Category: Best Use of Experiential Marketing in a Promotional Campaign
Advertiser: PERGO
Product/Service: PERGO FLOORING
Agency: FITZGERALD+CO
Chief Creative Officer: Noel Cottrell (Fitzgerald)
Creative Director/Copywriter: Mitch Bennett (Fitzgerald)
Creative Director/Art Director: Wes Whitener (Fitzgerald)
Director Of Integrated Production: Christine Sigety (Fitzgerald)
Director: Jeremy Konner (Partizan)
Executive Producer: Sheila Stepanek (Partizan)
Producer: Ross Girard (Partizan)
Director Of Photography: Eric Haase (Partizan)
Production Designer: Eric Archer (Partizan)
Editor: Jacob Kuehl (Final Cut LA)
Producer: Jennifer Miller (Final Cut LA)
Colorist: Ricky Guasis (The Moving Picture Company)
Producer: Amanda Orneias (The Moving Picture Company)
Media placement: Public Installation/Event - Venice Beach - 19 September 2011
Media placement: Internet Films - Youtube, Facebook - 11 October 2011
Describe the objective of the promotion.
Pergo’s new floor is twice as durable as ordinary laminate flooring. With a very small budget, we needed a fun way to get the word out and make people understand just what it means to have an extremely durable floor.
Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation.
There’s a standard torture test in the flooring industry where a machine sandpapers a piece of floor for 8 hours. It is incredibly boring. We wanted to bring that durability test to life, in a very offbeat, very public way. We searched the country for floor-torturing acts, then flew the best to the Mecca of Weirdness, Venice Beach, CA. We built a 40’ x 30’ Pergo stage on the main drag, then let our 'acts' go to town on it as thousands watched. Acts included wrestlers in high heels, steel wool breakdancers and a 9,000 pound elephant 'magician'.
Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service.
The public installation and exhibition let us prove that Pergo was a tough floor in a very transparent way. The client was quite brave, as we literally didn’t know if the elephant would destroy his floor for all to see – the crowd filming the whole thing with their cameraphones. The promotion worked well beyond the event itself, as images from the day quickly spread across the web and TV news, as well as creating content for a promotional website.
Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results.
The stunt gained over 2.4m impressions in 30 days – including articles in Forbes, the L.A. Times and countless decorating blogs. Sales beat expectations by 20% and the Pergo plant had to run 24/7 for 3 months to catch up, making it Pergo’s most successful product launch in 18 years.