“A POWERFUL UNDERCLAIM”
APG Creative Planning Awards Submission 2007-05-30 Client: Lucozade Sport Agency: M&C Saatchi Communications Author: Richard Storey Category: Established product brands (over £3M) Word Count: 1,855
200 word Summary
The culture and language of advertising is rooted in exaggeration, with talk of amplifying competitive advantage, exploding out propositions, extending brand equities and expanding markets.
This case bucks that convention by converting a huge performance claim into an infinitessimal underclaim.
We inherited an impressive and rigorously justified fact: drinking Lucozade Sport improves top athletes' endurance by a whopping 33%.
But sceptical consumers felt this was a bit of a whopper - at odds with the reality and psychology of sport.
To find a more credible expression of our brand's contribution to success, we interrogated some professionals, amongst them Jonny Wilkinson, Steven Gerrard and triathlon legend Tim Don.
We learned about the tiny margin that separates glory from disappointment and the psychological importance of any possible advantage that secures it.
From that we made a critical deduction: By aligning our brand to this slender margin, the smaller the difference it claimed to make, the more people would want it.
We reduced our claim to a single word - edge.
Creatively, we quite literally equated the winning margin to a bottle of Lucozade Sport.
In sales terms this tiny claim proved much more powerful.
The Full Paper
The overclaim business
“Advertising’s function is to make the worse appear the better” George Santayana
“The skill of the strategist is to unearth a proposition that speaks of more than just marginal product superiority. The skill of the creative team is to magnify this further.” How to Plan Advertising
“A tension is now apparent for advertisers: whether to hyperbolize and reframe claims or merely ‘package attractively’ those same claims.”
Laurence Green, Advertising Works 15
“In the world of advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie. There’s only expedient exaggeration” Cary Grant (in North by Northwest)
“The World’s Favourite Airline”
British Airways 1983 – 2003
It’s what we do. We exaggerate, emphasise, overclaim. We make things that are slight look significant.
HG Wells called it ‘legalized lying’. The IPA‘amplifying competitive advantage’. The BACC prefers ‘clearly understood hyperbole’.
Either way, it’s why Peugeot claimed to be ‘The drive of you life’, Carlsberg is ‘probably the best lager in the world’ and every incarnation of Gillette razor offers ‘man’s best ever shave’ or similar.
This is the story of how we achieved the exact opposite, taking a huge claim and reducing it to something infinitesimal and marginal.
And in so doing, we magnified its power several fold.
The Huge Claim
The brand is Lucozade Sport.
Lucozade became a marketing legend by repositioning a drink for sick people into one that helps people stay well. A sport product was an obvious extension.
After Daley Thomson and his legendary lunchbox, John Barnes explained that ‘Isotonic means it gets to your thirst. Fast’. But Lucozade Sport’s growth really kicked off when it switched its message to endurance.
Planner Uses Sales Graph in APG Awards Shock
Lucozade Sport Sales (£m)
endurance isotonic 2000 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2001 2002 2003
GlaxoSmithKline scientists satisfied the British Medical Journal and BACC that;
‘When games players drink an isotonic sports drink such as Lucozade Sport whilst exercising, fatigue is delayed, and they are able to run for 33% longer than when consuming a water placebo.’ Influence of ingesting a carbohydrate-electrolyte solution on endurance capacity during intermittent high-intensity shuttle running, Journal of Sports Sciences 1995
Improves top athletes’ endurance by 33% was a marketing person’s dream - motivating, justifiable, quantifiable, with a nice round number to help it stick.
Four years of advertising through Ogilvy followed. The thinking was sound. A coach became the brand spokesperson, shouting the 33% claim at exhausted celebrity sportspeople to improve their performance.
Signs of Fatigue
The claim was powerful and for a time sales raced ahead.
But in 2003 fatigue set in. Whilst strong rationally, the brand wasn’t rated as gutsy, sweaty or adrenaline-fueled. It didn’t seem to ‘get’ sport, like Nike, Adidas and (crucially) Gatorade in the US.
We were appointed to address this and immediately spotted a glaring problem.
Research showed that the 33% claim had lost ‘new news’ status and lost all credibility. When people thought about it, 33% was ridiculous.
“Do you see Michael Owen running 33% faster?”
“So I can play 90 minutes plus extra time, neck a bottle of Lucozade, then carry on fresh as a daisy for an extra thirty minutes, when everyone else is dropping like flies?”
“Drink Lucozade and do the 100 metres in about 6 seconds!”
M&C Saatchi qualitative
No matter how robust the science, the spirit didn’t gel with the reality and psychology of sport. With half an eye on Nike, we sought to align the claim with real sporting aspirations, which we glibly identified as winning.
Triple Whammy
Two other problems emerged.
With the exception of some well informed elite sportspeople, the product was consumed after sport, to quench thirst.
Importantly, this didn’t allow the product to perform (slaking thirst after exercise was something any drink - even water - could do). Increased endurance only really works when people fuel themselves up before hitting the pitch.
We needed to get into people’s kit bags as a premeditated choice; part of their preparation.
Our third problem was sugar. People suspected the product was just a glorified sugar rush. Consuming highly calorific carbohydrates was anathema to finely tuned athletic frames or casual Saturday morning joggers looking to shed a pound or two.
GlaxoSmithKline’s scientific explanation of carbohydrate supplementing a body’s glycogen levels was as impenetrable to the average sportsman as it was impressive to boffins with science degrees.
Our translation was to describe the contents of the bottle as ‘body fuel’.
So, flipping the three problems, we’d arrived at a nice neat solution.
