Chicco: SMILE

Credits & Description:

Category: Best Consumer Engagement

Advertiser: CHICCO

Product/Service: BABY PRODUCTS

Agency: McCANN ERICKSON NY

Agency: OUTDOOR ADVERTISING GROUP

Date of First Appearance: Jan 27 2011

Entrant Company: McCANN ERICKSON NY, USA

Creative Director/Art Director: Nathalie Brown (McCann Erickson)

Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Karen Ingram (McCann Erickson)

Creative Director/Writer: Steve Nasi (McCann Erickson)

Copywriter: Katelyn Homer (McCann Erickson)

Art Director: Lacey Waterman (McCann Erickson)

Executive Creative Content Producer: Catherine Patterson (McCann Erickson)

Creative Content Producer: Stuart Shapiro (McCann Erickson)

Business Manager: Wilmien Blake (McCann Erickson)

Project Manager: Lindsey Rogers (McCann Erickson)

Group Strategy Partner: Jane Goodman (McCann Erickson)

Partner/Creative Director: David Schwarz (Hush)

Partner/Creative Director: Erik Karasyk (Hush)

Lead Animator: James O’Brien (Hush)

Flash Developer: Nicholas Kircos (Hush)

Executive Engagement Officer: Biagio Black Goetzke (Modstar)

Production Manager: Marina Mezzogiorno-Brown (Modstar)

Head of Engineering: David Crow (Aevra )

Interactivity Engineer: Rafael Mendiola (Aevra )

Software Engineer: Raam Dev (Aevra )

Software Engineer: Tony Aidamouni (Aevra )

Media placement: Print Campaign - Targeted Magazines - 27 January 2011

Media placement: Interactive Banners - Across The Web - 27 January 2011

Media placement: Interactive Billboard - New York Time Square - 27 January 2011

Media placement: Commemorative Email - Email - 14 February 2011



Insights, Strategy & the Idea

Our task was to introduce Chicco, a brand of baby products, to the US. Chicco has been a global leader in the juvenile products market for over 50 years, but the brand is relatively unknown in the U.S. market. The main problem was that most Americans pronounce the name “Cheek-o” rather than “Kee-Ko.” This made the provenance of the name confusing and parents questioned the reliability and safety of the products. The second we told parents Chicco is pronounced “Kee-Ko”, like Chianti, and is from Italy, the brand gained more credibility. So, our idea is to have Babies Introduce Chicco to the US.



Creative Execution



We used a balance of traditional and non-traditional media to raise awareness for the program and drive strong consumer engagement.



We created a chance for kids ages 0-5 from anywhere in the US to have their own Broadway debut.

We had parents to shoot videos of their kids saying “Kee-Ko” (or at least trying). We then put videos of the babies on a billboard in Times Square. We set up a camera on the 8th floor of the building facing the billboard and took a picture of it in real time and sent it back to the parents as an attachment in an email.



We used print ads and banners to send parents to the micro site where they could upload their videos. We even created a webcam enabled banner so parents could record their kids directly from the banner without having to leave the site they were visiting.



Results and Effectiveness

In only 6 short weeks, we received over 80,000 hits to the micro site and had close to 500 video submissions. Parents spent on average over 3 minutes on the site. The campaign received a lot of buzz on Mommy blogs, which are a crucial element for any kids’ products. We nearly doubled Chicco’s Facebook likes and helped drive more consumer engagement on their page. Chicco’s sales at a leading U.S. retailer passed expectations and their phones kept ringing with new b2b customers. But most importantly, now, Americans can say our name! Say “Chicco”.