Category: Best fictional program, series or film where a client has successfully created a drama, comedy or miniseries around a product or brand
Advertiser: TRAVELMENU
Product/Service: TRAVEL COMPANY
Agency: SMETANA
Chief Executive Officer: Andrey Buzina (Smetana)
Copywriter: Sveta Belousova (Smetana)
Director of Photography: Ivan Egorov (Smetana)
Project Manager: Katia Startseva (Smetana)
Producer: Irina Matienko (Smetana)
Media placement: Online video - Online - Starting 20 December 2011
Campaign Description
The situation with branded content in Russia:
- Very high price for TV advertisements and only big companies can afford federal TV campaigns.
- The efficiency of TV ads recently is disputable (reliance to federal channels has decreased dramatically in the last 5 years) and not many people of active economy class are monitoring the TV shows and news.
- The role of Internet as a mass advertisements channel is growing.
- The internet is still not regulated by the federal government; on the other hand, only 47% of Russia’s population has an access to the Internet.
Effectiveness
We started in early December. Our client Travelmenu is a young travel start-up; the company was facing tight competition, and needed to raise awareness with a limited marketing budget.
The task was to attract the attention of the audience to the system of internet travel booking provided by Travelmenu and to stimulate sales on the Russian Market.
We analysed the environment during the video launch period in December 2011, when dissatisfaction with the government and the rigged parliamentary elections reached their peak levels. Russians citizens, who used to be largely politically indifferent, joined popular street protest manifestations in large cities. President Medvedev, whose political authority and status has always been somewhat of a question mark, has become even more of a joke in the eyes of the thinking Russian people.
On the other hand, Russians traditionally devote the whole of December to New Year celebration preparation. Russian people associate New Year's Eve with festivities full of Champagne, tangerines, olive salad and the most anticipated media event of the year - the President's New Year address to the Nation.
We decided to combine the forthcoming New Year atmosphere and political situation around the fake elections in Russia and produce satirical video with the president Medvedev.
We had only 1 week for creative concepts development and 1 more week for video production.
We produced a video with a fake President's New Year's speech, where the President was shown delivering his speech on a sunny beach in Hawaiian shorts.
We distributed our video through social media and opinion leaders.
We were expecting aggressive reactions from the president's retinue, but the reaction was surprisingly positive.
Implementation
We produced a video with a fake President's New Year's speech where the President was demonstrated delivering his speech on a sunny beach in Hawaiian shorts.
We have uploaded the video with the President into a specifically created YouTube channel KremlinVideo so that people could think that this was an official Kremlin video.
We have seeded it though DifferenetVK.com and Facebook groups and pages.
Top bloggers, and other opinion leader’s, enjoyed sharing the content and being actively involved in distribution process.
Outcome
During the first week, over 5m people were watching and sharing the video, which made the case the most successful Russian commercial on YouTube in 2011
- The number of comments on sites with embed video exceeded 50,000
- The number of YouTube video likes exceeded 30,000
- The website traffic grew 5 times
- Sales grew 3 times
- The video received YouTube Awards
- The client received significant mass media exposure
- The video inspired huge public resonance
The reaction of the President was surprisingly positive. Moreover, we received a proposal to produce similar viral stories for Prime Minister Putin.