The Nice Neat Solution
We simply (and somewhat smugly) summarised the answer as;
THE STRATEGIC FLIP
After Preparation
Sugar Fuel
33% Win
Two years of advertising flowed from this chart, under the thought of ‘Are you ready?’. Focusing on preparation rituals of top sportspeople and enthusiastic amateurs alike, we highlighted the physical and psychological importance of being well prepared, claiming Sport was an essential part of the groundwork behind success.
Must do better
Always stretching to improve our performance, one thing troubled us; winning.
We knew it was critical.
“Winning’s not the most important thing. It’s the only thing.”
1930s UCLA coach Henry ‘Red’ Saunders (Now appropriated by most agency New Business Directors)
But our work didn’t really show winning. It showed struggling. Reveled in discomfort. Celebrated getting there and only hinted at crossing the line.
Overclaim was the problem once again. With qual consistently warning against suggesting it was a magic wand that guaranteed victory, we had to claim to help you win. But within that simple word lay our conundrum: Just how much help could we credibly claim?
33% was too much. Anything less risked feeling … well, less, really.
We needed a strong stance on our role in other people’s success.
We sought professional help.
Professional Respondents
We turned to Team Lucozade Sport, a collection of sporting big names Lucozade sponsor as their engagement programme for elite sportspeople, trainers and managers.
Over many months, we were lucky enough to interrogate a list of sporting big-wigs that makes the average BC1C2 sample in Cheam and Solihull look decidedly humdrum. The brilliance of Fast Track, GSK’s sponsorship agency is acknowledged and much appreciated here. Research Sample
Michael Owen Football legend Liverpool James Cracknell Rowing legend Henley Jason Queally Cycling legend Lancaster Tim Don Triathlon legend London Steven Gerrard Football legend Liverpool Johnny Wilkinson Rugby legend Newcastle Helen Reeves Canoeing Legend GB Canoeist Jurgen Grobler Chief Trainer GB Rowing squad Dave Reddin Fitness Coach England Rugby Dave Bedford London Marathon Race Director London Tony Strudwick Fitness Coach Blackburn Wandere David Faulkner Performance Director England Hockey
Accompanied training sessions were particularly illuminating. Somehow there was great interest from certain members of the team in watching Michael Owen break sweat, whereas I was the only sucker cycling along a cold, dark, drizzly Henley towpath at 6am.
Funny that.
Interrogating Victory
Our discussion guide was ‘winning’.
We discussed what it takes, physically and psychologically, what it feels like, how you prepare for it, hope for it, and occasionally don’t achieve it.
All gripping stuff. Particularly when dissecting belief. Asked about the mentality behind winning, our professionals asserted that what mattered was not soft hope, but hard conviction.
“If you know you can do it, you can do it. If you don’t, you won’t.”
“There are only two things to worry about in this sport - pain and doubt.”
“I may not always win. But I always play believing I will.”
This made us rethink the brand’s role. We’d always seen Sport as a performance brand, but realised it could be most potent as a belief brand. For our elites, believing Lucozade Sport made a difference helped make a difference. If we captured and spread this conviction, we could overcome rational skepticism and add emotive power.
So we interrogated the difference. The Slenderest of Margins
Four interlinked insights rushed forward;
1. Everything and anything could make the difference between winning and losing. Hence preparation has to cover everything and anything. (Every rower is responsible for tightening bolts on his rigger before a big race, because one bolt could make the difference.)
2. The winning margin is often small, sometimes minute. A single piece of skill or mistake can seal the result. (Less than a tenth of a second separated 23 Golds from Silvers in Athens).
3. The moments when the winning margin is created is precisely when you need physical stamina and psychological belief most. (Some fanatic has drawn up the 80 minute league based on the scores in premiership games with 10 minutes to go. The table’s astonishingly different to the final placings).
4. The smaller the margin between winning and losing, the more you’d give for that margin. (Cyclists are prepared to train for 1000s of km to gain just 10cm advantage on race day.)
In true APG fashion, a single quote crystallises the point;
“With the difference between winning and losing so small, if something can give me just a fraction of a second over everyone else, then I’ll do anything to get that fraction of a second.”
We made a critical deduction;
By aligning our brand to the slender margin between winning and losing, the smaller the difference we claimed to make, the more credible and desirable that difference would become.
At a stroke, we reduced our 32 word, 33% endurance claim to a single word:
Edge.
We’d claim Lucozade Sport makes a small difference to your performance (not 33%). But that difference could be the crucial edge separating glory from humiliation, elation from disappointment.
Of course, we agonised over the word.
We explored, prodded and unzipped ‘edge’ .
Unzipping ‘edge’
Using a creative exploration session we unzipped the associations and implications locked within ‘edge’.
The output was rich.
Smallness of Margin Positive State of Mind
Physical Advantage Applications of Edge
Life Imitates Insight
We realised that recently our insight had played out on the world sporting stage. Three of our professional respondents had pulled off high profile victories by the slenderest of edges.
Athens: Cracknell and Great Britain’s Mens Coxless Four win Olympic Gold by 42cm
Sydney: Wilkinson kicks England ahead 25 seconds from the end of extra time at Rugby World Cup Final
Istanbul: Gerrard heads Liverpool back from 0-3 to ultimately win the Champions League on a penalty shoot out
Art imitates insight
We also discovered this guy preaching our insight, more or less word for word, in a gut wrenching team talk.
Al Pacino, Any Given Sunday “Life’s a game of incheshttp://www.” youtube.com/watch?v=9rFx6OFooCs “Life’s a game of inches. So’s football.
Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small…I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it… one half a second too slow or too fast, you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game … every minute … every second.
On this team, we fight for that inch.
On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us apart for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch.
Because we know that that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing.
Between living and dying. ” Swallowing our pride, realising that our insight wasn’t original, we consoled ourselves that it was spine-tinglingly powerful. So powerful it could bring grown men to tears.
A One Word Brief
‘Edge’ became our brief, our proposition, our mantra, our tone of voice, our media plan, our guidelines.
