Category: Ambient Media (Large Scale)
Advertiser: TOOM BAUMARKT
Product/Service: TOOM GARDENING SERVICE
Agency: OGILVYACTION
Executive Creative Director: Martin Seele (OgilvyAction)
Senior Art Director: Lee Manton (OgilvyAction)
Client Service Director: Werner Hesse-Quack (OgilvyAction)
Management Supervisor: Cordula Mehler (OgilvyAction)
Senior Copywriter: Mike Dawe (OgilvyAction)
Copywriter: Nadja Franke (OgilvyAction)
Production: Congaz (Congaz Audio Visual Company)
Post-Production: Congaz (Congaz Audio Visual Company)
Head Of Project Management: Hanna von Schultz (Ogilvy ActionOgilvyAction)
Submissions: Toma Soare (OgilvyAction)
Media placement: Ambient (Street Team) - City Centres - 17.11.2011
Describe the brief/objective of the direct campaign.
toom is a German DIY store with an extensive gardening department and garden planning service. The task was to increase awareness of these divisions and activate consumers (both current and potential) to purchase.
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective with reference to the projected response rates and desired outcome.
Gardens across Germany are being neglected, so much so that gnomes have decided to march to vent their anger.
We placed protesting garden gnomes across Germany, contacting our target audience directly and in a relevant, eye-catching manner. Each gnome carried a placard containing a story detailing why they were demonstrating, with a call to action to help out by visiting toom’s garden centre.
The protesting gnomes took to Twitter to further increase awareness of toom, while members of the public won prizes by taking pictures of the gnomes and uploading them to Facebook, creating an online buzz.
Explain why the creative execution was relevant to the product or service.
By using a surprising, interesting and very different communication method, we were able to achieve standout in an already cluttered marketplace. With the majority of garden centres using ‘traditional’ marketing methods for promotion, we set ourselves apart by utilising a media space that no one in the category had previously explored.
By taking to the streets, we could communicate with the public in a more personal manner, while using characters synonymous with gardens (the gnomes) allowed the promotion to have an instantly recognisable group of heroes that could be sympathised and interacted with.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible with particular reference to the RESPONSE of the target audience including deliverability statistics, response rates, click throughs, sales cost per response, relationships built and overall return on investment.
The protest generated enormous word-of-mouth and invaluable consumer-generated publicity. The gnomes attracted the attention of all who walked by, and the Facebook page and Twitter feed targeted the consumers directly, allowing us to easily inform people about toom’s garden service and lead them seamlessly to the webpage.
The gnomes featured in 1,000s of uploads, comments, views and shares on social networking sites, spreading word of the protest directly to people’s personal feeds.
Even though we are only just entering spring, enquiries for garden planning services have increased 40%, with much more expected in the build-up to summer.