PR can often result in unpredictable coverage can back fire and work against you as well as often spiralling away from the desired point/message. So, when using magazines from a display point of view the control offered (particularly in a launch situation) is in my opinion worth its weight in gold!!! Vanessa
Re. the Boots example wasn't the frenzy actually driven by the coverage on the BBC and subsequent newspaper coverage of the story? I don't know if the press ads fully capitalised on this - I wonder if advertorials could have been tailored to make the most of that fantastic endorsement, instead of the standard 'pack shot' display ad..?
Magazines definately have a way of reaching 'influentials' in a very clever way however it will be interesting to see more research as to how this can be maximised and whether there are certain campaigns that can be measured more clearly to prove this.
I was interested to see some work on word of mouth by TGI across Europe. They defined product Champions as ‘connectors’, ‘mavens’ and ‘salesmen’, and looked at their media usage. Magazines did particularly well. In France, for instance, food champions (the people who most influence others about food purchasing decisions) were much more strongly represented among heavy magazine readers than among heavy newspaper readers or heavy TV viewers. Only internet heavy users could compare with heavy magazine readers in the proportion of food champions. It was the same in Germany and Britain.
Welcome to the blogosphere PPA :). I think it's intuitively right that magazines reach influentials in particular sectors since they are a self-selecting, paid-for medium and read by people who are often passionately interested in the subject matter of the magazine they've bought. The new research merely prooves this. It gets really interesting when you start thinking about how magazines can work in tandem with online to drive WOM
I'd suggest that this may be applicable to traditional audiences but what about categories like technology, gaming, music - the influencers in those categories just don't have the time or desire to wait to read a piece of opinion they first encountered on a blog eight weeks ago.
It strikes me that success for those involved in communications planning is led more by knowing and understanding an audience and tailoring your communications programme to their needs than making blanket generalisations about individual media.
In response to the previous blogger. I agree that "successful planning is led by understanding an audience and tailoring your communications programme to their needs."
This, of course, is a blanket generalisation of what makes successful planning. It is also, in my opinion, true.
Another generalisation that appears (from data not opinion) to be true is that consumers who are prepared to pay for access to content in categories that interest them are more likely than the average consumer to be an Influential in the category.
Consequently, I'm not sure that I agree with the view that influencers in the technology, gaming, and music categories "just don't have the time or desire to wait to read a piece of opinion they first encountered on a blog eight weeks ago."
Take music for example - I think that the editors and contributors to NME, Clash, Word, Kerrang, Q, Mojo (to name just a few of the magazines servicing those consumers with a passion for music)would argue that many of their ideas and much of their content are original rather than derivative (as you suggest) and that many of the opinions encountered on blogs are reached as a consequence of exposure to this content.
I'm not sure the suggestion that enthusiasts in this market don't have the time or desire to read these magazines holds true either.
This can only mean that the consumers who regularly PAY for access to print content in these categories (For example, there are 78 paid for music magazines selling over 1.8 million magazines each month) aren't the influencers in the music category. This seems very unlikely to me - I think the people prepared to hand over around £5.5 million each month to music magazines are very likely to be knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the category - why else would they pay?
No doubt we'll read more about this in eight weeks when creatively challenged magazine editors pick up on our blog and reproduce it as content in their paid for magazines.
Boots marketed this serum flawlessly with the press releases and ads. No wonder people were lining up for this, what they made seem like a magic potion.
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