In time it became our endline.
Of course we had wordier versions of the brief, sales force presenters, motivational videos, integrated planning documents and so on. But all were sharply focused on edge.
Closer to the edge
Media was sharpened to position our message ‘closer to the edge’.
Ads ran in disproportionate amounts of live TV sports airtime and at ‘edge moments’ (eg. half time break). We also booked tactical TV spots (eg. in Champions League knock out stages).
A budget was set aside to exploit tactical press opportunities.
An experiential strand of activity took place at running events where competitors were seeking an edge before they start.
On Talk Sport radio we followed a journalist preparing for the London Marathon, giving him tips on how to get the edge in his training. We devised a Saturday morning ‘stat doctor’ who would discuss the key battles in that afternoon’s Premier League and predict who would have the edge.
Showing the edge
The key creative challenge was how to make Lucozade Sport central to edge moments and not be overlooked amid all the excitement.
There was no need for lengthy briefing sessions, teams had already unzipped and articulated ‘edge’ with us. A visual from these sessions had become the centerpiece of the brief.
That didn’t stop us nancying around with ‘clever’ ideas like ‘Sharpen your edge’ or ‘Survival of the fittest’. But the raw, gutsy, unrefined power of the tiny margin beat them hands down on integrity.
In the end, the creative breakthrough came from being explicit that a bottle of Lucozade could be what separates victor from vanquished.
The idea played out across all media and beyond.
Edge even became the NPD brief, resulting in a new Caffeine Boost providing additional mental edge and Creatine tablets delivering a power edge.
TV
There’s a fine line between winning and losing
Sometimes just a few millilitres
Press
Tactical and Football Programmes
Experiential Programme
Online
A tiny difference
So we’d done a lot of thinking to end up with not a lot.
The entire strategy fits on one slide.
THE STRATEGIC FLIP
After Preparation
Sugar Fuel
33% Edge
And we’d reduced the claim from a whopping 33% to a miniscule ‘edge’.
But this has made a significant difference to Lucozade Sport’s credibility;
“It’s definitely a sports drink not a drink that’s trying to be sporty.”
Male Elite
A big difference
Small differences in perception can make a big difference in sales.
In the end, edge speaks for itself.
Lucozade Sport Sales
edge endurance isotonic 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
FAMILIAR TERRITORY
APG Creative Planning Awards Submission 2007
Client: Transport for London – Surface Transport Agency: M&C Saatchi Communications Author: Rohini Pahl Category: Public Service and Charity Brands Word Count: 1,881 Summary This is a story of planning detective work. It’s the story of how psychological profiling helped pinpoint the real reason motorbike riders were losing control of their vehicles on the streets of London.
Anticipation skills are fundamental to riding a motorbike. But riders weren’t anticipating enough; otherwise they wouldn’t have been losing control as much as they were, when reacting to hazards on the road.
Planning’s role was to investigate, firstly, the exact journey type where they needed to anticipate more; and, secondly, why they weren’t anticipating when they clearly thought they were.
Riders could tell us everything about riding to work, generally, but couldn’t specifically recall their journey to work that morning. The reason why lay beyond whatever they could consciously tell us. We had to delve deeper into their subconscious.
By uncovering a deep-rooted psychological truth we helped riders realise why they needed to open their eyes on journeys they could make with their eyes closed.
Word count: 161
Introduction This paper has all the hallmarks of a classic detective story. It’s a story of clues, cagey suspects and deduction. Importantly, it shows how psychological profiling made sense of the evidence to help prevent further deaths and serious injury to bikers on the streets of London.
A tried and tested formula The first powered two-wheeler1 (P2W) road safety ad for Transport for London dramatised the most common cause of killed and seriously injured (KSI) motorbike casualties in London:
Other vehicle turns right into the path of P2W:
The rider is a victim of a car driver’s ‘car-centric’ view of the road that means drivers look, but don’t see the motorbike. The ad helped triple the reduction in KSIs resulting from the specific ‘turning right’ manoeuvre compared to all manoeuvres.
Despite this reduction, riders are still the most vulnerable road users. As the first ad had been so effective, it seemed logical to follow the same approach and tackle the next most common manoeuvre.
As the first ad helped prevent 98 KSIs of London riders, getting it right for the sequel in this campaign was truly a case of life or death.
Losing control The next most concerning manoeuvre that caused fatalities and serious injuries was that of ‘losing control’. But this proved to be a vague description, compared to the precision of ‘turning right’.
1 Powered two-wheelers (P2Ws) are motorbikes, mopeds and scooters. Throughout the paper we’ll refer to this group of vehicles as motorbikes, and the people as riders. The official diagrams demonstrated this with an ambiguous ‘loop the loop’ used to depict the loss of control, in three different iterations:
P2W loses control P2W loses control - P2W loses control, (and may hit other and hits kerb, mounts kerb & hits vehicle) barrier road side object or or wall etc. street furniture
Crashing into barriers, kerbs or street furniture begged a big question: what on earth was causing these motorbikes to crash into inanimate objects? The diagrams gave no explanation of what event might cause a motorbike to veer off. If we stood any chance of reducing these incidents we needed to understand the human error involved.
Anticipation Delving into incident reports stated that losing control was down to ‘distraction’. Examples included ‘distraction from the side of the road e.g. a car door opening’ or a ‘reaction to another person on the road’.
Being a motorised vehicle on two wheels, it doesn’t take much for a motorbike to destabilise. So reacting to the events described in the incident reports would have greater consequences for a rider who can more easily lose control.
We talked to riders about these hazards. They spoke spontaneously and vociferously about anticipation skills. They described themselves as the lowest in the pecking order of motorised vehicles on the road. Half the time people don’t see them, and if they do crash, they don’t have two tons of steel casings to protect them. From an early stage riders have it drummed into them by instructors and other riders that they must constantly look ahead and anticipate the actions of others, due to their vulnerability.
