Category: Best integrated content campaign
Advertiser: AKZO NOBEL PAINTS BELGIUM
Product/Service: LEVIS PAINT
Agency: SANCTA
Chief Executive Officer/Founder: Kristoff Leue (Sancta)
Marketing Director Consumer Brands: Greet Boonen (Akzo Nobel)
Business Unit Manager: Chris Van Gils (Sqills/Sanoma Media)
Creative Manager: Robin Ibens (Sancta)
Production Manager: Pieter Maes (Sancta)
Director: Thomas Ceulemans (Sancta)
Production Assistant: Els Mostien (Sancta)
Camera: Hadewych Cocquyt (Sancta)
Editor: Jonas Missine (Sancta)
Camera: Luis Monge (Sancta)
Production Assistant: Ernst Marechal (Sancta)
Sound: Maarten Leemans (Sancta)
Office Manager: Maria Rita La Russa (Sancta)
Field Manager: Sofie Steen (Sancta)
Administrator: Trui Kempynck (Sancta)
Conversation Manager: Frank Delmelle (Sancta)
Media placement: TV Series - RTBF La Une - 3 July 2011
Media placement: Events - Real World, City Level - 20 June 2011
Media placement: Social Media - Facebook + Youtube, Blog, Flickr, Twitter - 16 June 2011
Media placement: PR And Earned Media - TV Channels, Newspapers, Magazines, Blogs - 16 June 2011
Media placement: Customer Media - POS, App Store, Newspaper Inserts - 16 June 2011 - 27 April 2012
Campaign Description
Since SBS Belgium partnered with energy supplier Electrabel to produce Belgium’s poorly received branded entertainment première ‘Onder hoogspanning’ in 2006, viewers had not been treated with branded TV before ‘Couleurs Carolo’ was broadcasted. Despite affluent lip service to the branded entertainment trend, even in 2011, all approached commercial stations had a very hard time imagining precious airtime being traded for ready-made branded content and preferred to cling to traditional ad airtime models. Belgium’s commercial broadcasters obviously still fear cannibalising on traditional ad revenues and hence regret to see an advertiser spend his budget on entertainment production, especially when combined with a clever earned media strategy.
Regulatory restrictions in Belgium are hardly insurmountable nevertheless. The European Union’s 2007 Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) was incorporated into domestic legislation in 2009. On February 1, 2010 the first broadcaster in the French community of Belgium to use product placement was not a commercial TV station but the public channel RTBF/La Une, which, in 2011, agreed to air the branded docu-reality series Couleurs Carolo.
Effectiveness
As a transmedia story marketing endeavour, Couleurs Carolo was to activate Akzo Nobel Belgium’s paint brand Levis’ new brand identity, ‘Let’s Colour’, on the Belgian market. It empowered the brand by attaching it to real stories, sourced in colour, providing a shared brand experience.
The program was preceded by an elaborate phase of scouting for the key colour stories and their partners in ‘The World’s Ugliest City, Charleroi’. Its starting point, the essential significance of colour in people’s lives, enabled an unusual multipartner setup: a paint brand partnered with a city council and a public broadcaster.
6 ambitious ‘colour challenges’ were sowed across the city, inspiring an urban make-over for which some 2000 locals picked up paint brushes. The popular CEO of the airport mobilised to colourfully express the hospitality of his hometown. Colour turned a godforsaken square into a local ‘Notting Hill’: a cultural activist set out to prove that culture would revive the run down downtown area. A gynaecologist told the stories of 99 fellow citizens in 99 shades of red on his hospital’s façade. In an ancient steel factory, colour complemented the indie music scene. A retired historian spurred the young and angry to splash their colours onto a, finally wild yellow, water tower.
These stories, or reconversions of a post-industrial city for which, in public perception, all hope was long lost, vibrated on a real-world level before being taken to national TV, social and earned media. Within less than 2 weeks of their realisations, they were broadcasted on consecutive Sunday nights, as a 8 x 26’ docu-reality series on RTBF/La Une, earning a meritorious amount of free media before being taken to the brand’s owned media and, of course, remembered in its points of sales.
Implementation
Couleurs Carolo’s pulling power was as much a product of the earned transmedia strategy as it was a result of the narrative force of locals painting 6 colour landmarks in the ‘Ugliest City in the World, Charleroi’.
Scouting for these stories and their celeb ambassadors, generated a first wave of WOM, supported by social media. Broadcasting on national TV, 8x26’ on Sunday nights, was preceded by a PR and autopromotion campaign, echoed in owned media.
Most importantly, news of ‘The Black Country’ being coloured triggered extensive earned media space, including TV news items, newspapers, radio, (re)tweets, blogposts etc.
Outcome
For Akzo Nobel Belgium, Couleurs Carolo realised a successful transmedia visualisation of both the paint brand Levis’ new brand identity, ‘Let’s Colour’, and the generic brand’s mission ‘adding colour to people’s lives.’ An operation that simultaneously benefited the brand’s structural partners, broadcaster RTBF and the reconversion of the post-industrial city of Charleroi.
• 8% market growth for Akzo Nobel Belgium
• Levis brand market share rise from 41.3% to 45%
• 6 colour celebrations + 6 lasting major urban colour landmarks
• >2000 engaged local volunteers from 6 urban communities
• 1000’s of citizens rediscovering their city’s pride
• 8 x 80,000 viewers and 15% market share for the 8x26’ TV-series
• 1, 351, 141 daily news views and a 1000 fans per month growth rate on Facebook
• 6m reach via earned newspaper and magazine articles
• 1m national TV-news viewers: French, Dutch & Flemish
• Daily updates on local radio Vivacité throughout the summer
• Story injection in owned media: online, customer magazine (print & iPad), POS
• Idem on managed social media: Youtube channel, Flickr, Facebook, blog.