Treat your customers like rock stars
Who wants to be treated like a number? Nobody – that’s who. That’s why Virgin Mobile came to Publicis Digital for help with bringing the idea of a digital Members’ Lounge to life.
- Virgin Mobile Members’ Lounge – treating customers like rock stars…
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As the iconic underdog battler brand on the Australian mobile scene, Virgin Mobile had all the right in the world to leap into social marketing boots and all. Our team at Publicis Digital in Auckland – Andre, me, Jeremy and Rochelle – conceptualised and designed an approach designed to break through the corporate culture and treat Virgin Mobile “members” like, well, rock stars.
Based in a slick, ultra-fluid site built by our team in Australia, and driven via a Twitter feed packed with surprise gigs, topups, freebies, shoutouts and more, the Members’ Lounge leverages Virgin’s unique personality and familiar rock star personality to create what was at the time a completely new style of customer retention community, pushing highly customised content and offers to Virgin Mobile customers – or should we say, members. One of those wonderful projects when strategy, ideation, design, development, the web tools to make it happen and a fully engaged client results in something really cool. Me likey.
What’s next is up to you.
A quick-step journey through sites best suited to a life lived to the full
Not your ordinary website or not your ordinary beer: when Steinlager Edge debuted as the mid-strength beer for those living life to the full, we knew we had to pull something out of the bag to not only help explain the product benefit, but to cut through with an idea that actually added value to the web experience, rather than interrupting it.
The result: a seamless, swift, iFrame-based choose-your-own-adventure journey through some of the best local sites – selected purely for those to whom living a full life is not about doing less, but about doing it all.
Your journey begins at one of many clear-cut web ads (with up to three times average click-through) inviting you to decide what’s next. We set up multiple journeys based on themes like Work vs Play, and Home vs Away, and lead you through sites that prove the web is not just for email and news, but inspiration and opportunity. Each site was carefully selected to help provide ideas for getting ahead, getting away, or getting inspired — and each step was also closely tied with an occasion to drink.
Every page featured an iFrame journey selector, acting as a stepping-stone to the next
Using iFrames allowed us to control the journey, while providing full, uninterrupted access to the entire content of each site that agreed to join us in promoting Steinlager Edge – right down to Flash movies running under our overlay (thanks CactusLab!)
Schhh… it’s for adults only.
The Schweppes Short Film Festival Bar - with a twist...
In a world dominated by perceptions of carbonated beverages being “fizzy pop for kids”, Schweppes was not being consumed at adult occasions. Something resonant needed to happen to remind the audience of the timeless, adult sophistication of Schweppes. The web was the perfect medium to deliver content unashamedly targeted at adults. The team at Mojo created an online-only Short Film Festival, featuring filmic stories that reflect adult experiences and aspirations, leaving the audience intrigued, invigorated and wanting to know more.
Our team was asked to “invigorate” the relatively static site. Amongst a slew of enhancements, we added an intriguing, sophisticated and entertaining Bar experience… with more than one twist. Visit the site to see what I mean.
With over 1.4 million unique visitors to date, at an average of 7.6 minutes on site, that’s 10 million minutes of brand engagement.
Absolute clarity… as seen on TV.
Better web design delivers absolute clarity
While a set of truly excellent TV commercials did the impossible job of making Panasonic’s great TVs look amazing on other people’s rubbish TVs, we worked in the background to ensure Viera’s entire web presence – search and website – reflected the “Absolute Clarity” message. That meant reviewing everything: from a redesign to reflect the glossy, high-end feel of the TVs themselves, right through to staging the copy in deeper and deeper layers so the average visitor wasn’t scared away by jargon from the start. And the site’s structure and all that copy was designed in concert with the Search team to lure visitors in and drop them on the right page, depending on their search term, which depends on their stage in the buying process.
Result? From number three to number one in flatscreen TVs in six months, while a competitor even gave up and exited the market. That’s a pretty clear indication of success.
Giving your mate a wake up call.
Our man will sort out your shambles of a mate...
Everyone has a mate who is a bit of a shambles in the morning.