We realised lack of anticipation was key, convinced that it could partly explain why riders were crashing into inanimate objects.
But, anticipation is such a fundamental skill for riders that asking them to do it more would be tantamount to telling them they were bad riders, making them less accepting of anything we tried to tell them.
We needed to find out why they weren’t anticipating, when clearly they thought they were. If we knew this then we could avoid accusing them of being bad riders.
New evidence In our search for more clues we uncovered new evidence. Our research behind the first ad had revealed that London riders are twice as likely to be killed or seriously injured, compared to the rest of the UK2. Further research built on this and looked at London riders specifically. It gave us an exhaustive analysis comparing factors such as reasons for getting a motorbike, types of journey and, importantly, detail on how and when London riders crash.
The data revealed that the majority of motorbike collisions in London occurred on a work journey.
Similarly, the data also showed that London riders were more likely to crash on roads they rode on more frequently. We were astounded to see that it was the roads that riders travelled on, on average, 24 times a month that they crashed on (resulting in serious injury).
We were struck by the contradiction here. Why were riders losing control on journeys they knew well? Surely, you would expect the reverse?
Interrogating the suspect The data couldn’t help us solve this conundrum, so we returned to our riders. We wanted to find out what was unique about this journey to work. To put it in context we got them to describe different types of journeys: epic wind-in-your-hair journeys, new journeys, routine journeys, work journeys, their first journey, their last journey.
Interestingly, they could recount the detail of new journeys made a week, a month, even a year ago. They could tell us about work journeys in general – the directions they took, the landmarks they passed, the time it took for the lights to change…
Then we made an important distinction. From day to day the roads stay the same, but there can be slight differences in the weather, people and vehicles. So we asked them: ‘Tell me about your journey
2 London Road Safety Unit Topic Discussion Paper to work this morning’. They looked at us blankly. They weren’t being cagey. They genuinely couldn’t remember a single thing about their journey to work that morning.
Psychological profiling This failure to recall the detail of their journey to work as recently as that morning, coupled with the fact that Londoners crash on repetitive commutes, put us onto the scent of something. We wanted to understand what was causing their memory failure for these specific work journeys, and if there was anything in repetitive behaviour that could be an indication of why they crashed.
We felt the answers went deeper than any data or any conversation we could have with riders. So we burrowed deep into the inner workings of the mind and immersed ourselves in the depths of psychology. We read up about the psychology of memory and of habitual behaviour.
Memory failure Daniel Schacter, in his book Searching for Memory defines three types of autobiographical memory:
1. Memories from an era: e.g. going to college, living in a house 2. General memory: composite episodes, e.g. regularly going to football games 3. Event-specific memory: e.g. a fight at the end of a football game
When describing a typical and a specific journey to work our riders were drawing on the last two types of memory. They could describe the general features of their journey to work (memory type 2), because that memory is an amalgam of lots of repeated journeys. But they couldn’t describe their journey to work that morning (memory type 3) because nothing extraordinary had happened. Repetition seemingly blocked riders’ sight of ordinary changes in their regular journey.
Autopilot We needed to understand this type of repetitive and habitual behaviour more, to understand the impact on the likelihood of crashing.
We read up about something called ‘cognitive flexibility’. We become increasingly cognitively inflexible the more frequently we perform a task. This can lead to delayed reactions – the more used to doing something you are, the less aware you are of doing it, making you less reactive to an interruption to the pattern:
‘When experts rely on automated performance routines … they are less able to judge the likelihood of a failure in a system’. 3
A failure in the system. Like a car door opening unexpectedly on the familiar journey to work.
Familiarity was the killer It was all beginning to fall into place. The repetitive journey to work was so familiar it was automatic. That’s why our riders couldn’t describe their journeys to work. They zoned out. They had anticipated the journey so many times before that anticipation had involuntarily and subconsciously become assumption. They knew the bumps in the road, the sharpness of the bend, the roads with lots of parked cars. But that meant they were slower to react as they were not anticipating the forthcoming danger.
Reframing the task The task was to increase anticipation in order to avoid unexpected events. But telling riders to do this more would be a red rag to a bull as riders try and anticipate these things anyway.
So the task needed to be more specific, alerting them to when more anticipation would be needed: on familiar journeys they ride repetitively and automatically.
So we redefined the task as:
Get riders to open their eyes for journeys they think they can make with their eyes closed
Our proposition was:
Ride the roads you know as if you have never ridden them before
Because:
Most accidents happen on roads you know well
3Edland, Svenson and Hollnagel, 2000
This wasn’t accusatory because the psychological truth about familiarity making you less reactive applies to many situations people can identify with. But, of course, for riders the consequences can be life-threatening.
The briefing Our creative team included one biker and one tube commuter. We asked the creative team the golden question: "Can you describe your journey to work today?" They couldn't. We told them why.
Even the tube commuter nodded his head in recognition as the insight applies to any repetitively made journey or action. And the biker nodded his head because it was a new realisation to him and we weren’t telling him to ride better.
The idea The resulting ad seized upon that all-important journey to work, building on the theme of mundane repetition and familiarity. It features a normal guy, on a normal day, following the same routine as normal, at home, then on his way to work passing the things he sees every day. Importantly, it is from his perspective so we don’t know he is on a bike. The content and tone of the narration reinforces the sense of normality, lulling the viewer into a false sense of security with its rhythmic and repetitive metre, listing the routine actions and everyday sights.
The action unravels as the viewer realises that it’s not the car door opening that’s the killer. Rather, it’s the familiar journey that switches the rider’s autopilot on… making him less reactive to an unexpected event… causing him to lose control… causing him to crash into a lamppost with sickening consequences.
The choice of Ewan McGregor as the narrator (a keen motorcyclist, whose book and TV series Long Way Round chronicled his journey round the world by motorbike) was an important touch as it felt like the message was coming from someone who understood. The metric beat of his voice echoed the monotonous journey a rider experiences.
Getting through The thinking that went into the campaign helped uncover a psychological truth that resonated with our riders. 88% of riders thought the ad told them something worth knowing. It made 86% of riders more likely to pay attention on familiar roads. And 75% thought they would talk about it with friends. ‘perhaps as a result of the novelty of the message’, as the researchers put it.4
4 P2W Evaluation, Synovate, November 2006 Conclusion Sometimes there are things that your target audience inherently can’t tell you. Planning’s input was to not take what riders said at face value. Instead we delved deep into the data and then even deeper into the workings of the subconscious to uncover a recognisable, but latent truth. Once revealed, it made riders realise why they needed to open their eyes for journeys they ordinarily made with their eyes closed.
MVO: The alarm that always wakes The face you always pull The towel you leave on the floor you
The car that never moves The girlfriend you kiss goodbye The road you’ve lived on for years
The cereal you never finish The shop that’s always open The kids on the school run
The door you see too late The lamppost you slam into The legs you’ll never use again The day you went to work
“A CAMPAIGN THAT WE DIDN’T CREATE”
APG Creative Planning Awards Submission 2007
Client: Orange - Orange World Agency: M&C Saatchi Communications Author: Steve Martin and Matt Willifer Category: Established Service Brands Word Count: 1980
200 Word Summary
Our task was to encourage people to use their mobile phones to download video clips and other content from Orange World to their mobile phone.
The downloads were entertaining, and our first instinct was simply to showcase the product. However, we worried this would not sufficiently differentiate, or be sufficiently phone related.
We turned the problem on its head. What if we thought about the phone not just as the device that received the clip, but as the one that created it?
Film created by phone is different. It is personal and spontaneous. This would be of most interest when the subject was famous, usually seen carefully rehearsed.
Frank Lampard was briefed to film a range of personal video diaries using only his mobile phone. Fifteen diary entries were made available for download from Orange World, and generated huge PR.
This is about channel planning at its most inventive. And it is about creating something people were prepared to come to, rather than us having to pay to go to them.
But more than anything this is a story about not creating something ourselves. Instead, we decided to get someone far more interesting than ourselves to create it for us.
Full Paper
Introduction
This is a paper about something we didn’t create.
It is also a paper about a communications channel: mobile phones. It is about truly understanding the nature of the channel to produce a solution that, whilst subsequently copied, was completely novel at the time.
It is paper where there is not a real distinction between strategy and creative. It was a single fantastic idea.
And the insight came to us fairly intuitively. It is easy to explain what we did. So we don’t aim to beat around the bush in explaining it.
The Task
We handle a specific part of the Orange business: that relating to their connection with the world of sport and entertainment.
This task was related to a service they offer called Orange World. At Orange World, customers can choose then download sports content and videos to their mobile phones. It can be used by Orange customers with a 3G phone. Orange World can be accessed either via the mobile phone or the Internet. However, most people download on the hoof when bored. It is most helpful, therefore, to think about it as a phone to phone technology, rather than an Internet to phone technology. So, to summarise, people access it via their WAP-enabled phones, choose what to download, and then download it their phones.
A campaign that successfully promoted Orange World would create revenue in three ways. First, it would encourage users to upgrade their phones so they could fully benefit from everything Orange World had to offer. Second, surfing Orange World generates revenue regardless of whether the user chooses to download. Third, downloads are paid for additionally to this surfing time. The user can choose either to pay for each download, or to upgrade to a package where several downloads are included in the price.
The campaign was to run from the start of 2005 onwards. The budget was limited. So, no glossy big budgets ads, and no media wastage. We would have to box clever.
Just show people what you can get, stupid
Orange World is a wonderful place, aimed at the 3G generation – young people, predominantly boys, who not only had WAP-enabled phones, but knew what to do with them.
From Orange World you can download video clips of sport, music or cartoon, wallpaper images, ringtones, games, and graphics. So, for example, you can download an image of a ball curling into the top right hand corner of the goal. Or a beguiling graphic of a heart prettily and cleverly rotating. Or, if these are not to your taste, an attractive young woman wearing less rather than more reclining seductively on a motorbike.
Our task, then, was to advertise an inherently interesting product. This was not a bag of crisps or a detergent that needed some strategic or creative sophistry. The obvious thing to do was to give people a taste of the product: to show the wonderful goals, the sexy women and the intriguing graphics.
But is this sufficiently differentiating?
In many ways, this would probably not have been a bad solution. But there was something about it that worried us.
The thing that worried us was that Orange World was not the only portal where you could download such clips. Orange’s main competitors, not to mention a host of smaller web-sites both in the UK and aboard, offered similar services.
And there was a further potential issue. At a casual glance there was nothing particularly phone related to the content. These were great downloads, but the video clips were the kinds of clips you saw on TV, or that you downloaded from web-sites on your PC, or that you emailed to your mates. They were not unique to the medium of phone.
So the issue, with a limited budget, was one of stand-out and differentiation. Not only might we have been in danger of advertising downloads in general, there was nothing that tied it to and trumpeted the phone itself as a medium.
The Leap
In search of an angle in, we turned the problem on its head.
What if we thought about the phone not just as the device that received the clip, but as the one that created it? Where would this take us?
The nature of content created by a phone is very different from content created by traditional means. Phone-created films are personal, and they are spontaneous. They are created on the spur of the moment, rather than rigorously organised in advance. And they can offer a glimpse into a person’s private life. Phones are carried in the pocket the whole time, so are just as likely to be used to create film in the privacy of one’s own home as in a more formal situation.