We helped give them a bit of a wake up call – in the form of a personalised video from a no-nonsense character, who knows their name, mocks their morning mocha, and gives them a simple solution: wake up and drink Tararua Real Iced Coffee.
Every video was unique – triggered by an email, and seamlessly stitched together on the fly from more than 115 individual clips. During the 33,000 minutes of brand engagement we generated, over 50% of videos previewed were sent to a friend – and nine out of ten of those friends clicked through to be given a wake-up call they won’t forget.
A further innovation came as we looked to convert interest to trial. We made sure each shambles of a mate could book a perfectly timed, pre-personalised wake-up call to their mobile in the morning – complete with a txt coupon for the all new no-nonsense Tararua Real Iced Coffee at the nearest gas station.
The campaign not only gave thousands of kiwi blokes a bit of a wake up call; we proved that people engage with FMCG brands in the digital space – and we helped the product sell well over target: in the first eight weeks it sold twice what the benchmark product sells… in an entire year. And that’s a bit of a wake up call for the entire category.
Face to Face with the Australian Cricket Team
Face to face with the Australian Cricket Team
We adapted the ground-breaking 2007 Weet-Bix All Blacks Face2Face campaign to create a site that let Australians face up to their cricket heroes via the web or mobile, to see which one they most resemble.
Highlights:
• Learning the background and hearing from the team about how exciting it was developing the All Blacks version of this with the irrepressible Daniel Lee reminded me of the reasons I chose to join Ogilvy in the first place.
• However. A relaxed bout of to-ing and fro-ing in the selling-in stages left us with the most insanely compressed timeline I have ever, ever seen (and I’ve seen a few)…
• …made worse by the Christmas break — and a freelancer who did “nothing” over a ten-day period. And by “nothing”, I mean “not a thing”.
• Without the incredible willpower, outright skill and incomprehensibly good humour of the lead team (Super Rupert, Farah the Invincible and freelance developer Oscar the Invisible), there is no way the agency would have survived this process.
• And many, many thanks to the rest of the team who kept their own balls in the air, while this project – supporting one of Australasia’s greatest brands and one of Australia’s greatest sports teams – was successfully managed to completion. You know who you are.
Meet the Robinsons
- Your Time Machine Awaits…
Capturing the spirit of adventure and excitement of the film, Meet The Robinsons takes you on a treasure hunt to the future. This campaign seeded clues in off-line media such as bus stops, movie posters, and press ads; and asked participants to build “time-machines” by submitting their clues online.
What it does: Shares the excitement of the film through video and animation; more importantly excites kids into signing up to build their own Time Machine from parts they’d found scattered around Singapore.
Who built it: Steaming through content supplied by Buena Vista in California, Andy headed Kash and Loy to build out the back end, while cajoling a freelance artist to replicate the Disney style in developing the Time Machines for the front end.
What we learned: Keep Playing. The media company couldn’t seem to find ways to bring this movie to life. Profero kept at it, throwing idea after idea around until we found one that would gel with the audience of ten-year-olds.
Play / Pause with Millennium Copthorne
Two doors: one leads to excitement, the other to enchantment
A sideline to the then-newly revamped Millennium Copthorne corporate site, this blog-based travel journal is packed with local ideas, supplied by hotel staff and delivered from two points of view: do you want to play, or pause?
What it does: A great job of adding personality to Millennium & Copthorne hotels by allowing staff to share their knowledge and ideas, for guests to enjoy from an invigorating or relaxing perspective. Endlessly updatable, and the more content the better.
Who built it: The idea was sold in by Daryl Arnold. Joel, Farah and myself knocked it into shape, while Jon and May kicked off the design for May and Andy to polish. Back end by Kash Neo and Friends; initial content from me, writer / editor Vanessa Wood, and very receptive and helpful clients Jinou Park and Darren Ng and Friends.
What we learned: When your idea is sold in properly, the rest will follow. Play / Pause is a good example of a project that came together just right: a great idea, creatively presented through moodboards, concept sketches and client involvement, all leading to collective agreement. That agreement was taken up by a motivated creative team producing first-class design, built upon a modular backend written by professional developers, populated with professional writing, and all managed by a project manager… we even had a scope document, a timeline and a contract. Joy!