Okay, we thought, let’s push this further. When might this be of interest to people?
Probably not when the subject of the phone-generated film is people like you and me. The time when phone-related content would be most interesting, we thought, would be when the people featured were famous people. Not only (obviously) were famous people inherently interesting. They were also normally seen as the subjects of traditional ways of filming: in their professional capacity and carefully rehearsed.
This was the time when “I’m a Celebrity get me out of here” was huge. (And we knew about this not just as viewers, but as promoters of the show on behalf of another of our clients, ITV.) The show was fascinating because it showed celebrities as they really were, and we heard their uncensored opinions about anything that crossed their minds.
This show, of course, was nothing to do with mobile phones. But it showed that getting under the skin of famous people was fascinating to a lot of people. And this was an insight that phone created content could really capitalise on.
We had an exciting idea. This is what we decided:
First, we would select a famous person, and use phone-generated content to really get under their skin. This would contrast with the way this famous people was normally seen: it would give a glimpse of the real them, unrehearsed, spontaneous, and in private as well as public moments.
Second, we would ask them to create the content themselves. The medium of phone is an inherently personal one. If we had filmed them, we would have compromised the very reason for using the medium.
Third, this content would be something that could be downloaded from Orange World. Such exciting, novel, ownable content, that was completely unique to the medium of phone, and which was promoted by accompanying PR, would create demand for Orange World in general, and these downloads in particular.
This had the potential to be cost-efficient. First, we hoped, the famous person would be prepared to do this for less than he or she would charge for standard advertising. This was, first and foremost, about them, not about flogging a product. And, hopefully, because it was a media first, it would be more attractive to them. Second, if everything went according to plan, we would not be buying paid for media: downloading our content (and PR) would be the primary channels.
So we just needed a famous person.
And to make sure that what they generated was exciting, novel and ownable.
Frank
So who would we pick?
It would be misleading to say that the choice was the result of any great science. It was a case of who was right, who was available, who we had an “in” with, and, of course, who was up for it. (Jack Nicholson and the Queen didn’t return our calls.)
It goes without saying that football is huge for this target audience. And, with the World Cup draw coming up, it was country as well as club that was in the headlines. A prominent, adored and articulate footballer would be ideal. We had worked closely with Chelsea FC. Frank Lampard fitted the bill perfectly. And he was up for it.
Frank was briefed to film a range of personal video diaries across a six month period using only his mobile phone. This was the first time that an international footballer has allowed people to get such a unique insight into his life. Normally Frank was to be seen on the pitch, or in jacket and tie as a rehearsed TV pundit, or in carefully scripted TV adverts. Now the real him was to be seen. He would talk, via spontaneous filming on to his mobile phone, about his thoughts on himself, football, life.
From this novel starting point “Frank Lampard’s Orange video diaries” were created.
15 individual diaries of Frank’s life were available for download with subjects ranging from: Frank going to World player of the year awards, to Frank in the CFC dressing room, to Frank at home with his dogs, to Frank watching the draw for the World Cup at home in front of the telly.
Videos were edited into 90 second clips and uploaded onto the Orange World portal usually within 24 hours of being filmed – and non-orange customers were encouraged to view teaser clips on the website.
Screengrab from video diary “Christmas”
Photo shoots were held with Frank to produce high quality ‘iconic’ photography to ensure that his association was communicated through multiple platforms including In store, Wallpaper downloads, and PR.
The Sun
Back of the net (if you will pardon the pun)
PR worked very hard for us. Media coverage of Frank and his dairies generated an AVE of £1,203,350 (Evaluated by Metrica).
The campaign has been extraordinarily successful. Orange has seen a 12% rise in video downloads since the launch of the Lampard video diaries.
Further, the Frank Lampard video diaries themselves don’t just drive people towards other content: they have consistently been the most popular downloads on Orange World.
The campaign won a number of awards, including the Best Use of New Media at the 2006 Sport Industry Awards
Conclusions
This has been the story of something completely novel. (A road safety campaign was subsequently shot on mobile phones that were given out to teenagers. Orange came first.)
It is about channel planning at its most inventive. By which we mean, really understanding the unique nature of a channel, how people used it, and how we could turn that to our advantage.
And it is a story of how, with a limited budget, we created something so interesting that people were prepared to come to us, rather than us having to pay to go to them.
But we think the most interesting point of the story is to do with not creating stuff yourself.
To draw a comparison, much of Marcel Duchamp’s work in the early part of the 20th century consisted of objects that other people had made, which he then repurposed - perhaps most famously his urinal.
To draw a comparison closer to home: with the rise of user-generated content on the Internet, work that is not solely originated by agencies or brands will surely become more commonplace. In these cases it is up to brands to set a starting point, parameters, inspiration, for others to interpret. And then, sometimes, a filter on what come out the other end.
Viewed in this way, this is a fascinating case study. Our contribution as an agency was a strategy, an approach. Then, rather than brief creatives, we briefed Frank Lampard. A doubt over user-generated content is whether it will ever have the creative spark or interest of professionally-generated content. In this case, due to people’s interest in Frank, it was far more fascinating for the target audience that mere advertising could have achieved.
In short, this case study shows how, via understanding of the mobile phone as both a source of communication and a source of creation, we decided not to create something ourselves.
Instead, we decided to get someone far more interesting than ourselves to create it for us.
“OPEN PLAN THINKING”
APG Creative Planning Awards Submission 2007-05-30 Client: Lucozade Hydro Active Agency: M&C Saatchi Communications Author: Jacqueline Biggs, Anna Donaghey Category: Established product brands (under £3M) Word Count: 1,979
200 word Summary
This is a case about channel planning. The story begins with a classic FMCG launch for Hydro Active, a fitness water, designed to hydrate you better than water while you exercise.
But Hydro Active had a serious competitor with 100% penetration, 100% distribution and furthermore it was free. Tap water.
Undeterred, we launched with conviction (backed up by reams of pre launch research). Mass media drove awareness and trial amongst our gym-going target. But they were failing to adopt. Repeat trial was low.
Consumers didn’t understand why it was better than water. But it wasn’t what we were saying; it was when, where and how we were saying it.
There were 3 barriers to adoption:
1. Lack of information; consumers questioned why it was better than water and had no answers. 2. Ingrained behaviour; free water was part of their gym-routine 3. Cynicism; water was considered the ultimate hydration
A clever bit of thinking managed to uncover the only channel that could address all barriers to adoption. A channel that could answer questions, that was at the point of sweat, was impartial, credible and trusted. That channel was the medium of gym instructors. A solution that step-changed Hydro Active’s sales.
The Full Paper
Hats off
This is a joint initiative from an Advertising agency and a Sponsorship agency. It’s a paper about different disciplines working seamlessly together; it’s about varied and open-minded people from different specialisms sitting round a table to solve the same business problem. At M&C Saatchi it’s a process we call Open Plan Thinking.
This is a story about channel planning. It’s about a clever bit of thinking that shows how a brand’s message remained consistent over time, but when, where and how it was communicated step-changed the fortune of the brand.
The Challenge
Lucozade has a pretty good track record in launching and dominating categories it creates; 80 years on, Lucozade Energy is still leading the energy drink category and 17 years on, Lucozade Sport still has the lion’s share of the sports drink market, so there were high hopes for the launch of Hydro Active, a water designed for exercise.
As with any brand from the Lucozade stable, credibility and functionality are key. Hydro Active is specially designed to hydrate exercisers better than water, replacing not just water, but the salts and fluids lost through sweat. It contains a small amount of carbohydrate in addition to sodium, which makes it a more effective hydrator than water because they help to speed up absorption and enhance retention of fluid within the body.
But communicating this to the world at large presented an interesting challenge….
The daddy of all competitors
We knew we had our work cut out. Fuelled by Britain’s commitment to healthy living, sales of bottled water were going through the roof.
If this wasn’t enough of a challenge, Hydro Active had an even greater competitor than bottled water. A competitor with 100% distribution, 100% penetration, universal acceptance and considered to be the gold standard in hydration. Tap water. Furthermore, it was free and readily available at the point of sweat. In fact, more gym goers were drinking free water in the gym than anything else.
But we could take on Goliath; we had a product specially designed to hydrate better than water and a powerful product story backed up by science. We just needed to start telling people about it.
Introducing the gym bunny
Hydro Active had its sights on “Gym Bunnies”; self-motivated, fairly disciplined exercise lovers, who work out several times a week. Cardio is interspersed with classes and they tend to be creatures of habit with repetitive routines. When it comes to hydration, they see water as the archetypal hydrator and drink this throughout their workout.
Awareness & education
The brief was clear, we needed to drive awareness of Hydro Active and “rewire” gym bunnies by convincing them about its benefits over water. The proposition on the brief was straight-forward:
“Hydro Active - specially designed to hydrate better than water”
Sales objectives for launch were pretty ambitious; we needed to drive awareness and trial rapidly, so broadcast mediums were central to the media strategy. TV and Press would build mass-market coverage; a classic launch strategy.
The TV featured a human body formed of water running and cart- wheeling in the rain with the voice over "Imagine if water did more. Imagine if Lucozade Sport re- designed water for exercise and for better hydration than water alone."
Launch activity was followed by a second TV and press campaign that continued to build understanding and education as to why it was better hydration than water.
The second ad featured a water figure re-hydrating as she drank Hydro Active, with the voiceover explaining how Hydro Active helps replace the salts and fluids lost during exercise with the end-line: Better Hydration. Better Exercise.
Head scratching
Campaign analysis painted an interesting picture, with mixed results. Whilst brand awareness was high and growing and trial figures were encouraging, overall sales were lower than forecast. We were witnessing sales peaks in line with activity, but sales then slumped lower than expected. We weren’t growing a loyal consumer base, people were only trying Hydro Active once and failing to adopt.
Traditionally this would be indicative of a poor performing product, but prior to launch, oodles of product research with consumers had fuelled confidence that we were onto a winner: liquid tests had proved they liked the taste and flavours, positioning research had confirmed the product proposition was motivating and scientific tests proved that Hydro Active made a small, but meaningful difference to work-out performance. This was a great product. So why wasn’t launch activity driving sales? We were puzzled. Something in our communications evidently wasn’t working, so we ran some more qual to understand why, given we knew it’s such a great product, our communications weren’t working.
Barriers to adoption
Research highlighted three key issues that we needed to address were we to convince our target audience.
1. Lack of information
Despite our best efforts, exercisers still weren’t sure why it was better than water. Previous research had had the luxury of delving into the detail of the science behind the product with respondents, discussing how and why it worked. But in the real world, people just didn’t understand enough about how the product worked.
2. Ingrained behaviour
Our gym bunnies have set routines. When it comes to going to the gym, they’re on autopilot. They pack their bag the night before, get into the gym at the same time each week, use the same locker, do the same warm up, same circuit – 10 minutes walking, 20 minutes on the bike, 10 minutes on the step etc. You get the picture. Hydro Active simply wasn’t on their radar; what’s more the free water fountain was a part of their routine and an all too easy default. We hadn’t presented them with a compelling enough reason to change the habit of a lifetime.
3. Cynicism
Against these ingrained beliefs, gym bunnies thought Hydro Active was just a gimmick; a flavoured water and advertising on a “selling medium” wasn’t helping. Those who tried it, did so simply because it was new, but had no idea if it made a difference. Water was the gold standard, by definition the ultimate hydrator, and trying to undermine its pole position was met with cynicism.
The power of explanation
During initial research, the dynamic and dialogue of focus groups had allowed us to explain why Hydro Active was better than water, piquing the interest of respondents. When the science behind the product was revealed, they were impressed. Motivated. When the functionality of Hydro Active was divulged in detail to respondents, their cynicism had disappeared.
We needed to re-think our communication strategy. In some ways, ATL had done a good job; raised awareness, established a new brand and driven trial. But knowing what we now knew about the barriers to adoption, we had to accept that our choice of TV and Press as the only media had significant shortcomings.
Firstly they imparted too little information to answer the plethora of questions that our audience needed answered.
Secondly, TV and Press were not point of sweat media. (A small percentage of our budget was against gym TV, but in this era of the iPod, not all exercisers plug into the TV in the gym)
Thirdly, they were simply not the appropriate media to dispel cynicism, being seen as altogether too ‘salesy’.
So it wasn’t what we were saying that was the problem. We remained convinced that we needed to communicate that Hydro Active was better than water.
It was when, where and how we were saying it.
We needed to find a way to overcome the three barriers to adoption, and mapped out the criteria for our ideal channel solution:
Barrier Channel Solution
Lack of Able to deliver detailed Information information and respond to questions
Ingrained Directly at point Behaviour of sweat
Considered Cynicism credible, impartial and completely trusted
We needed to find a trusted channel that could literally engage gym bunnies in a conversation (the merits of which we had clearly witnessed in research). Delivering detailed information was key, but this could still leave people confused, we had to be able to enter into a dialogue, be interactive and able to respond to questions. We needed to be there, in the gym when it mattered most and to dispel cynicism we had to be considered credible, impartial and trustworthy.
We looked at key potential channels to see how they stacked up against these key criteria:
TV / Radio / Gym Press / Outdoor TV Advertorial Online Sampling
Able to deliver detailed information and respond to questions 9 9
At point of sweat 9 9
Credible, impartial and completely trusted
As you can see, no one channel met all criteria. Combined channels could of course complement each other, playing to their strengths, but with limited budgets we couldn’t afford to dilute our spend.
We talked around and around our conundrum, we looked back over the research; pre, post, qual, quant, we thought about our own experiences in the gym and then looking through consumer quotes, it struck us.
“One of the instructors here did a plan to help me lose weight for my wedding. I was doing all the wrong stuff and he helped me focus on certain ‘bits’. He’s is the main reason I got into my dress & deserves a medal”
Olivia Mason, gym member
They clearly know what they’re talking about - you don’t get fat instructors do you!”
John McKeen, gym member
There was a channel we hadn’t yet considered. A channel that was actually sought out for advice, was constantly asked questions and was right there in the gym. Our gym bunnies even looked up to and trusted its advice and tips.
Gym instructors. Genius.
These guys were gods amongst gym bunnies, they motivated them, helped them get back into the jeans they thought would never see the light of day, helped shave two inches off their waistlines. They were revered. They were also the only channel that could meet all three of our criteria. We’d found the perfect channel.
Now what?
So with our sights set on our credible expert with no axe to grind, we identified the largest body of gym instructors in the UK - FitPro, the fitness professionals. With a presence in the majority of gym chains across the UK, FitPro were the ideal partner and we approached them with a view to building a genuine partnership; something that was way beyond paid for sponsorship rights. But, if we were to influence the influencers, the instructors needed to believe in Hydro Active.
The ultimate torture test
We didn’t want FitPro to simply take our money or our words that Hydro Active was better than water – these guys had to genuinely believe that it worked. They ded to put it to the test; in fact, it was critical to our strategy that each and every ambassador personally put Hydro Active to the test. We needed genuine converts.
So we devised the ultimate torture test. We took our sport scientists along to a FitPro ‘work-out workshop’ and conducted hydration tests, pitting instructors drinking Hydro Active against those drinking water whist they worked out.
The results spoke for themselves - Hydro Active kept them better hydrated than water, but more importantly, being so in tune with their body, they could feel the benefit. Better hydration meant they felt less sluggish at the end of their workout. We had them.
They wanted to get their hands on Hydro Active as quickly as possible. The tests ensured we had genuine brand ambassadors and they wanted to understand how it worked.
The Ambassador Programme
We devised an educational programme for our ambassadors; we ran Q&A sessions, had a dedicated section in their training handbook, wrote articles in
Fitpro’s magazines, supplied educational materials to go up in the gyms and of course supplied product.
In return, during classes our ambassadors drank Hydro Active and educated gym bunnies about the importance of hydration when exercising, actively encouraging them to drink Hydro Active over water.
Turning the tide
The ambassador programme became the pivotal strand of our communication, although not the only strand. A physical presence in the gym worked in conjunction with existing ads on Gym TV and across lifestyle & fitness magazines.
We were telling the same story, but now much more convincingly.
Whilst still early days, initial results have been hugely positive. Vending sales in gyms running the ambassador programme have record sales; growing numbers
of gym goers are consuming Hydro Active and understand its benefits over water. Furthermore, overall sales are showing a steady uplift as consumers move from trial to adoption.
“Since our re-launch I have noticed more members drinking the product both in the gym and classes.“
Katie Bulmer, Esporta Sunderland
“What I have found while promoting Hydro Active is that our drinks machines are emptying fast”.
Jenny Davidson, Bannatyne's Milton Keynes
Conclusions
This paper is a great example of the potential of genuine open plan thinking, when sleeves are rolled up, hats taken off and channels neutral. It showcases the clever bit of thinking that could only have come from combined specialisms.
What we were communicating remained the same, but when, where and how we communicated changed radically. It led us away from the world’s most well known advertising channels, to one that had yet to be exploited, and the only channel that met all of our criteria: The medium of gym instructors.